Communalizing History: Shivaji And Afzal Khan

By Ram Puniyani

30 September, 2009

The assembly elections have been declared in Maharashtra, and with this the atmosphere is heating up politically. In this state there have been substantial number of farmer’s suicides, all over there are serious issues related to rising prices, unemployment and other problems of daily life. But it seems that some political parties in Maharashtra are not much concerned about these core issues of society and seem to be more interested in the identity issues emerging from the past. Recently (September 3rd, 2009) tension developed in Miraj, Sangli and neighboring areas during Ganesh festival. This is the major festival of the state. During the festival trouble began with the erection of an arch on the route of Ganesh Visarjan, this arch depicted the slaying of Afzal Khan by Shivaji. Anticipating trouble due to the communal polarization around Shivaji and Afzal Khan, to maintain peace, the police removed the arch. Protesting against this removal of the arch some Ganesh Mandals decided not to immerse the Ganpati idols till the arch was restored. This is what led to the violence in due course, in which one person died and five got injured.
BJP leadership condemned the Governments’ step of removing the arch. Shiv Sena leader asserted that they will put posters of Shivaji slaying Afzal Khan all over the state and stated that had Shivaji been not there all of us would have been reading Namaz! The state administration did control the situation but since by now lot of emotive appeal has been generated around Shivaji it was an easy job. Few years ago during the previous Parliamentary elections, the same parties had tried to organize the procession to demolish the tomb of Afzal Khan. Fortunately at that time it was brought to people’s notice that this tomb was built by Shivaji himself and the matters came to a rest, but not before it created lot of bad blood. The matters related to Shivaji are very sensitive in Maharashtra, the state administration has even planned to construct the statue of Shivaji in the Arabain sea, costing thousands of crores, from public exchequer, at the cost other public necessities.
As a matter of fact, Shivaji is popular amongst people, not because he was anti Muslim or worshipper of Cows and Brahmins, but because he reduced the taxation on the poor peasants. Shivaji adopted humane policy in all the aspects of his administration, which did not base itself on the religion. In the recruitment of his soldiers and officers for army and navy, religion was no criterion and more than one third of his army consisted of Muslims. The supreme command of his navy was with Siddi Sambal, and Muslim Siddis were in navy in large numbers. Interestingly his major battles were fought against the Rajput army lead by Raja Jaisingh, who was in the administration of Aurangzeb. When Shivaji was detained at Agra forte, of the two men on whom he relied for his eventual escape, one was a Muslim called Madari Mehtar. His confidential secretary was Maulana Haider Ali and the chief of his cannon division was Ibrahim Gardi. Rustom-e-Jamaan was his bodyguard.
His respect for other religions was very clear and he respected the holy seers like 'Hazarat Baba Yaqut bahut Thorwale', whom he gave the life pension and also he helped Father Ambrose, whose church was under attack in Gujarat. At his capital Raigad, he erected a special mosque for Muslim devotees in front of his palace in the same way that he built the Jagadishwar temple for his own daily worship.
During his military campaigns Shivaji had issued strict instructions to his men and officers that Muslim women and children should not be subjected to maltreatment. Mosques and Dargah's were given due protection. He also ordered that whenever a copy of Koran came into the hands of his men, they should show proper respect to the book and hand it over to a Muslim. The story of his bowing to the daughter-in-law of Bassein's Nawab is well known to all. When she was brought as a part of the loot and offered to him, he respectfully begged her pardon and asked his soldiers to reach her back from the place from where she was forcibly brought in. Shivaji was in no way actuated by any hatred towards people of other religions.
As a matter of fact he had great respect for holy people of all religions. All this goes on to show the values of communal harmony which Shivaji pursued, and that his primary goal was to establish his own kingdom with maximum possible geographical area. To project him as anti-Muslim and anti-Islam is travesty of truth. Neither was Afzal Khan an anti Hindu king. When Shivaji killed Afzal Khan, Afzal Khan’s secretary Krishnaji Bhasker Kulkarni attacked Shivaji with a sword.
Today communal forces are out to ‘use’ Shivaji issue, to communalize the same for their political goals. In Maharashtra, Shivaji Afzal Khan have been projected as Hindu and Muslim kings. From amongst all the possible pictures of Shivaji, why is the one related to Afzal Khan is chosen? One can also show the pictures of his Pratapgadh fort with Afzal Khans tomb in that, one can show Shivaji paying respect to the Mazar of Madari Mehtar, a Muslim prince, who helped him to escape from Agra? The very selection of this picture is to divide the communities along religious lines. Communal interpretation of History, Communal historiography has been the major tool in the arsenal of communal forces. Minorities should not react to such things and try to call for peace with all the communities all the time. Now we are witnessing this pattern of history being used to communalize the society, to create sectarian divides in society. What is needed is to overcome these communal angles, to undermine identity issues, to build the Indian nation. We need to look at historical icons, as kings ruling for power, rather then the representatives of a particular religion.

Palestine, Yes We Can

By Sonja Karkar

30 September, 2009

The sounds of “yes we can” still ring in our ears, Mr President, but we have yet to see the changes we can believe in. That was evident when you backed down to Israel on a settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. You made us believe that we can, but it seems that you no longer believe that you can.

On the matter of Palestine, many people in the world would have been happy if you had just stuck to your word. The tragic, relentlessly abused Palestinians were ready to say, “yes we can”; we can negotiate peace again, despite sixteen years of repeated failures, if you would ensure that Israel freezes and dismantles its illegal settlement building. We would all say “yes we can” if we could see the US finally become an honest broker in such an obviously unequal conflict.

However, the summit meeting you had with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders is worse than that sense of déjà vu everyone is talking about. We know that we have all been here before, but more Palestinians are dying Mr President, more of their land is being stolen and being built on, more of their children are suffering from hunger, anaemia and unrelieved psychological trauma, more of their painful hope is being tortured out of them by our miserable efforts to gloss over an ethnic cleansing we said would never happen again.

What are you waiting for Mr President if you cannot put at least a temporary hold on the $3 billion plus-a-year “aid” your country gives to Israel? If you cannot stop arms sales to Israel when US law expressly states they must be used for defensive purposes only, and when there is precedent for doing so? If you cannot countenance the UN Security Council reaching its own conclusions free of US veto on the charges of war crimes in the Goldstone report? If you cannot distance the US administration from Israel’s aggression and defiance even though it hurts America’s interests?

We didn’t need a United Nations report to tell us what was so blatantly obvious, but now that we have Goldstone’s documented war crimes in Gaza, your concerns about the validity of his mandate only make us wonder if law has lost its meaning. All this patter about moving forward without calling in the debts of horrific crimes against humanity will surely take us down a slippery slope to lawlessness – a licence for aggression - where anything goes for those in power. But what kind of power is it when you cannot stop what you have started? What kind of power is it when you fear the people you suppress by force and terror?

As each day passes, Mr President, people everywhere believe less and less that you will change the eight awful years of neoconservative rule. In fact, they see things getting much worse. The words “yes we can” increasingly grate, as you do nothing: and you of all people could have turned the Titanic midstream. The world would have been with you, no matter how powerful the military-industrial complex that your late President Eisenhower warned Americans about, no matter how shrill the cries of some 30 million Christian Zionists salivating over End Times in Jerusalem, no matter how intimidating the Israel lobby that shamefully holds Congress in its sway to the detriment of America’s own interests.

Do you really think we don’t know that these forces are dictating our futures?

