Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Israeli MP blames quakes on gays

An Israeli MP has blamed parliament’s tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently.

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy“.

Mr Benizri made his comments while addressing a committee of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, about the country’s readiness for earthquakes.

He called on lawmakers to stop “passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes“.

From the Urban Dictionary;

3. shlomo

This word combines the sentiments of “homo” with a dash of “shlong”. It is reserved for those who are such shlomos that the two words that comprise it are not descriptive enough.

Amy: I bought my boyfriend some earrings from Claire’s because they were having a sale.
Alysia: You are such a shlomo.

Shlomo Benizri is such a shlomo.

J.K.

The Terrorist Was Neutralized

The taxi to Bethlehem was delayed, and Jihad stood at the dusty taxi stand and waited. He was on his way to the Open University in Bethlehem, to register for the upcoming school year. His father says that he hadn’t decided what he wanted to study. Maybe that’s what he was thinking about while he stood at the stand, exposed to the burning sun.

And what was going through the heads of the soldiers who beat him mercilessly, with a club, with the butt of a rifle and with kicks to his head, so that he died? Is it possible that he tried to attack them with a knife, even though two eyewitnesses didn’t see it? Even if he did, why did the soldiers continue to beat him, even after he lay on the ground, unconscious and perhaps bound as well, as an eyewitness told us? And what kind of monstrous behavior is it to handcuff the bereaved father, and then leave him on the ground, in front of the body of his beaten and dying son? Above all, why did the Israel Defense Forces rush to dismiss this grave incident, “after an initial investigation,” during which nobody interrogated the eyewitnesses, with the conclusion, “the soldiers acted properly”?

Pictures of Jihad Shaar’s death flicker on the computer screen: The battered and calm face of a young man with three holes in his skull, in front and in back. Also a picture of the bereaved father, Khalil, a worker in a Bethlehem factory that manufactures olive-wood souvenirs, his hands bound behind his back, kneeling on the floor, his face radiating restrained pain and humiliation, and the soldier standing next to him with a drawn weapon – everything is documented on the computer screen. The stone houses stand at the edge of the desert, in the village of Tekoa, on a mountainside opposite the archaeological site of Herodion and the Jewish settlement also called Tekoa. The area is usually quiet, with the exception of the annoying IDF patrols.
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Khalil, with bristles of mourning on his face, is a gentle and quiet man. They say that his son was like that, too. The day after the incident, the Israeli press asserted that Jihad was mentally unstable, perhaps even disabled. It’s all a fabrication. Last year Jihad studied hard to improve his matriculation exam grades and now he was supposed to register for the Bethlehem branch of the Al-Quds Open University.

On Friday, July 27, the family awoke as usual, the mother of the family went for a family visit and Jihad planned to travel to the university. Nothing in the house testified to what was to take place a short time later. Jihad, like the rest of his family, had never been arrested.

At 9:30 A.M., Jihad left the house and walked the several hundred meters to the taxi stand near the road to Bethlehem. His father, who was at home, says that Jihad took nothing with him. But the armored Hummer was already standing at the side of the road, several dozen meters from the taxi stand. There is almost always a Hummer standing there, a kind of surprise roadblock for the village’s residents, where soldiers check papers, harass and humiliate, and maintain proper order on the road.

As Jihad stood alone at the stand, the soldiers apparently called him to approach them. A Palestinian policeman, Musa Suleiman, was riding to Bethlehem at the time in a taxi that was approaching the stand. Suleiman saw Jihad walking “with ordinary steps, in a manner that did not arouse any suspicion,” toward the soldiers. He says that Jihad had nothing in his hands.

One soldier stood next to the driver’s door of the Hummer, and another three soldiers sat inside. When Jihad reached the Hummer, Suleiman says he saw the soldier grab Jihad by the shirt and pull him forcibly behind the vehicle. Suleiman, who was already about 20 meters from the vehicle, says that apparently an argument broke out between Jihad and the soldier who grabbed his shirt, which developed into a violent struggle between the two. A few seconds later he saw them both sprawled on the ground.

