THE HANDSTAND

SEPTEMBER 2003

THE REAL REASON OF THE IRAQ WAR STARTS TO APPEAR AND RICHARD PERLE REAPPEARS.....

Israeli Center Opened In Baghdad

By Kamel al-Sharqi, IOL Correspondent

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2003-08/16/article02.shtml

BAGHDAD, August 16 (IslamOnline.net) - An Israeli center said to be specialized in Mid Eastern studies was opened in the occupied Iraqi Capital Baghdad, in a provocative move seen by Iraqi academics as the beginning of an Israeli scheme to infiltrate the Iraqi society.

"Israel opened its center on August 1 at a large rented building in Abu Nawaas St. overlooking The Tigris river," they told IslamOnine.net Friday, August 15.

The sources, who requested anonymity, said the center has already started operation, noting that it was the first Israeli center operating publicly in Baghdad since its downfall on April 9.

The heavily-guarded building, they said, obtained work permits from the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq and the Pentagon.

The Iraqis sources said the center is affiliated to the Washington- based MEMRI (short for the Middle East Media Research Institute), an Israeli association set up five years ago, with offshoots in London, Berlin and West Jerusalem.

"Superficially, the center follows up Arab newspapers in the Arab world and Europe, particularly London, translates key articles into Hebrew, English, German, French and Italian and circulate them among subscribers, not to mention state-run Israelis institutions," they clarified.

The sources put at 35,000 the number of subscribers, who receive MEMRI's services on a daily basis, adding that it is a non-profitable organization and employs dozens in its different offshoots.

"MEMRI receives donations from Jewish and Zionist institutions from all over the world," they averred.

Brian Whitaker, a Guardian writer, has investigated whether the 'independent' MEMRI is quite what it seems.

He wrote on August 12, 2002, that MEMRI is "rather a mysterious organization. Its website does not give the names of any people to contact, not even an office address."

Whitaker attributed "Memri's air of secrecy" to those who run it, noting that its co-founder, president and registered owner of its website, "is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon."

"Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin."

The Guardian writer said that based on a retrieved now-deleted page from MEMRI's website archives, he came across the names of six people, "three - including Col Carmon - are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence."

He added that another staff "served in the Israeli army's Northern Command Ordnance Corps."

According to Whitaker MEMRI's co-founder is "Meyrav Wurmser, who is also director of the center for Middle East policy at the Indianapolis- based Hudson Institute.

He noted, in this respect that the "ubiquitous Richard Perle, (former) chairman of the Pentagon's defense policy board, recently joined Hudson's board of trustees."

Judging from the e-mails he receives from MEMRI, the Guardian writer concluded that "the stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel. I am not alone in this unease."

He recalled that Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Washington Times: "Memri's intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible."

Whitaker also challenged MEMRI's "claims that it does provide translations from Hebrew media, I can't recall receiving any."

Foul Play

Dr. Anwar Abdu Aziz, professor of political sciences in Baghdad University, charged that MEMRI and its offshoots have sinister objectives.

"Israel's underground goals in the Middle East are not a secret; this center is, in effect, a façade for intelligence and security bodies orchestrated by the Mossad (Israel's intelligence service)," he stressed.

The academic urged the U.S.-handpicked interim Iraqi Governing Council to immediately shut down the Israeli center in Baghdad "because it will penetrate our security."

For her part, Dr. Soad Bahudin al-Mousli from Al-Rafeden University, said Iraqis have never pronounced the word "Israel" and always referred to it as "the Zionist enemy."

She wondered: "Who would have imagined that Baghdad would someday host a center serving Israeli plots and schemes?"

Before the ouster of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Iraq was the only country in the Arab world - if not in the entire world - to sentence anyone who imported Israeli products to capital punishment

"This is the product of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and reaffirms out conviction that Israel and the United States are two sides of the same coin," Dr. Mousli underlined.

She further exhorted Iraqis to stand up to this Israeli infiltration, which runs counter to the interests of the Arab nations.