What kind of future then do you envisage for the 4 million Palestinians under occupation and almost 5 million refugees Mr President? There is no two-state solution: it is a sham. In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians are being stripped of their homes and their farming lands while Jewish foreigners flood in from abroad to populate the monstrous complexes being built illegally on the last remaining vestiges of the Palestinian homeland. And in Gaza, people are drowning in blood, ravaged by hunger, sickness and hopelessness while they watch politicians grin and shake hands and make promises that everyone knows are as empty today as they were yesterday. Must another generation of Palestinians watch their prison walls squeeze them in tighter while the world plays more games of pretending peace and talking about a future state vanishing before their eyes?

Be honest with us Mr President and tell us openly that you cannot fight the forces stacked against you alone. We would understand that. We do want to believe that a sense of justice will still move you to make the changes we can believe in. Billions of people in the world are ready to carry you on the crest of a tsunami, if you would only give us more than words. Perhaps from where you stand Mr President you don’t hear how hollow they sound.

Yet, it is in that very same hollow space that more and more people can hear the keening sounds of silence from Gaza and the rapidly fading echoes of your “Yes we can”. It is not too late Mr President to give us the changes we can believe in; it is not too late to say Palestine, “yes we can”.

Sonja Karkar is the co-founder and co-convener of Australians for Palestine and founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. She is also the editor of the website http://www.australiansforpalestine.com and has had numerous articles published in online and printed journals and Australian newspapers. She can be reached at sonjakarkar@womenforpalestine.org

Israel's Ofra Settlement On Unauthorized Palestinian Land

By Stephen Lendman

30 September, 2009

Israel's 130 West Bank settlements are illegal under international law, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that states:

"Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive."

In addition, various UN resolutions (including 446, 452 and 465) condemned Israel's settlement building by declaring they have "no legal validity" to exist. Yet they do and continue expanding in reckless disregard of the law.

Even so, after its forces occupied the West Bank in 1967, Israel in principle agreed to respect binding local Jordanian law and its own subsequent military order. It didn't then and doesn't now.

B'Tselem's report titled "The Ofra Settlement - An Unauthorized Outpost" shows that Israel reneged on its agreement because Ofra is illegal under local and international law.

Called a flagship settlement, it was established in 1975 by the fundamentalist Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) movement that began seizing West Bank land for itself - modestly at first in abandoned Jordanian Ein Yabrud army camp houses. Then later, more aggressively after the Rabin government recognized it as a community even though 58% of its area lies on land registered to Palestinians in Israel's Land Registry. Settlement construction there is forbidden. Yet in 1977 under Menachem Begin, recognition became official.

Ofra set a precedent. As the first northern West Bank settlement, it broke "the barrier that blocked settlement attempts in the heart of the Palestinian population" and established events on the ground for dozens more to follow - illegal settlements and outposts "in opposition to the stated official position of the government," on paper only to be defiled and ignored.

Some Background on Gush Emunim

Under the slogan, "The Land of Israel, for the people of Israel, according to the Torah of Israel," Gush Emunim (GE) emerged in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, but Israel's 1967 Six-Day war victory inspired its adherents to believe that all biblical Israel for Jews alone was now in reach.

Today, GE is an influential, extremist pressure group - fundamentalist, radical, messianic, militant, terrorist, and undemocratic, yet supported by all Israeli governments. Ofra gave it a footprint, a toehold, an entry for Israel to establish 130 West Bank settlements and other outposts, now home to half a million Jews on confiscated Palestinian land.

From Ofra to Colonizing the Entire West Bank for a Greater Israel

In their book, "Lords of the Land: The War over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories," Israeli authors Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar described the beginning as follows:

"Ofra...., which was established in trickery and on false pretexts, flourished into the heart of the Israeli consensus because of its respectable appearance, the settler's flagship institutions that were established there, and the mellifluous discourse of some of its better-known inhabitants."

Respectability, however, hid its dark side. Besides lying on registered Palestinian land, the area's borders weren't defined. A community plan was never approved, and required building permits were never issued for construction. As a result, Ofra is now the largest unauthorized West Bank outpost, yet it continues to exist. It has 2700 residents in well-established northern and southern neighborhoods with extensive community services, including three schools, a day-care center, several kindergartens, a Society for the Protection of Nature field school, women's religious schools, various public institutions, businesses, and light industry.

It's registered as a cooperative society, a legal entity offering many advantages. Their private, not public bodies. Their documents and files aren't open to the public, and they can restrict membership solely to others as ideologically committed as themselves.

Ofra's Illegality Under Israeli Law

Besides international law, Ofra violates local law under which a settlement must meet four criteria to be legal:

-- Israeli government authorization for its establishment;

-- the settlement's jurisdictional area approved under the military commander's order;

-- a lawfully approved Civil Administration planning authorities' plan; and

-- settlements must lie on state land and/or land purchased by Israelis and registered under their name in the Land Registry.

At its inception in 1975, no government authorization was given. Yet, on July 26, 1977, Israel's Ministerial Committee for Settlement recognized Ofra as a civilian community. The Civil Administration told B'Tselem that "no area of jurisdiction has been defined for Ofra, which is one of the communities of the Meteh Binyamin Regional Council in accordance with the schedule to the Order Concerning Administration of Regional Councils (Judea and Samaria) (Number 783), 1979."

The still-in-force Jordanian planning law states that building permits are required for construction, including structure additions. Lawfully approved, detailed plan outlines are also required. In 1971, the IDF military commander signed Order No. 418. It left most Jordanian law provisions intact, but "made significant changes to the structure and composition of the planning institutions."

International law is precise. It lets occupying powers change existing laws only for reasons of military necessity or to provide humanitarian aid for the local population. Israel did it anyway. It cancelled local Palestinian planning and building committees, transferring their authority to the Higher Planning Council subcommittees operating within the Civil Administration on the Beit El army base.

Special local settlement planning committees were also appointed with powers given them by the military commander. It let them issue building permits, "pursuant to valid detailed outline plans." It also gave the Higher Planning Council power "to exempt any person from the obligation to obtain a (required) license (building permit)."

B'Tselem requested information on Ofra's planning process. In response, the Civil Administration replied:

"The build-up area of Ofra is not located in the planning area of a local or special committee. There are no approved or deposited planning schemes concerning the built-up area of Ofra. No building permits or exemptions from building permits were given to structures in Ofra."

Proceeding anyway, Ofra leaders broke the law by bypassing planning procedures and preparing their own "building rules." As a result, they're legally invalid, and no building permits should have been issued under them. Further, Ofra isn't situated with the boundaries of a planning area where local or special local committees have authority. Construction was authorized anyway.

In May 2008, aerial photos showed 570 structures built, at least 400 of which are single-family homes. None were authorized. All are illegal.

The Mandatory Outline Plan

Lawful building permits may only be issued under Mandatory Regional Outline Plan RJ/5. Approved in 1942 and still in force, it covers the land on which Ofra lies. It's designated for agricultural use with construction allowed under strict conditions:

-- landowner approval must be gotten;

-- only one residential structure per original plot may be built provided the area is at least 1000 square meters; even if much larger, the "one" rule applies; and

-- distances between structures and plot boundaries must be at least five meters.

Ofra construction failed to comply on all counts. "Residential dwellings and public buildings have been built in total disregard of the provisions of the Mandatory plan."

In October 1979, Israel's High Court ruled that privately-owned Palestinian land seizures by military requisition order were only lawful if they served "a clear security interest." Yet a month later, the government decided to establish settlements only on "state-owned land" without ever defining it properly.