That’s when the other three soldiers got out of the Hummer. Suleiman heard two shots. The four soldiers, according to Suleiman, began beating Jihad, who was sprawled on the ground. They used wooden clubs and their rifle butts, while Jihad tried to protect his head with his hands. That was all Suleiman saw, because the taxi, which was traveling slowly, then passed the Hummer.

When the taxi was a few dozen meters away from the area of the beatings, it drove back to see what was happening behind the Hummer. Suleiman says that the soldiers continued to beat Jihad. He saw the club land on Jihad’s head at least twice. “I felt that these were fatal beatings,” says the policeman Suleiman. He says that Jihad was no longer moving. Suleiman rushed to Jihad’s house to alert his father: “Come quickly, the soldiers are beating your son.” Accompanied by Suleiman, he rushed in the direction of the stand.

When they approached the area, the soldiers aimed their weapons at them and ordered them to leave. One of the villagers who speaks Hebrew, who also arrived at the spot, tried to explain to the soldiers that Khalil was the father of the battered young man, and all he wanted was to know what had happened to his son. And then the soldier said: “Tell him that his son is already dead.”

Then the soldiers handcuffed Khalil behind his back, and placed him on the road, the Hummer separating him from his son’s body, while they chased the other two men away from the site. Meanwhile additional forces arrived, together with a military ambulance, whose squad apparently tried to save Jihad’s life. After about 40 minutes during which he sat handcuffed in the sun, says Khalil, an officer from the Civil Administration, Taysir, arrived and ordered the soldiers to free the father from his handcuffs and told him that his son had been sent to the hospital in nearby Beit Jala.

The officer from the Civil Administration asked Khalil: “Why did your son do that?” The father: “My son was on the way to the university.” The officer: “Your son made problems for the soldiers and pulled out a kitchen knife.” Khalil to the officer: “My son did not leave the house with a knife. Show me the knife, I’m familiar with the knives in our kitchen.”

“You want to see the knife?” asked the officer, who then immediately retracted his offer: “The Military Police have already removed the knife from the site.” Khalil didn’t see the knife.

Taysir told Khalil that Jihad was seriously wounded. Khalil called his brother and together they drove quickly toward the hospital. On the way they were delayed again, in the same place where his son was killed. Only after about 10 minutes were they allowed to continue, after the intercession of one of the soldiers who had seen Khalil in the area earlier and recognized him.

Jihad had been evacuated from the site at about 11:15. A short time later his father arrived at the hospital. But his son’s body reached Beit Jala only at about 3 P.M. The officer from the Civil Administration had told the father that his son was “seriously wounded,” but the soldier had told him even earlier that Jihad had died, and therefore Khalil had no hope of seeing his son alive again. He talks about everything in an amazing tone of acceptance and restraint.

When the body arrived at the hospital the doctors examined it. They determined that Jihad had not been shot, he had been beaten to death. They discovered the three superficial holes in his head and several bruises in other parts of his body, mainly around the hips. The body was sent for an autopsy in Abu Dis, and afterward was brought for burial; the funeral was well attended. Several residents of the village say that when they began to dig the grave, a Border Patrol Hummer arrived at the village and its passengers called out in Arabic on a loudspeaker: “Jihad is dead. Let Allah have mercy on him and your mother’s c – – -.”

The IDF spokesman, this week: “On July 26, in the course of operational activity by an IDF patrol near the village of Hirbet al-Dir, east of Bethlehem, a Palestinian armed with a knife approached the patrol and tried to attack one of the soldiers. In response, the soldier fired at the terrorist and hit his lower body. After the Palestinian continued with his attempts to stab the soldier, another soldier who was present was forced to use a club in order to neutralize the terrorist. The Palestinian terrorist, who was seriously wounded, was given medical treatment on the spot by an IDF force and in the end he was declared dead.”