"Arab intelligentsia should expose all hostile Israeli practices," she said, charging that the U.S. occupation is Israel in disguise.

Famed Palestinian journalist Mohammad Samara regretted the existence of such a center in Baghdad.

"It is breaking our hearts to see the Israeli Mossad in Bahdad, the citadel of Arabs," Samara lamented.

Retaining some optimism, he said: "We still pin our high hopes on the brave people of Iraq to resist.

"Iraqis and Palestinians will continue to hold the Arab torch of struggle against powers of evil.

"Israel will never fulfill its much-pursued dream of establishing a (Jewish) state from the Euphrates to the River Nile as long as the Arab nation continues to give birth to heroes every day," Samara said.
Thanks to Raja Mattar

.U.S.GULAG IN IRAQ
by
Gordon Thomas


Each prisoner receives six pints of dank, tepid water a day. He uses it to wash and drink in summer noonday temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius.
He is not allowed to wash his clothes’. He is provided with a small cup of delousing powder to deal with the worst of his body infestation.
For the slightest infringement of draconian rules he is forced to sit in painful positions. If he cries out in protest his head is covered with a sack for lengthy periods.
This is daily life in America’s shameful Gulag – Camp Cropper on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport.
Only the International Red Cross are allowed inside. They are forbidden to describe what they see.
But some of its staff have broken ranks – to tell Amnesty International of the shocking conditions the 3000 Iraqi prisoners are held under.
None had been charged with any offence. They are listed as suspected “looters” and “rioters”. Or listed as “loyal to Saddam Hussein”.
Every day more prisoners are crowded into the broiling, dusty compound.
Surrounded by ten-foot high razor wire, they live in tents that are little protection against the blistering sun. They sleep eighty to a tent on wafer thin mats.
Each prisoner has a long-handled shovel to dig his own latrine. Some are too old or weak to dig the ordered depth of three feet. Others find they have excavated pits already used.
The over-powering stench in this hell-hole is suffocating.
“Add to sleep deprivation and physical abuse you have highly degrading conditions which are tantamount to torture and gross abuse of human rights” said Curt Goering, deputy director of Amnesty International, the London-based human rights watchdog.
He confirmed that Amnesty had received “credible reports” of detainees which had died in custody, “mostly as a result of shooting by members of the coalition forces”.
Camp Cropper also houses a growing number of what are listed as “special prisoners”.
They include the former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, Saadiun Hammadi, the former speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, and Ezzar Ibrahim, the son of Saddam’s second in command on the Revolutionary Command Council.
The one woman “special” is Huda Ammash – known as “Chemical Sally”, because a key member of Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons programme.
The week before he committed suicide, Dr David Kelly, the English scientist, had prepared a list of questions he planned to put to her when he returned to Iraq to assist in the search for weapons of mass destruction.
Chemical Sally sleeps in a tent with other women members of the Ba’ath party. Like the men they are not allowed to wash their underwear – and several have developed unsightly sores, according to a Red Cross visitor.
After two months incarceration none of the “special prisoners” have been told what charges they will face – though several, like Tariq Aziz, then had surrendered voluntarily to the Americans.