Contrary to valid Jordanian law, Israeli policy states that "land that is not registered in the Land Registry, and has never been cultivated or is not suitable for cultivation, or was only cultivated in the distant past, is state land."

However, land registered to Palestinians is their land and may not be declared government property. Yet Israel twisted the law to declare 16% of the West Bank state land besides another 14% pre-1967 under Jordanian rule giving Israel 30% ownership and growing.

B'Tselem petitioned the Civil Administration for clarification, clearly marked on a map to show:

-- all defined state land;

-- land confiscated for public purposes;

-- land seized "pursuant to military requisition orders;"

-- land classified as "absentee property," belonging to Palestinians who fled in 1967 and didn't return; and

-- closed military zone areas.

The information gotten showed that "the portion of the built-up area of Ofra, or the area adjacent to it, that lies on requisitioned or confiscated land is very small, except for the land that the Civil Administration contends was confiscated by the Jordanians for the army camp."

By May 2008, Ofra's built-up area covered over 670 dunams (about 170 acres). About 27% of it was seized under Expropriation Order No 77/E (November 1977). Civil Administration information claimed it was "expropriated by the Jordanian government for a public purpose" and not initiated by Israel. Official documents, however, show that "the expropriation process was not completed." Also, Order 77/E wasn't recorded in the Land Registry, but the Civil Administration insisted that it's state land nonetheless even though registration was incomplete and thus invalid.

B'Tselem calls the land "not state land. (Therefore), Order 77/E, issued by the Israeli military commander in 1977, is a new expropriation order, issued more than two years after the settlers of Ofra took over the abandoned houses of the Jordanian army camp and some three months after the government of Israel decided to recognize Ofra as a permanent community."

The entire scheme was illegal. Israel's official position puts privately-owned Palestinian land off-limits for settlement construction because it's not for a "public purpose" under (still in force) Jordanian law. According to Plia Albeck, former State Attorney Office's Civil Division head:

Israel "may expropriate land for public purposes in the region, but regarding establishment of a new community, whose residents are Israeli citizens and at the time of establishment of the community do not live in the region, it is very doubtful that it is an expropriation for a public purpose in the region."

Former attorney general Yitzhak Zamir agreed in saying that "it is impossible to act under Jordanian law to expropriate private land for public purpose" to build settlements. Order 77/E was thus illegal and so is Ofra.

Israel also expropriated dozens of additional acres for an expanded area "not recognized as legitimate under international" or local (Jordanian) law. Further, most of Ofra's built-up land is not included under Order 77/E. In responding to recently filed petitions in Israel's High Court, "the state admitted that (Ofra's built-up area) contains additional lots that are recorded on the name of Palestinians...." It amounts to at least 58% of Ofra's built-up area.

The Ofra Cooperative Association, however, claims that it's held the land for many years without registered owners disputing it through legal action, so the land was lawfully theirs. The State Attorney's Office disagreed in stating "no proof had been made that the land was purchased by your client (and saying it is constitutes a) mere claim." The Civil Administration also provided no proof of purchase.

By law, all claimed West Bank land must be recorded in the Land Register under the name of the purchasers. Failure to do so is a crime. Ofra settlers said they failed to comply to "protect the lives of the Palestinian sellers" even though there were none. Also, according to Israeli attorney Plia Albeck, 90% of supposed West Bank purchased land involved forged "fictitious" documents.

As a result, Palestinian rights were grossly breached because Ofra construction "prevent(ed) them from possessing and exercising their ownership rights in the land and from gaining a living from it and from its agricultural produce."

Under Israel's Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, 5752 - 1992, section three states: "there shall be no violation of the property of a person." Illegal settlement construction on Palestinian-owned land constitutes a grave breach. International law affirms it. Besides Fourth Geneva and numerous UN resolutions, Article 46 of the 1907 Hague Regulations states:

"Family honor and rights, the lives of persons, and private property, as well as religious convictions and practice must be respected. Private property cannot be confiscated."

Ofra construction violates this law, "extending beyond the prohibition on establishment of the settlements." It denies Palestinians:

-- the right to live on their own land, develop it, raise crops on it, and gain other benefits;

-- thousands of additional dunams that Ofra seized for future development;

-- more still for infrastructure, including for-Jews only roads; and it

-- "has ramifications for other Palestinian communities" by preventing free movement between them and letting all settlements expropriate more West Bank and East Jerusalem land.

Conclusions

Under international and local laws, Ofra's settlement is illegal. No jurisdictional area was set for it. It doesn't have a valid outline plan, and at least 58% of its land is lawfully registered under Palestinian names in the Land Registry.

Israel's High Court held that settlements may not be built on such land. Yet it was and still is. Also, the military order pertaining to Ofra states that "the jurisdictional area of an Israeli regional council shall not include (privately-owned) Palestinian lands."

Israel's Civil Administration is prohibited from approving plans for Israeli communities on land registered to Palestinians. The state didn't authorize Ofra, but did nothing to stop settlement construction and continues letting them expand.

"Officially, Ofra is a recognized settlement and not an unauthorized outpost." But that doesn't make it lawful. International and local law obligate Israel to disband it, return the land to its rightful owners, and provide compensatory damages. And that's besides the greater issue of other unauthorized outposts, all 130 illegal settlements, a sovereign Palestinian state, the lawful right of return, and decades of unaddressed abuses depriving Palestinians from having the freedom, equity and justice they deserve.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Association of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

The Goldstone Report: Fierce But Toothless

By Yacov Ben Efrat

30 September, 2009
Challenge-mag.com

Judge Richard Goldstone of the UN Human Rights Council has issued a devastating report on war crimes during the latest campaign in Gaza, arousing much ire in Israel. During his investigation, the government refused to cooperate. In fact the Goldstone Committee had to enter Gaza via Egypt. On seeing the destruction, the members concluded, as had most European officials who visited there, that Israel's use of force was entirely out of proportion to any real danger. This disproportionate force left behind much more than ruined buildings. It wiped out entire families. The deaths of more than a hundred children testify that Israel waged war in disdain of civilian life, caring only to make Hamas pay as much as possible while safeguarding its own soldiers.

This is nothing new. The war of 1973 was the last in which Israel combated regular armies. Since then this country has fought against armed militias, Lebanese and Palestinian, among whom the civilian population has been considered a legitimate target. In the first Lebanon War against the PLO (1982), a new pattern was created: there was the siege on Beirut, the massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and the bombing of the Ein Khilweh camp, leaving thousands of dead and wounded civilians. That same war got the backing of the international community. The UN never investigated. The difference this time, however, is that the pictures coming out of Gaza aroused tremendous international anger. The Goldstone Report reflects the will to prevent Israel from emerging spotless from its Operation Cast Lead.

Conflicting views in Israel

As ever, opinions in Israel differ. Most people condemn Goldstone, accuse the Rights Council of political leanings, and describe the report as a prize for terror. Haaretz, on the liberal side, called in its editorial of September 17 for a national committee of inquiry into the war, as Goldstone had urged. The op-eds in the same edition split. One by Ari Shavit opposed the very formation of the Goldstone Committee, claiming that Israel's deeds were no different from those of the Americans and Europeans in Iraq and Afghanistan. His call "to put President Obama on trial" was intended to show the absurdity of Goldstone's demand to put Israel's then prime minister, defense minister and army chief of staff on trial at The Hague. In a contrary vein, Gideon Levi defended the findings of the Report and joined the editor in calling for a national inquiry.