A few cypress trees are planted on the slope at the foot of the place where Jihad was killed. Some faded bloodstains are still visible on the ground. The taxi stand is deserted. A Hummer observes us from the hill overlooking the road. We ascend the hill, passing the armored Hummer whose passengers, four soldiers in dark sunglasses, are laughing among themselves. Are these the soldiers who killed Jihad. Are they from the same unit?

In the handsome stone house with beehives in the yard, which overlooks the taxi stand and the site of the killing, lives another eyewitness, Nur Harmas. On the day of the incident she awoke to the sound of the Hummer’s engine below. Harmas says that she noticed a young man at the stand, waiting. She went inside and began to do her housework. After about 15 minutes she heard a dull noise. She cast a glance from the window and saw the stand empty. Jihad was no longer standing there. A cypress hides the place where the Hummer stood.

Harmas rushed to her bedroom, opened the door that leads to the balcony, from which one can see the place where the Hummer stood. “I saw the deceased lying on the ground, his hands handcuffed behind his back, with three soldiers standing around him, one of them kicking his head. The moment I saw that, I rushed to the neighbors to call for help.” She told her husband’s cousin, who quickly went down to see what they were doing to Jihad.

Karim Jubran, an investigator from B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), takes out of his briefcase a pair of torn, white plastic handcuffs, which he found at the site of the incident. Was Jihad also handcuffed at the time when the soldiers beat him to death? Or are these the handcuffs with which the soldiers handcuffed the bereaved father, in front of his son’s body? Does it make a difference?

J.K.

Now you are paralyzed, as we promised

Ashqar is sitting in his wheelchair, his left leg completely enclosed in a cast, his right leg shaking nonstop. When he tries to get up and lean on his crutches, he threatens to topple over. “I was married in 2004, and I started to work in aluminum in the village to provide for my new household. On April 22, 2005, at 2:30 A.M., the soldiers came and started to throw grenades and to shout for everyone in the house to go outside. They blindfolded me with whatever they use and handcuffed me. I was taken in a jeep to prison and I was examined by an army doctor. He looked over my body – no operations, doesn’t take medication, no illnesses. Again I was taken in a military jeep, this time to Kishon. ‘Yehuda, incoming,’ the warder said and transferred me to the interrogation office. They opened my eyes: Good morning. An excellent morning. One of the interrogators, Maimon, told me: I am responsible for your file. What file? The one you were arrested for. This is the major, and this tall guy is the colonel, this is Sagiv and this is Eldad. Eight interrogators.”They said: We have no time, it will soon be our Passover and you have to finish everything in a short time. Finish what? You have to tell us what you have. I don’t have anything to tell you. I begged. They said: We know all that nonsense. We are talking about security. Plans for terrorist attacks at Passover. I said: I don’t understand what you are talking about. They said: The suicide bomber was at your place. What suicide bomber?”After two hours of talking they said to me: If you don’t give everything you have, we will have to take it by a different way. What is the different way? Did you hear of a military interrogation? You might leave here with your body battered or crippled. I was taken to a military interrogation. Here you pray to God that you will die, they said, but we won’t give you that. We will let you die only after you spill out what we are looking for. He gave me a prison uniform and I told him that if I was going to die, I preferred my own clothes.

“They sat me down on a square chair without a back, which was attached to the floor and had sharp metal ends [sticking up]. My legs were tied to the legs of the chair with metal cuffs and my hands were tied behind my back with metal cuffs. One interrogator sat behind me and the other in front of me. The interrogator opposite me said: We have to give you a little sports, so you will be able to hold out in the military interrogation. The sports was that they pushed me backward by the chest, a backward somersault, and I would hold myself so my bones would not break. After a minute or two I would automatically fall on the floor, but the interrogator behind me would put his foot on my chest and press, and the interrogator in front would grab my hands and pull and pull behind the chair. They kept on like that until I don’t know what happened to me, heat in every part of my body, puking everything I had in my stomach and it would go into my nostrils. I would wake up when they poured water on my face. When I woke up, we went back to the same situation. It went on like this 15-20 times an hour.