A glimpse of his life nowadays has come from one of the few prisoners to be released, Adnan Jassim.
“Tariq Aziz has aged very much in the past months in the camp. He shuffles and has a stoop. This may because he has to dig his own toilet hole. It is forbidden for anyone to help him to do this. He is treated just like anyone else – an animal to be driven wherever the guards want him.
“His hair has grown. It is very dirty. He gets no special treatment. The same terrible food. Mostly he eats very little of it. It is hard to believe he was, second to Saddam, the most powerful man in Iraq”.
Jassim was arrested the day after the war officially ended. He insists, according to a Red Cross official, that he was stopped for speeding.
“The Americans just fired at my car. Then they threw me into a truck and took me to the camp. At the gate I had a badge pinned to my shirt. It said’ presumed killer’. I have never even fired a gun, let alone kill anyone”, Jassim insisted.
Amnesty’s human rights workers and Red Cross officials have gathered statements from the few prisoners who have been released.
One is Qays al Salman, a 54-year-old guard at one of Saddam’s palaces. He claims: “One day we became so angry that all the man in my tent began shouting, ‘Freedom, freedom!’ The soldiers rushed in, tied us up and forced us to lie down in the middle of the day in the open. Some of us had bad sun stroke.
Other detainees, like Suheil Laibbi Mohammed, who used to work as a mechanic, repairing Saddam’s fleet of cars, said he had seen prisoners repeatedly hit with riffle butts”.
Detainees described being given food as inedible to Muslims. Most of the meat was pork. “But it was either eat it or starve”, said Rafed Adel Mehdi.
Tariq Aziz’s wife, Zureida, and his two sons fled to Jordan when the war ended.
In London their family lawyer, Dr Abdul Haq al-Ani, wants to serve a writ of habeas corpus on Britain’s embattled Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, arguing that his client is being held in contravention of the Geneva Convention and the Human Rights Act.
“I spent a week in Baghdad but I was not allowed to see my client. I know the conditions he is being held under from those who have been released. It is outrageous what is happening”, he said.
Chemical Sally’s family are also planning legal moves to have her freed.
They have submitted evidence to the Americans that she has breast cancer and requires to continue with her medical treatment.
Her mother, Kasmah Ammash, a frail 70-year-old said: “My daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer in the late Eighties. She went to Pittsburgh for chemotherapy and underwent a mastectomy. Before she was arrested she was undergoing further follow up treatment. How can they be so cruel”.
Amnesty International said it had urged the coalition forces to look into such allegations – and to bring to justice those found guilty of offences.
“The Americans have acknowledged there are some serious problems. But there is a difference of opinion on what laws apply”, said Mr Goering.
Nada Doumani, the International Red Cross spokesman in Baghdad said “we never comment on the conditions at the detention centers”.
“The Geneva Convention is clear about the obligations that exist for legal advice and visits. If someone is being held as a POW then there is a legal obligation to allow them access to legal advice. But if they are held as a civilian detainee that does not apply. A tribunal has been set up to decide which category each person in the camp fits into. Until their work is complete we can say no more”.
A spokesman for Lt-General Ricardo Sanchez, the coalition forces commander in Iraq, said he could not give a time frame when the tribunal’s work will be completed.