Ari Shavit is right in one respect: the war crimes of the Americans, British and Germans are no less severe than Israel's. The Occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are as cruel as the Israeli version. Without American and European backing, Israel could not have committed its crimes against the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples. In the first Gulf War (1991), when America did want to prevent an Israeli response to Iraqi scuds on Tel Aviv, it knew how to get its way. But does the fact that the West kills civilians make it right for Israel to do so?

On the other side, Gideon Levi urges a committee of national inquiry. This is absurd, when we consider our past experience with such committees. The one that studied the massacre at Sabra and Shatila found the defense minister of that time, Ariel Sharon, to be guilty. This didn't stop him from becoming Prime Minister 20 years later. He engineered the disengagement from Gaza and inaugurated the blockade that lies at the root of the latest conflict.

It's all politics

In Operation Cast Lead, Israel used massive force not in order to defend itself, but in order to achieve a political result: subdue Hamas and get it to give up armed struggle. The method was the same as in Lebanon: you cause such enormous suffering that the population pressures the leadership to yield. This has clearly succeeded. Hamas no longer fires rockets on Israel, despite the fact that the latter's blockade against Gaza continues in full. Not only that. Hamas had walked out on the Cairo talks with Fatah, aimed at reaching a political accommodation and creating a basis for new elections; after Cast Lead it went back to the table.

The Goldstone Report is political too. The Human Rights Council cannot oblige the Security Council to bring Israeli leaders to justice. It can, however, create broad international public opinion against the ongoing Occupation, now in its 42nd year. That's enough time, one would think, to end a conflict whose solution is clear and acceptable to everyone except Israel. Indeed, "Two states for two peoples" was Obama's slogan in his Cairo speech, but since then nothing has happened.

Goldstone surely knows that Israel did not act alone in Operation Cast Lead. It got direct or indirect support from the Palestinian Authority itself. Egypt too was sympathetic. We recall the words of its Minister of Secret Services, Omar Suleiman, to the Hamas government shortly before Cast Lead: that if Hamas keeps insisting on its position, "Israel will know how to give them a slap in the face." The Goldstone Report, therefore, though indeed an indictment against Israel, is more a warning shot than an attempt at interception. Israel is not Yugoslavia; there is no international interest in dismembering it; and Palestine is far from being Kosovo, where Goldstone investigated Serbian war crimes. Milosevic became a leper, easy prey. Not so the Prime Minister of Israel.

On September 22, therefore, in the framework of the convocation of the UN General Assembly, Obama, Netanyahu and Abu Mazen met, despite Israel's refusal to fulfill the minimal condition set by the US itself: freezing construction in the settlements. The Goldstone Report could have been a lever for pressuring Israel and isolating Netanyahu. It could have threatened him that his recalcitrance will bring him too in the end before the international court of The Hague. What has happened, however, points the opposite way. After innumerable meetings with Obama's special envoy, George Mitchell, Netanyahu held the line and emerged on top. In order to bring about a meeting, Obama had to pressure Abu Mazen to join, despite the fact that settlement construction continues. Out of such a summit nothing good can come.

As things look now, the Goldstone Report will go to the shelf, the Occupation will continue, and so will Palestinian suffering. To cope with the present reality is more complex than putting people on the stand for war crimes. The reality is that Israel is ruled by the Right, which is nowadays attracting part of the Left. On the Palestinian side, the reality is a war between two rival factions that care more for power than for their people. The hope in Obama diminishes as he runs into troubles at home: to pass health reform, regulate Wall Street, and allow more freedom for unions. That is why he was weak when facing Netanyahu, and that is why the Goldstone Report will remain a toothless indictment. The end of the Occupation will have to wait until real change occurs in the United States. Only then can change come to Israel and the PA. Until that time, the facts in this damning report will amount to no more than a reprimand.

Gaza Peace Protester Is Prisoner In Own Home

By Jonathan Cook

30 September, 2009

Nazareth: Nine months after he helped to organise protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza, Samih Jabareen is a prisoner in his home in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, an electronic bracelet around his ankle to alert the police should he step outside his front door.
The 40-year-old actor and theatre director is one of dozens of Arab political activists in Israel who have faced long-term detention during and since Israel’s winter assault on Gaza in what human rights groups are calling political intimidation and repression of free speech by the Israeli police and courts.
A report published last week by Adalah, an Arab legal rights group in Israel, said 830 Israeli demonstrators, the overwhelming majority of them Arab citizens, were arrested for participating in mostly peaceful demonstrations during the 23 days of the Gaza operation.
According to the report, the police broke up protests using physical violence; most protesters were refused bail during legal proceedings, despite the minor charges; the courts treated children no differently from adults, in violation of international law; and Arab leaders were interrogated and threatened by the secret police in a bid to end their political activity.
This month’s report by the UN inquiry into Gaza, led by Judge Richard Goldstone, dedicated a chapter to events inside Israel, concluding similarly that there was wide-scale repression of political activists, non-governmental organisations and journalists in Israel.
The goal, the committee said, was “to minimise public scrutiny of [Israel’s] conduct both during its military operations in Gaza and the consequences that these operations have had for the residents of Gaza”.
Abir Baker, a lawyer with Adalah, said the police and legal system had resorted to mass arrests and a declared policy of “zero tolerance” as the most effective way to suppress peaceful protests.
According to Adalah’s statistics, a third of all those arrested were people under the age of 18, and, in a break with normal legal procedure, 80 per cent were refused bail for the entire period of legal proceedings. Detention is usually reserved for people considered a danger to the public. Most charges related to participation in a prohibited gathering, disturbing the peace or assaulting a police officer. Some children were charged with stone-throwing.
Ms Baker said it was telling that all the detainees in northern Israel, where most of Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens live, were kept in detention throughout proceedings, while in Tel Aviv, where joint Arab-Jewish protests were held, all those arrested were quickly released.
She said: “The police used the power of arrest not to punish criminal behaviour, but as a weapon to deter the Arab population from staging entirely lawful demonstrations. This is a tactic we have seen used before in Israel, particularly in the first and second intifadas.”
She noted that there were echoes of events in October 2000, at the start of the second intifada, when Arab citizens held demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied territories. Thirteen unarmed Arab demonstrators were shot dead and hundreds were beaten and arrested.
A later state inquiry castigated the police for treating the Arab minority, a fifth of Israel’s population, as an “enemy”. Unlike in 2000, however, police commanders on this occasion did not resort to rubber bullets or live ammunition.
Mr Jabareen, a prominent political figure in Jaffa, said that during the Gaza assault he had been put under a three-day house arrest and faced a series of interrogations where he was warned he would be jailed.
Three weeks after the Gaza assault ended, at a small demonstration in northern Israel, he said the police set a “trap” for him. “When I arrived, the police commander clearly knew who I was. He immediately had seven officers surround me. I was soon on the ground and they were beating, hitting and kicking me.”
Mr Jabareen was jailed for three weeks and has been under house arrest ever since.
Ms Baker said of his case: “The police commander accused him of assaulting him and yet they have produced no video footage, even though they filmed the entire demonstration, and no medical evidence that the commander was ever harmed.”
Mr Jabareen said his treatment contrasted with that of the ultra-Orthodox in the Mea Shearim neighbourhood of Jerusalem who have been clashing with police for months to prevent the opening of a car park on the Sabbath.
“They are shown on TV throwing punches at the police and hurling stones at them. A few arrests have been made, but despite the high levels of violence, they are almost always released the same or next day. How can I still be under house arrest for eight months? It is clear that different legal standards are being applied.”
Ms Baker said the police had created new offences during the Gaza operation, such as “protests detrimental to public morale”.
Adalah found that a new directive was issued to police commanders about how to handle the protests, though the police have refused to divulge its contents. Ms Baker said she would petition the attorney general for the information.
The Goldstone Committee noted widespread intimidation and humiliation of community leaders. Saleh Bakri, a public figure who participated in a silent candle-light vigil on January 1 in Haifa, was arrested and forced to stand motionless facing the Israeli flag for half an hour as police officers filmed him.
The committee also recorded that at least 20 Arab leaders were forced to attend illegal interrogations by the Shin Bet where they were asked about their political activities. Student activists were asked to collaborate with the authorities and threatened with arrest or harm to their studies if they refused.
Police demanded Amir Makhoul, the head of the Ittijah co-ordinating body for Arab organisations in Israel, attend an interrogation following a speech he gave on December 29 in Haifa. After he refused, he was forcibly escorted to a police station where he was interviewed for four hours.
“They told me I would be thrown in jail if I continued my political work and that they could arrange for me to be dumped in Gaza. Their main concern seemed to be that I was urging the younger generation to be more politically active,” he said.
The Arab minority is staging a general strike on Thursday to protest the increasingly harsh climate and to mark the failure to prosecute any of the policemen responsible for the 13 deaths in 2000.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

