Torture is an ugly side of war that under the best of circumstances mainstream media doesn’t want to cover. That reluctance is amplified when the alleged torturer is Israel’s government. From Jonathan Cook at antiwar.com:
‘Black sites’ are about reminding those who have been colonized and enslaved of a simple lesson: resistance is futile
On a misty November morning 21 years ago, I was desperately trying to remain camouflaged. Concealed in the foliage of an orange grove in Israel’s rural Galilee, I hurriedly took photos of a drab concrete building not marked on any map.
Even the original road sign identifying the site as Facility 1391 had been removed after a local Haaretz newspaper investigation revealed it housed a secret prison.
I was the first foreign journalist to track down Facility 1391, most of it hidden within a heavily fortified complex built in the 1930s to suppress resistance to British rule in Palestine.
For decades, Israel had secretly held mostly Arab foreign nationals captive at the site, unknown to the Israeli courts, the Red Cross and human rights groups. Many were Lebanese citizens kidnapped during Israel’s 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. But there were also Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians and Iranians.
This site would soon be known as a “black site”, a term popularised by Washington’s invasion of Iraq that year. Drawing on techniques refined by Israel at Facility 1391, the US would, in the coming months and years, torture Iraqis and others at Abu Ghraib and Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo.
No one knew how many captives were held in Israel’s Facility 1391, how long they had been there or if there were more such prisons.
However, the first testimonies from inmates revealed horrifying conditions. For most of the time, they were kept in a state of sensory deprivation, made to wear blacked-out goggles, except for when being tortured. In one case that later came to court, a Lebanese captive had been sodomised with a baton by “Major George”, the facility’s torturer-in-chief.
Major George would go on to become head of Israeli police relations with the Palestinian population of Jerusalem.
Saw an attention grabber headline at aggregator, Nazi like Israel has no future in the Middle East.
That’s what the 404 clearing out is about?
When you are the indispensable chosen you can torture away since the rest of world only exists to lick the feet of the master race.
Breaking from the Misfits:
Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?
Thanks for posting, Robert.
That was grim but necessary reading. Bad enough just understanding the words – can’t bear thinking about the reality behind them.
Karma will get us all in the end.
In the meantime, wishing you well.
Thanks, and wishing you well.