email Gordon Thomas at gthomas@indigo.ie

Secret Burials in the Desert :.. Ultimate Disrespect for U.S. Army Personnel and   US-Contracted Mercenaries in Iraq August 19, 2003 2000 - Mazen Dana arguing with an Israeli soldier during a demonstration at the entrance of Shuhada street in Hebron Did the Pentagon order the assassination of a journalist in order to cover up secret mass burials of dead U.S. soldiers and U.S.-contracted mercenaries in the deserts around Baghdad? What is really behind the killing of my colleague and friend, the Palestinian Reuters cameraman, Mazen Dana, in Bagdad? Is the Pentagon really scared of the media telling the U.S public what is really going on in Iraq? Do the criminals in the Pentagon want to cover their crimes against their own soldiers by killing journalists in Iraq? If so, then this is what can be called organized terror. The U.S. troops obviously felt threatened and in big danger due to the Palestinian Reuters cameraman, Mazen Dana, who was investigating a story about secret burials of U.S. mercenaries and soldiers in mass graves in far-away places in deserts strips around Baghdad, burials which had obviously been authorized by the commanders of the U.S. army. Mazen's scoop began when he realized that that the U.S. troops were burying human bodies wrapped in plastic in the desert. Initially, he thought that these were the bodies of Iraqi people. He kept watching and investigating the activities of the U.S. troops. He kept developing his scoop, working around different U.S. units and military jails, trying to figure out where the bodies had come from, and whether they were Iraqi or not. Ultimately he found a source, a U.S. mercenary, who told him that those buried were not Iraqis, but mercenaries who had been promised green cards and U.S. citizenship in return for serving in the U.S. Army. Besides, according to this source, not few of those interred were Americans who had been killed in combat. Mazen had been able to film the activities of the U.S. army, and their secret mass graves. He was experienced in journalistic work in areas of conflict and under dangerous conditions. In our hometown Hebron, he had been covering the Israeli Duvdevan units, essentially death squads of the Israeli army which can not normally be filmed. Since he had become aware of what the Americans were doing in the desert, he kept the secret to himself. The intelligence units of the U.S. Army probably knew that Mazen was uncovering, and they must have feared that their secret desert burials would expose the Pentagon and the Army for involvement in a big scandal. The U.S. Army prides itself in always bringing home their dead, and this ultimate disrespect for their own would certainly be frowned upon by the American society at large, even if not a few of them were mercenaries. The story also had the potential of making foreigners think twice before joining the U.S. military forces as mercenaries, nobody wants to be disrespected in this most abject and impious way, not even those who would sign up as mercenaries. During his last days, Mazen felt that the U.S. Army were observing him. Ten days before his death, he called home to Hebron and told his family that he feared for his life because of the story he was investigating, and he promised them to return as soon as he had finished his research. On Sunday, August 17, 2003, at noon and in bright sunshine, Mazen Dana was assassinated by the U.S. Army outside Abu Ghraib prison, where it had previously given him permission to film. According to my colleague, Nael al-Shyoukhi, who was with Dana at the time of his death, the camera team was known to the U.S. military personnel at the prison. Al-Shyoukhi said that they had asked for permission to interview an officer, which had been denied. The soldiers had seen their IDs and knew about their mission and intentions. Nael Al-Shyoukhi said "after we filmed we went into the car and prepared to go when a convoy led by a tank arrived and Mazen stepped out of the car to film. I followed him and Mazen walked three to four meters. We were noted and seen clearly. The soldier on the tank shot at us. I lay on the ground. I heard Mazen, I saw him scream and touch his chest with his blood-covered hand". The Pentagon Response: The U.S officials said that the troops mistook Mazen's camera for a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher. This was obviously a lie which nobody, not even naive people, will be able to believe. How can it be that the U.S. troops have the most technologically advanced sensors on their weapons, but will not be able to distinguish a camera from an RPG launcher at 50 meters in broad daylight? Did the U.S. troops learn to lie from their friends at the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)? This killing was a prepared assassination by the U.S troops in order to cover up their criminal activities, which Mazen had discovered and was about to expose. When I received the news of the killing of Mazen Dana, I thought for the first moment that the Israeli government was involved or in some way behind it. Mazen Dana had troubled the Israeli occupation more than enough for one man. The Israeli occupation forces targeted Dana several time during this Intifada, and even before that during the 'peaceful' period. He was shot in Hebron in 1998 by the IDF, together with his colleague Nael Al-Shyioukhi. Mazen Dana had been exposing the daily crimes of killing and collective murder in Hebron and the occupied territories, and he was shot again by the IDF during 2001. The Israelis were obviously not interested in his return from Iraq to Hebron. All Palestinians know that the U.S. Pentagon and the Israeli Defense Ministry do work together closely. Maybe we do not realize this, but we are killed by the IDF soldiers who