Countering Benjamin Netanyahou's Orwellian Spin At The UN

By Eileen Fleming

30 September, 2009

In defense of freedom of the press, conscience and speech; I have seized the liberty to counter Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spinning at the UN on September 24, 2009.
He is "N" and I am "E" and so it begins:
N: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen
Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland. I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust.  It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events.  Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth.
E: In agreement on principal and the brutal truth is: 
Israel has been targeted by at least 65 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by none. [1]
"Aside from the core issues—refugees, Jerusalem, borders—the major themes reflected in the U.N. resolutions against Israel over the years are its unlawful attacks on its neighbors; its violations of the human rights of the Palestinians, including deportations, demolitions of homes and other collective punishments; its confiscation of Palestinian land; its establishment of illegal settlements; and its refusal to abide by the U.N. Charter and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. [2]
"Israel holds the record for ignoring United Nations Security Council resolutions…Since 1968, Israel has violated 32 resolutions that included condemnation or criticism of the governments' policies and actions…The resolutions Israel violated were either about its annexation of East Jerusalem or settlements in the territories. Israel also ignored UN Security Council resolutions that called for Israel to cease using harsh measures against the Palestinian population and to cease expelling Palestinians. [3]
N: Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants.  Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.
E: I am no fan of the President of Iran-or any politician, for they all get addicted to power and  I don't trust any of them; but it is way past time to move on from the useless canard of labeling anyone who denounces the policies of Israel as an anti-Semite.
According to Webster's New World Dictionary a Semite is: 1. a person regarded as descended from Shem 2. a member of any of the peoples speaking a Semitic language, including the Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians, Phoenicians, etc.
Daniel McGowan, Professor Emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Founder and Executive Director of Deir Yassin Remembered, wrote:
"For more than fifty years Jewish scholars have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to document each Jewish victim of the Nazi Holocaust. The Nazis were German, obsessed with paperwork and recordkeeping. Yet only 3 million names have been collected and many of them died of natural causes. So why is it heresy to doubt that fewer than 6 million Jews were murdered in the Second World War?
"'Holocaust Denial' might be no more eccentric or no more criminal than claiming the earth is flat, except that the Holocaust itself has been used as the sword and shield in the quest to build a Jewish state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, where even today over half the population is not Jewish.
"The Holocaust narrative allows Yad Vashem, the finest Holocaust museum in the world, to repeat the mantra of 'Never Forget' while it sits on Arab lands stolen from Ein Karem and overlooking the unmarked graves of Palestinians massacred by Jewish terrorists at Deir Yassin. It allows Elie Wiesel to boast of having worked for these same terrorists (as a journalist, not a fighter) while refusing to acknowledge, let alone apologize for, the war crimes his employer committed. It makes Jews the ultimate victim no matter how they dispossess or dehumanize or ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinian people." [4]
N: Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee.  There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people.  The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments.  Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews.  Is this a lie? 
A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.  Those plans are signed by Hitler's deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself.  Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered.  Is this too a lie?
E: I cannot see that copy, but here is NO lie:
In Tel Aviv "on March 10, 1948, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns."-Dr. Ilan Pappe, Israeli born and a graduate of Hebrew University and Oxford is the author of "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples" which documents the expulsion of Palestinians as an orchestrated crime of ethnic cleansing. [5]
N: This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp.  Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie? And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? 
E: Scars are tattoos with deeper stories and "Jewish scholar, Marc Ellis, called [it] the ecumenical deal: you Christians look the other way while we bludgeon the Palestinians and build our Jewish state and we won't remind you that Hitler was a good Catholic, a confirmed 'soldier of Christ,' long before he was a bad Nazi." [6]
N: One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration.  Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own.  My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis.  Is that also a lie? 
E: While my spirituality, love of story-telling and temper are inherited from my Irish, not so good Catholic grandmother, her husband was a Polish Jew and my other two grandparents were from the Ukraine and they all died before I could learn how many of my relatives may have been murdered by the Nazis because good people looked the other way for too very long and did nothing at all.
N: Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium.  To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you.  You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.
E: "Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you. Opposition is True Friendship." -William Blake, "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" 1796
N: But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame?  Have you no decency?  A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace!  What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! 
E: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? What a disgrace! What a mockery you make of the United Nations as I stated above! And what a lie you perpetuate by denying the facts regarding Israel's Dec-Jan. arrack on Gaza!
One example: The rocket fire directed at Israel was practically "zero in the months preceding the attacks, [and] Hamas [made] repeated efforts to extend the ceasefire indefinitely provided Israel lifted its unlawful blockade of Gaza.  Further it was Israel that had seemed to provoke the breakdown of the ceasefire when it launched a lethal attack on Hamas militants in Gaza on November 4, 2008. Israel disregarded this seemingly available diplomatic alternative to war to achieve security on its borders. Recourse to war, even if the facts justify self-defense, is according to international law, a last resort." [7]
N: Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews.  You're wrong.  History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.
E: What about Israel's Samson Option? The term coined by Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, Levi Eshkol and Moshe Dayan in the mid-1960s to describe Israel's deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons against nations whose military attacks threaten its existence, and possibly against other targets as well?
N: This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims.   It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others.  Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times. Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated.
E: What about this summer's proposal of a law by Avigdor Lieberman's party that would strip Israeli Palestinians of their citizenship unless they pledge loyalty to a Jewish state, essentially legitimizing Zionist racism?
On June 6, 2009, Hannen Zoubi, the first woman representative of an Arab party to be elected to the Kennest, said, "From 1948 until now, loyalty to Zionism was enforced by policy. With the introduction of the loyalty law, anyone who would say Israel is not a Jewish State and a democracy would be jailed for three years…In 1948, the Jews had 4% of the land and they have confiscated 93% more and we have 3% of our homeland…There are three times more settlements now than in 1995. Today there are 600,000 settlers and 800 checkpoints. Israel negotiates only to block a peace agreement. Hamas won because after 13 years of negotiations the people wanted a change. The rockets are stupid and illegitimate, but they carry a political meaning; we want our freedom…Resisting occupation is legitimate and our goal is not one or two states, our goal is to end the occupation. The goal is freedom, equality and justice." [8]
N: The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.  It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death. The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century.  The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future.  And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope.   The pace of progress is growing exponentially.  It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet. 
E: We almost agree; but the depth of reality is that:
"We live in an insecure, uncertain world; it is also a time of opportunity. It is a time to put aside many of the old ways and with creativity and imagination, develop new thinking, ideas, institutions, etc. Young people and women will help this process; they know that Nuclear weapons belong to the cold war thinking, and can never be used. To do so, would be immoral, illogical and destroy the Environment.
"They know our real problems, are: Poverty, Environment, unethical globalization, abuse of Human Rights and International Laws, gender inequality, ethnical/political conflict, State and paramilitary acts of terror…They know that spending trillions on weapons that can never be used, while each day over 30,000 children die of preventable disease, is immoral and unacceptable.
"We are all aware that we are living in an increasing Culture of violence, and if we are to survive we need to build a Culture of Non-violence. Choosing not to kill another human being is the greatest contribution each of us can make to peace. This is not a hard choice when through prayer, meditation, morality, or logic, we come to realize that our lives are sacred as is the life of all our brothers and sisters, and there are always alternatives to violence which work. Human beings are evolving and there is a new consciousness that we must choose non-violence and build strong relationships and community." - Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Mairead Maguire, in Hiroshima on May 2008. [9]
N: What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code.  We will cure the incurable.  We will lengthen our lives.  We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.   
I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances – by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment.  These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise. 
But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time.   And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after a horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind.
E: And fear and paranoia also kill!
In 2007, Naomi Klein, in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism , illuminated those with eyes to see that the military industrial complex was driving Israel's tremendous economic growth, and Israel had the largest GDP growth of any Western country.
"Klein theorized that the source of Israel's tremendous economic growth in the past five years cannot be attributed simply to its encouragement of high tech entrepreneurship and basic science. Its success must be understood, rather, as a product of its ability to use the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as a laboratory for defense industry innovation -- and to showcase their wares."
After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, but then came 9/11, and "suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners…Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom--a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war…Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States—up dramatically from $270 million in 1999…That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world…Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry…The key products and services are …precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror… Israel's policy of erecting walls and checkpoints to seal off the occupied territories are also "laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states are being field-tested Palestinians--whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan"--are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs." [10]
N: That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction, and the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge?  Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?
E: Are the members of the UN also up to the challenge to demand the same of Israel that is demanded of Iran?
From Ashkelon prison in 1987, Mordechai Vanunu asked:
"Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger. Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened…when governments develop nuclear weapons without the consent of their citizens - and this is true in most cases - they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation…Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons?" [11]
Another reason the UN is limp is due to America's exercising its veto 32 times to shield Israel from critical draft resolutions. Between 1972 and 1997, which constituted nearly half of the total of 69 U.S. vetoes cast since the founding of the U.N.
On July 26, 1973, a draft resolution affirmed the rights of the Palestinians and established provisions for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories as embodied in previous General Assembly resolutions. But, Washington killed this international effort to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. [12]
N: Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism? Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?
E: Many people in America believe Bush stole a presidential election too, and those who live in glass houses should not throw stones, so I say to you:
You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.- Lewis Mumford, 1946