“After that they made me crouch on my toes, not letting me lean on the back of my foot. I was in that position for 40-50 minutes, maybe an hour – that was my estimate – until I felt my soles swelling and they turned blue and there was tremendous pain. After that, stand up, and they tied my hands and pressed as hard as they could on the metal handcuffs until the metal dug into my hand. Here are the signs, you can still see them. Because of the pressure, the key of the handcuffs didn’t always work and they would bring huge metal scissors, like they use in construction, and tear off the handcuffs and then bring new ones, to go on. The color of my hands changed to blue, and when they opened [the handcuffs] my hands shook. The interrogator stood on the table and pulled me with a chain of handcuffs. When I fell, they pulled me by the hair.

“I would cry, beg, shout, and they came back to me with words, that it was impossible to stop, only after you start talking about what we want. I said to them: Tell me what you want. Tell me I am responsible for the attack on the Pentagon, I am ready to confess to everything, just tell me what. I want to end this death.”

“There were always four interrogators and two rotated every four hours, day and night. The new ones would tell me they were stronger than the ones before, that the ones before were a joke, we are the strong ones. And that was true. The new ones tied me and started to beat me all over my body. One interrogator pressed hard on my testicles and on my feet with his shoes. When they slapped me and I tried to pull back, the major would say: What are you doing? If you move back, I will break your nose, and if you move forward I will rip off your ear. Be strong and take it sportingly, because you are a soldier and a fighter. They broke this tooth.”

Ashqar suddenly stops talking. He turns pale and his face is covered with beads of perspiration. His father, Sati, quickly wipes his face with a damp cloth. “Every time I try to remember I get dizzy, even when I am alone.” Quiet descends in the room. It will take Ashqar another few minutes to pull himself together.

“I was taken into detention on Friday morning, and that was the last light of day I saw before the interrogation. I came out for the first time on Monday night or before dawn on Tuesday morning. On those long days I sat in a chair and did not even go to the toilet. So you won’t kill yourself, they said. I urinated in my clothes, and a terrible stench started. For four days I didn’t eat anything. They told me: If we give you something to eat, something will happen to your stomach and your intestines. Maybe they will explode under the pressure of the food when we push you backward. You will drink only half a cup of saltwater. That is what they gave me every time after they bent me and I vomited. Why with salt? I asked. Give me without salt. No, so nothing will happen in your stomach and intestines. I would drink it and vomit.

“On Monday evening, they told me that five witnesses had testified that Luwaii had transported a wanted man. I told them that there was a famous wanted man named Luwaii Sadi, but my name is Luwaii Sati, and maybe they had mixed us up. He said to me: Are you saying the Shin Bet is that stupid? We know exactly what we’re doing, and it is all correct. I said: Put me on trial for whatever you want. He said: Ya’allah, sports again. He pushes me backward in the chair. I will help you become a story in Palestinian history. He is talking to me and my head is down below. He pushes strongly with his leg and presses on my chest. I felt something like an explosion in my body. Like something broke. After that I don’t know what happened. I woke up and they were pouring water on my face. Again they pushed me backward and again I fainted.

“He said to me: Stand on your feet. I felt that my legs were cold, like pins and needles in the legs. I said: I can’t. He said: Now you are paralyzed. I said: I guess I am. He said: That is what we promised you and that is what you want.”

J.K.

Boycott will destroy British academia, warns US professor

Mr Dershowitz, the prominent lawyer and Harvard law professor who is well known for the ferocity of his attacks on those he perceives as enemies of Israel, told the Guardian that if the boycott call is endorsed by the UCU branches there would be retribution, and that he had enlisted 100 lawyers to break the boycott. “If the union goes ahead with this immoral petition, it will destroy British academia,” Mr Dershowitz said. “We will isolate them from the rest of the world.”