use U.S. bullets, grenades, rockets and missiles, airplanes and attack helicopters. The U.S is constantly providing Israel with highly developed killing machinery, around $2 billions worth a year. That is more military aid than any other country receives from the U.S. It is also more aid (period) than any other country receives from the U.S. A quarter of the enormous military budget of the Jewish state is paid for directly by the U.S. American soldiers did also train Israeli soldiers to raid the Jenin refugee camp and other cities. They trained the Israelis in assassinating, killing and chasing "wanted" people, and in other so-called 'counter-insurgency techniques'. They also offered the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) Minister Muhammad Dahlan to train his forces to do the same. Soon the P.A. forces, instead of the IDF, will probably be chasing and murdering Palestinians. When I called Hebron to offer my condolences to Mazen Dana's family and to inquire about his death, I was informed about his investigation in Iraq on secret mass burials by the U.S. soldiers in the desert. This made me worry about my other colleague, Nael Al-Shyioukhi, who was still in Iraq, so I delayed writing this story until after Nael's safe return to our home town, Hebron. Mazen Dana held a B.A. in English Literature from Hebron University. He was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine during his time in the University. For this he was a targeted and harassed by the Israeli occupation forces, even after he stopped his political activities. During the first Intifada I worked for a short while with Mazen as a correspondent for Voice of Palestine Radio in Jerusalem. After that I worked with Al Fajir Newspaper, and Dana continued his work with different media. He was investigated several times by the Israeli civil administration in Hebron. He became a peace supporter after the signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993, and he then became a member of Fatah Peace Wing. He had been employed by Reuters since 10 years as a cameraman to cover the conflict in his hometown Hebron. Mazen Dana and Nael Al-Shyoukhi had been working together for eight years when Mazen was shot last Sunday. The Israeli occupation intelligence units continued considering Mazen Dana as a member of the Popular Front party even after he discontinued his activities with it, and they did not grant him an Israeli Government Press "GPO" Card, or a travel permit to visit the Reuters office in Jerusalem. 2000 - Journalists Imad Al-Saidi, Mazen Dana, Majdi Ibedo at a demo in Ramallah Dana was attacked several times by Jewish settlers and IDF soldiers in Hebron. In May 2000, Dana was shot in the leg with a rubber-coated bullet while filming Palestinian youths throwing stones towards the Hebron area H2 under Israeli control. Dana was arrested hundreds of times. In 1997 Dana was arrested as a result of filming IDF soldiers who were arresting me during an incident at the Halhol bridge border, where the IDF soldiers had caused the death of a nine-year-old child by preventing him from reaching a hospital in Hebron during a curfew which was imposed on the city, during peace time. Dana established the Journalist House of Hebron during the year 2002 despite the daily attacks and the constant threat of arrests made by the IDF soldiers against all Hebronite journalists. The last time I met my colleague Mazen Dana was at the end of May 2002 at our colleague's house: Hossam Abu Allan, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer who was arrested and imprisoned by the IDF for five months without being tried or even charged. At 10:30 on the same night Mazen drove with me in his jeep to "Al-Beweareh" mountain to film IDF tanks, 54 armed vehicles were arriving to Hebron on Road 60 as the military was preparing to re-occupy the city of Hebron, the area H1, normally under PA control. Mazen Dana had a long experience as a television cameraman, and he had experienced the hardships and harsh working conditions of journalistic work under military occupation. He left behind a wife and four wonderful children in Hebron. He also left a courageous and historic journalistic experience and a legacy for other journalists behind him. To most people, his death is but one more display of the abjectly criminal behavior of the gang in control at the Pentagon. To those of us who knew him and who worked with him, he will be a missed and respected colleague, friend, community and family member.

To Remember Mazen Dana

and All Those Murdered as

Witnesses.

Through a lense

He too saw

The dark shadow

Moving among men

He revealed those crimes

That the world must see.

Through a lense

His retina

Swarmed

As a bee

In  the hive of the cells,

His photographic slides

Ply the light of reason

The honey of proof

That we now pull

For ourselves

In season.

But our season

Because we can no longer

Adapt

To the vindictive spasm

Of evil

That runs through Israel,

Out into the world,

Must carry the crushing storms of voices

Denouncing the creeds

Wherein man seeks

To gain from a God

A spectral presence.

This history of violence

Now and in the future

Culls from politics

The final episode of insanity

 Keeping an appointment with lies.

A bitter sorrow

Brought about by the solitude

 Each witness keeps

With his brothers

Is a wind

Coursing

As a dog

In the hollows and crevices

Of all hidden things

Even in the fist

 And in that manifesto

Of belief

That government holds out…

Out of control,

Violence

Is now the method

Of breath consuming the living;

Air that is congealed

On our guilty silence.

Hear of that shot and speak out mankind,

Or you will turn down the road

That Mazin trod

 

Jocelyn Braddell ©

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