N: Ladies and Gentlemen, the jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging.  Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims.  That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.
For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities.   Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks.
We heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.  In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza.  It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis.  We didn't get peace.  Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv.   Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare.
You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent. Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond.  But how should we have responded?  Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population.  It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. 
E: I stated above many reasons why the UN is limp, and I cannot ignore such ignorance!
Why even a little one such as me wrote in 2005:
"Since the cease-fire agreement of February 8, 2005, seventy-five Palestinians, including seventeen innocent children, and fourteen Israelis, including two innocent children, have been murdered. Two thousand Palestinians arrested; 2,306 checkpoints imposed, and 8,700 acres of Palestinian land confiscated by the Israeli government…settlers attacked Palestinians 394 times since the cease-fire agreement…[and] they are a cult that has been allowed to get out of control. The Israeli government enticed and encouraged them to settle in illegal land, and this is what it has come to! And yet, the illegal settlements continue!
"And, what a farce the so-called disengagement in Gaza was. The Israeli government still controls all access to Gaza by land, sea, and air. Dr. Mustafa Bargouthi, documented that only 25 of over 150 settlements will be dismantled, and only 8,475 of over 436,000 settlers [less than 2 percent of settlers] have been evacuated. Meanwhile, [in less than a year] 12,800 new settlers have moved into the West Bank--50 percent more settlers than were evacuated.
"This is no withdrawal, this is BS! Until Palestinians have control of Gaza's borders and a guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank, it is not a withdrawal; it's just BS propaganda! And Gaza is less than 6 percent of the occupied territories, and that leaves 94 percent of Palestinian territories under the boot of the IDF. The corruption in the PA government and hot tempers from those under occupation are a powder keg that's getting ready to blow! What's it going to take to wake the world up to the fact that most of our problems with radical Islamist fundamentalist militants leads us back to the conflict in Israel and Palestine?
"What's it going to take before the International community gets it together and insists, in unity, upon the upholding of international law as the rule we all live by? And that includes Israel and America, too, for both ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I wonder, what's the point of signing on, but then not doing it?
"What's it going to take to wake up the legions of blind U.S. Christian Zionists to their indifference to the misery of their sisters and brothers in Israel and Palestine? Their blind allegiance to the Israeli government has allowed our best friend in the world to become a big bully. What's it going to take to break through the ignorance that hard-earned U.S. tax dollars are being used to continue the occupation and apartheid wall?" [13]
And let us never forget that the most brutal acts of terrorism upon innocent people happened when America bombed Hiroshima and two hundred thousand lives were vaporized within twenty minutes!
Let us never forget that violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion which began on March 2003- is now estimated to be 1,339,771 [14]
And we must never forget that the brutal sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990's-by the UN who was flogged into acquiescence by the USA- killed more than ½ million Iraqis-mostly children-and according to UNICEF and WHO it was due to the sanctions which choked off the country's ability to produce clean water and dispense simple medicines!
N: Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers. That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.  We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave.
Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way.   Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel.  A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.
E: Have you no conscience?
And by the way, Jeff Halper, American-Israeli, Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions illuminated me that "Israel is not a democracy. It is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control."
And I ask just where would 1.5 million people receiving flyers over their homes and phone calls escape to when they are refused access out of their open air prison?
Israel denied "a refugee option to the civilian population trapped in the tiny, crowded combat zone that constitutes the Gaza Strip. Israel closed all crossings during the period of the Gaza War, allowing only Gaza residents with foreign passports to leave. It is rare in modern warfare that civilians are not given the option to become refugees…The importance of this issue is reinforced by many accounts of the widespread post-traumatic stress experienced by the civilians in Gaza, especially children that comprise 53% of the population." [15]
N: By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals.  What a perversion of truth!  What a perversion of justice! Delegates of the United Nations, will you accept this farce?    Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.
E: The statehood of Israel was contingent upon upholding the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights!
I can go down the list and cite the Jewish States failures, but Article 13 will suffice:
Article 13:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
And regarding racism and Zionism, I reply by quoting Dr. Ilan Pappe:
"In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began. When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. Nothing wrong with either of those goals!
"But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology.
"Israeli Jewish life will never be simple, good, or worth living while this ideology of domination, exclusiveness and superiority is allowed to continue. The mind set today is that unless Israel is an exclusive Jewish State, Palestinians will continue to be obstacles."[16]
N: If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace.  Here's why.  When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop.  Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. 
E: If the UN rejects the Goldstone Report Orwellian spin will win and that body will have no legitimacy at all!
But, perhaps, Bibi hasn't read it all; for the report recommends that the U.N. Security Council require the government of Israel to launch appropriate independent investigations into the findings of the report within three months as well as Palestinian leadership to investigate alleged war crimes, for militants must also respect humanitarian law, and it calls for the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on humanitarian grounds!
N: The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us –my people, my country - of war crimes?  And for what?  For acting responsibly in self-defense.  What a travesty!
E: What a travesty of the truth you propagandize!
On December 28, 2008, Haaretz reported:
"Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about… Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
"The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops.
"While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas. In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip." [17]
N: Ladies and Gentlemen, all of Israel wants peace. 
E: Then END the Occupation and honor equal human rights for ALL!
N: Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace.   We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat.  We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace.  But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace.
E: Then END the Occupation and honor equal human rights for ALL!
N: In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state.  The Jews accepted that resolution.  The Arabs rejected it.   We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years:  Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people.   The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel.   This is the land of our forefathers. 
E: And Zionists grabbed more than they were allotted which led to 750,000 indigenous Palestinians becoming refugees, who are still denied the right to return to their homeland or be compensated for what was stolen!
"What Israel is attempting to demand is that I must be loyal to the Zionist dream. Loyalty to a state should require obeying the laws but Israel does not take our citizenship seriously. We cannot accept their Zionist dream, we have our dreams. We cannot accept the Zionist vision, we have our vision. I am a citizen of Israel but I am not an Israeli and I am not Jewish. Israel did not give me my identity and Israel cannot be a Jewish state and a democracy."- Hannen Zoubi, Arab member of the Kennest. [18]
N: Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation.  They shall learn war no more."   These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city - in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.   We are not strangers to this land.  It is our homeland.
E: And Jeremiah reminded the stiff-necked people: "Peace, peace, peace they say where there is no peace!"
N: As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own.   We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity. But we must have security.  The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel. 
E: END the Occupation, honor equal human rights for all and hear the truth from a member of the Knesset:
"Israel negotiates only to block a peace agreement. Hamas won because after 13 years of negotiations the people wanted a change. The rockets are stupid and illegitimate, but they carry a political meaning; we want our freedom and we do not accept the way Fatah negotiates. The dispute between Hamas and Fatah is not over power-it is about two different political ways. I cannot be pro-Hamas, but they were democratically elected and are now more powerful than in 2006. We are very critical of Abbas and we don't think he cares about the Palestinians in Gaza, he just wants to keep his position. The people know he put down spontaneous demonstrations in the West Bank in support of Gaza. Resisting occupation is legitimate and our goal is not one or two states, our goal is to end the occupation. The goal is freedom, equality and justice.''- Hannen Zoubi [Ibid]
N: That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized.   We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv. We want peace. I believe such a peace can be achieved.  But only if we roll back the forces of terror.
E: Great idea, but let's not stop there! Let us evolve and demilitarize the world, abolish WMD and War and feed, house, clothe and provide health care to the poor!
N: Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them. Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”
I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachability of mankind" is for once proven wrong.   I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.
E: Churchill also said:
"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever.  Use a pile driver.  Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again.  Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack...And never, never, never, never, ever, never give up."
So, as the only reporter in the world who has been documenting Mordechai Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and Conviction in the 'democracy' of Israel since it began in 2006-the very day Hamas was democratically elected, I reiterate: it is way past time that we the people in "the land of the free and home of the brave" learn this history and demand our government WAKE UP that our best friend in the world is a big bully and lies to US!
Exactly 23 years ago, to this very day-September 30, 1986, Vanunu was kidnapped from Rome by order of Shimon Peres, who ordered the Mossad, to "Bring the son of a bitch back here" because he had documented on film that Israel was manufacturing WMD underground in the Negev.
In 1963, Peres was Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense and he lied to President Kennedy during a White House meeting.
Kennedy told Peres, “You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?”
Peres repLIED, “I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.”
In 2005, Vanunu told me:
"Did you know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons?
"In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.'
"Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection.
"The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona.
"The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago.
"Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.
"When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to '69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.
"Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year."
N: In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage.  Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.
E: As Bob Dylan sang:
"The neighborhood bully just lives to survive. Well, he's surrounded by [politicians] who all want peace, they pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease. Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep…Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim, that he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him, He's the neighborhood bully."
But I have a radical hope that the times have already changed and bully's can be brought to their knees, and I know that the only hope worth anything at all is the hope that comprehends that "HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
It has been said many times before; if you want peace, give people justice, and as the psalmist warned:
"Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies! Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it" -Psalm 34:13-14
And I end my encounter with Netanyahu's spin at the UN with a spin of a Robert Johnson tune that has welled up within:
I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees.
I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees.
Begged the lord above for mercy, save us all if you please!
I went down to the crossroads, I looked east and I looked west,
Down at the crossroads, fell down on my knees,
Begged the lord above for mercy, Wake Us up as you please.

1. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

2. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
stats/un.html#source

3. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/scr.html

4. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1440&Itemid=224

5. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=763&Itemid=184

6. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1440&Itemid=224

7. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD
/meast/09/29/un.gaza.report/

8. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1307&Itemid=221

9. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1354&Itemid=222

10. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=860&Itemid=198

11. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1354&Itemid=222

12. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
us_ints/p-neff-veto.html

13. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1048&Itemid=205

14. http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq

15. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/
meast/09/29/un.gaza.report/

16. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=763&Itemid=184

17. http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html

18. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=1307&Itemid=221

Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine
Eileen Fleming,  Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
A Feature Correspondent for The Palestine Telegraph and Arabisto.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"  
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"

More Human Rights Violations In Gujarat

Press Release

30 September, 2009
Countercurrents.org

In a pattern which has become increasingly familiar in many parts of India, but particularly in Gujarat, once again in the run-up to the assembly by elections in Gujarat, a number of Muslim youth were picked up by police officials in plain clothes, illegally detained and severely tortured, before they were sent to judicial custody. The youth who were picked up by the police were:
1. Zahir Abbas Amiruddin Shaikh resident of Hathikhana Patel Faliya , Opp. Bismilla Mutton Shop, Fatima complex,

2. Usmangani Alias Nawab abdulGaffar Ansari, residing at Kalriwad, B/s. H. M. Batliwala, Fatepura, Baroda.

3. Amin Razzak Sha, residing atB/208, Richmond tower, B/h. Convent School, Fatehgunj, Baroda

4. Iqbal alias Ikku Majidbhai Shaikh, Age – 39 years, residing at 109, Rashida Apptt., Hathikhana Patel Faliya, Baroda.

5. Mustak Ismail Shaikh, 34 years, residing at Gujarat Mention building , Hathikhana Patel Faliya

They were illegally picked up by plain clothes policemen:

Zahir illegally picked up on Sep 1, 2009 shown arrested on Sep 6, 2009

Mushtak illegally picked up on Sep 1, 2009, shown arrested on Sep 6, 2009

Usmangani illegally picked up on Sep 3, 2009, shown arrested on Sep 6, 2009

Iqbal illegally picked up on Sep 2, 2009, shown arrested on Sep 6, 2009

Amin illegally picked up on Sep 2, 2009, shown arrested on Sep 6, 2009

All of them produced in the court on September 7, 2009.