Yesterday supporters of an academic boycott said they were determined to press ahead with the campaign. Sue Blackwell, who spoke in favour of the motion at the union conference last month, said: “We have voted to discuss how best to help our Palestinian brothers and sisters who often are not allowed to get to college or university and that is what we will do.” She said the proposed boycott had sparked a renewed debate about the plight of the Palestinians since it was first raised five years ago. “This is about boycotting institutions about criticising the policies of the Israeli government not about individuals.”

J.K.

The hostage crisis in Entebbe

From Documents claim Israel aided Entebbe hijack;

The Israeli secret service and radical Palestinians may have engineered the hijacking of an Air France plane that flew to Entebbe in Uganda, according to a claim in newly released government documents. This extraordinary interpretation on the Entebbe raid was cited by a British diplomat, DH Colvin of the Paris embassy, in June 30 1976 as the world was transfixed by the hostage crisis in Entebbe, which features in the recent film The Last King of Scotland. In a document released by the National Archives, Mr Colvin, citing an unnamed contact at the Euro-Arab parliamentary association, wrote: “According to his information, the hijack was the work of the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], with help from the Israeli secret service, the Shin Beit.”

Describing the collaboration as an unholy alliance, he went on: “The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO’s [Palestine Liberation Organisation] standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans. “Their nightmare is that after the November elections, one will witness the imposition in the Middle East of a Pax Americana, which will be the advantage of the PLO (who will gain international respectability and perhaps the right to establish a state on evacuated territories) and to the disadvantage of the Refusal Front (who will be squeezed right out in any overall peace settlement and will lose their raison d’etre) and Israel (who will be forced to evacuate occupied territory).”

From Israeli agents ‘helped Entebbe hijackers’;

An extraordinary claim that Israeli intelligence may have had a hand in an airline hijacking before sending in commandos to rescue the hostages at Entebbe was made to the Foreign Office. It came via David Colvin, the first secretary at the British embassy in Paris, according to a newly released National Archives file. He heard it from a contact in the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Association three days after the Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was seized in mid-air by Palestinians and German terrorists on June 27, 1976.

Mr Colvin told his superiors that his source suggested that the attack was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine with help from the Israeli Security Service, the Shin Bet. It was designed to torpedo the rival Palestine Liberation Organisation’s standing in France and to prevent what they saw as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans.

”My contact said that the PFLP had attracted all sorts of wild elements, some of whom had been planted by the Israelis,” Mr Colvin added. The message was received without comment by the Foreign Office but later officials recorded that a journalist from the Liverpool Post, Leo Murray, had also told them that a splinter group of PFLP was planning a series of spectacular incidents to disrupt contacts between the PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the US. An official noted: ‘If, as Mr Murray’s sources allege, the aim of the Entebbe hijacking was to prevent the development of relations between Arafat and the West, and Arafat knew this, it would provide another motive for Arafat’s recent approach to the French in Cairo warning us of further attacks.”

J.K.

Scavenging for scrap metal

Earlier in the day IDF troops shot dead two Palestinian children, aged 11 and 13, close to the ruins of the former settlement of Dugit, in the northern Gaza Strip.

An IDF spokeswoman said the two children and another 16-year-old were trying to place a bomb near the Gaza Strip border fence.

The army believes that they had been paid by one of the militant groups to place an explosive device.

“We know that a number of Palestinians crawled towards the border fence. They know that it is a dangerous area but they did not heed repeated calls to stop and they planted a suspicious device close to the fence,” the spokeswoman said.

The 16-year-old, who was unarmed, was taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment, the IDF said.

Palestinian sources said that the three had been scavenging for scrap metal where they were fired upon by the soldiers.

J.K.

Shin Bet, police severly tortured Palestinian suspects

In a harsh report released yesterday, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel accuses the Shin Bet security service and police of severely torturing Palestinian security suspects.The report includes the testimonies of nine Palestinians who were arrested by the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet between 2004 and 2005, including one that charged police investigators with severe sexual abuse.