They were formally presented to the magistrate after a gap of 5 or more days, during which they allege that they were blind-folded and taken into a farm-house at Sivasi Gotri Road, in Village Sindhrot and brutally tortured. The police charged them for planning to bomb the Ganesh Vijarjan Yatra and for possessing Sutli bombs and rocket launcher. Police claimed to have recovered these items from a closed hand cart . Police Commissioner called for a Press Conference on September 7, 2009 and all local newspapers flashed the news in bold headlines .

A team comprising Shabnam Hashmi, Harsh Mander Rahul Rashtrapal met family members of many of the affected youth on September 25, 2009 and Gagan Sethi and Shabnam Hashmi met with the family members on September 26, 2009. They all testified to versions of the same story: that youth invariably with no criminal records, were picked up by people wearing plain clothes, sometimes using force, sometimes taking them under false pretences. They were taken blind-folded to a farm, and subjected to torture. Family members were not informed about their whereabouts. Family members searched for them in various police stations and hospitals. After Mohdbhai Vora, the local counselor took a delegation to the DCP Rakesh Asthana, he was informed that the youth were safe and in their custody, even then he did not divulge where they were kept or why they were picked up. The same late evening some parents were asked to meet their sons at the police station. They saw them from a distance and were not allowed to talk to them. It was visible from their appearance that they were badly tortured, some of them could not even walk on their own. Police secured varying terms of police remand, followed by judicial custody. The youth were threatened with dire consequences if they told the judge about the torture. The families were threatened not to contact any one otherwise more cases will be put on their sons.

It is relevant to point out here that the alleged terrorist attack on the Ganesh Visarjan processions never actually took place, and we have only the police version, that such attacks were planned, to rely upon. The fact, that the statements of the accused were obtained under duress and torture, the whole police case and the motives behind these become even murkier.

A team constituting Rahul Rashtrapal, Dushyantbhai, Sachin Pandya and Shabnam Hashmi went to the Baroda Central Jail and met two of these youth Zaheer and Iqbal on September 25, 2009. Both youth testified to grave torture. Zaheer and Iqbal were blindfolded and taken to a farm house about 10-15 kilometers away from Baroda. They were brutally beaten up along with three others who were also arrested. All of them were kept and tortured in different rooms. The police beat them all over the body with lathis, two men stood on Iqbal’s thighs, legs stretched wide and beat him up brutally, Iqbal was given electric shocks on his waste down-words, abused using the filthiest language possible. Zaheer was stripped naked and given electric shocks all over his body many times a day. They caught him by his hair and banged his head against the walls repeatedly. Abusing him, they called him a Taliban and a terrorist, and degraded his community and mother and sisters. Zaheer’s hands were tied to the roof and he was not allowed to sleep for days.

Both Zaheer and Iqbal were not allowed to break their rozas till 11pm. The youth alleged that the police kept on forcing them to admit that they were going to bomb the Ganesh Visarjan procession and kill people. Zaheer pleaded with the police to spare him as he was innocent and he had no idea about the allegations. The policemen taunted him and said if you are tired of torture we will shoot you dead and made him run across a field all the time aiming at him to shoot him down.

The team also looked at the newspaper coverage. Divya Bhaskar’s headline read accused picked up in possession of the rocket launcher had foreign connections. Sandesh newspapers wrote: ‘When the accused used to come out of the mosque after praying he used to get into frenzy to destroy the Ganpati’

Rakesh Asthana, the Police Commissioner, Rakesh Sharma the ACP, J. D. Ramgadia. PI Crime Branch, D.R. Dhamal, PI of Baroda city, Halsika PSI SOG were all involved in this illegal picking up, detention and torture of youth.

We have also heard that the Farm House where the youth were taken and tortured belongs to a close associate of the Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana.

We urge the NHRC, NCM and the Govt of India therefore that these grave allegations are independently investigated and the guilty police officers severely punished.

We hope suo moto action will be taken against the Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana for flouting the Supreme Court DK Basu guidelines and for using the premises of a private farm house for illegal detention and torture. Not following these guidelines constitutes a contempt of the Supreme Court, which is a serious offence, punishable by Imprisonment and fine

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D.K.Basu Guidelines

In view of the increasing incidence of violence and torture in custody, the Supreme Court of India has laid down 11 specific requirements and procedures that the police and other agencies have to follow for the arrest, detention and interrogation of any person. These are:

l Police arresting and interrogating suspects should wear “accurate, visible and clear” identification and name tags, and details of interrogating police officers should be recorded in a register.

l A memo of arrest must be prepared at the time of arrest. This should:

µ have the time and date of arrest.

µ be attested by at least one witness who may either be a family member of the person arrested or a respectable person of the locality where the arrest was made.

µ be counter-signed by the person arrested.

l The person arrested, detained or being interrogated has a right to have a relative, friend or well-wisher informed as soon as practicable, of the arrest and the place of detention or custody. If the person to be informed has signed the arrest memo as a witness this is not required.

l Where the friend or relative of the person arrested lives outside the district, the time and place of arrest and venue of custody must be notified by police within 8 to 12 hours after arrest. This should be done by a telegram through the District Legal Aid Authority and the concerned police station.

l The person arrested should be told of the right to have someone informed of the arrest, as soon as the arrest or detention is made.

l An entry must be made in the diary at the place of detention about the arrest, the name of the person informed and the name and particulars of the police officers in whose custody the person arrested is.

l The person being arrested can request a physical examination at the time of arrest. Minor and major injuries if any should be recorded. The "Inspection Memo" should be signed by the person arrested as well as the arresting police officer. A copy of this memo must be given to the person arrested.

l The person arrested must have a medical examination by a qualified doctor every 48 hours during detention. This should be done by a doctor who is on the panel, which must be constituted by the Director of Health Services of every State.

l Copies of all documents including the arrest memo have to be sent to the Area Magistrate (laqa Magistrate) for his record.

l The person arrested has a right to meet a lawyer during the interrogation, although not for the whole time.

l There should be a police control room in every District and State headquarters where information regarding the arrest and the place of custody of the person arrested must be sent by the arresting officer. This must be done within 12 hours of the arrest. The control room should prominently display the information on a notice board.

These requirements were issued to the Director General of Police and the Home Secretary of every State. They were obliged to circulate the requirements to every police station under their charge. Every police station in the country had to display these guidelines prominently. The judgment also encouraged that the requirements be broadcast through radio and television and pamphlets in local languages be distributed to spread awareness.

Failure to comply with these requirements would make the concerned official liable for departmental action. Not following these directions constitutes a contempt of the Supreme Court, which is a serious offence, punishable by Imprisonment and fine. This contempt of court petition can be filed in any High Court.

These requirements are in addition to other rights and rules, such as:

*The right to be informed at the time of arrest of the offence for which the person is being arrested.
*The right to be presented before a magistrate within 24 hours of the arrest.
*The right not to be ill-treated or tortured during arrest or in custody.
*Confessions made in police custody cannot be used as evidence against the accused.
*A boy under 15 years of age and women cannot be called to the police station only for questioning.

The Constitution

The Constitution of India, which is the basic law of the country, provides protection to all persons from ill treatment and torture by the police and other state agencies.

Article 21
Guarantees the right to life and personal liberty to all persons.

Article 22
Lays down the rights available at the time of arrest and detention. These rights can be enforced by directly approaching the High Courts and the Supreme Court of India.