The prisoners interviewed complain of beatings, painful sitting positions for long periods of time and being tied up painfully, among other things.

The report says the doctors at the hospitals and prisons ignore the prisoners’ complaints or treat them with contempt, thus enabling the security services to continue torturing the prisoners.

A 24-year-old prisoner from Nablus testified that during questioning a police investigator held his legs in the air, and inserted an object into his rectum.

“While the investigator inserted the ‘object’ into my rectum and removed it, he pulled my genitalia, as if he wanted to rip it out,” he said. “He told me that he wanted to cut it off and throw it to the dog – this lasted at least 10 minutes. The whole time I yelled out in pain.”

This prisoner’s examination by an Abu Kabir Forensics Institute doctor revealed signs of sexual abuse, the report says.

Another prisoner, Louay Ashkar, 27, of Saida village, said he sat during questioning on a chair with a bent back, both hands tied behind the chair and each leg tied to chair leg.

“The interrogator Effi would push my chest backward until my head reached the floor, then grab my bound hands and pull me to him,” said Ashkar. “I lost consciousness because of the pain, especially in my back.”

The report says Ashkar’s legs are paralyzed due to the spinal damage caused by the torture.

One of the complaints alleges forceful use of iron shackles “until the iron cuts into the flesh and you felt as if your hand was being cut off,” said Amin Shakirat.

He also charged his own screams were taped and played back as a means of psychological pressure.

The Shin Bet responded that its methods were “legal” in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling.

Article 2 of the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which Israel is a signatory, allows “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever,” including a state of war or any emergency, as a justification of torture.

J.K.

We didn’t know where to hide

“We tried to move to the other side in order to approach the Palestinian and foreign demonstrators. One of the security guards began shouting and firing directly at us. He did not warn us first, he just opened fire. His friends also fired in the air. We shouted to them, ‘We are journalists, are you crazy?’ But they continued to fire for about 10 minutes. There were four security guards and they were standing about 7 meters (22.96 feet) away from us when they started firing with live ammunition. Only when one of them came down to us, the gunshots stopped. We felt the bullets pass 20 centimeters away from us. We told him, ‘If you want to kill us, kill us.’ Ten minutes later, the army arrived. We told them, ‘There are crazy people here firing at us,’ but they didn’t seem to care. The contractor building the fence came down later and told us, ‘If I were here instead of the security guards, I would also have fired at you.‘”

J.K.

Lod residents protest Arab neighbors

“We have no problem with Arabs living in their own neighborhoods, but they’d better stay out of our neighborhood,” one of the residents told Ynet, “this is their way to slowly kick us out of the city by taking over Jewish neighborhoods. Just like we don’t go live in their neighborhoods, they shouldn’t come live in our neighborhoods.”

J.K.

In the service of the Jewish state

In the late 1940s, Walther (Walter) Rauff, an SS officer who was responsible for the murder of at least 100,000 people and was wanted by the Allies as a war criminal, was employed by the Israeli secret service. Instead of bringing him to justice it paid him for his services and helped him escape to South America. Documents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that have been released over the past several years show that the Americans were aware that Rauff’s case was not exceptional.

J.K.

Israel gripped by general strike

Israel has struggled for years with malfunctions in a number of its municipalities. There have been allegations of the mismanagement of funds, cronyism and in some cases embezzlement

Why, it’s capitalism par excellence!

J.K.

Norway-Hamas link angers Israel

Israel has cancelled a meeting with a visiting Norwegian minister after he held talks with the prime minister of the new Palestinian unity government.

Of course they have.

J.K.

Naked, drunk, surrounded by sex toys – it’s the Israeli ambassador

When San Salvador police discovered him in his official embassy residence yard in the capital San Salvador, however, smooth talk was not really an option. For starters there was the gag and the rubber ball in his mouth. There was also the matter of being drunk. And naked. And bound. And surrounded by sex toys.

J.K.