posted 05-08-2004 11:29 PM            

Israeli Torture And US Complicity
Mid-East Realities - MER
5-6-4

The U.S. and Israel have been torture interconnected in the Middle East for quite a long time. Those now infamous hoods -- finally infamous because of the dramatic pictures from a U.S.-run prison in Iraq -- have long been used by the Israelis in prisons where Palestinians are treated far worse but the world has looked the other way for decades now.

Indeed, Israeli 'training' of Americans to 'deal with the Arabs' may well be the secret so-far untold aspect of today's 'torture scandal' now dominating today's headlines. TortureGate now dominates Washington and has the potential to threaten the Bush Presidency as the Monica scandal affected Clinton's.

The top Pentagon civilian officials -- Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith -- both Jewish and both known for their extremely close relationships with top officials in Israel and the Zionist movement, are believed to have personally authorized clandestine Mossad officials to be in Iraq working closely with U.S. military intelligence.

Something similar is believed to have been secretly authorized by the head of the CIA, George Tenet. Many in Washington find it hard to believe that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfled did not know and approve; even if the information was not provided to the President who many believe at the time would not have cared or understood the implications anyway.

As of today TortureGate is at the least further erupting into a profound earthquake-like public relations catastrophy for the U.S. American credibility has been shredded to pieces. The President himself is unusually personally involved in attempting damage-control. Talk of Donald Rumseld being forced to take the fall this time is beginning to be heard above whispers.

As for the U.S. and Israeli torture connection it has grown considerable in recent years and certainly needs to be investigated -- but just as certainly not by the American Congress which is itself quite complicitous despite all the loud protestations otherwise.

Even as far back as a decade before the first Palestinian Intifada began in 1987, the U.S. government was already very much aware and complicitous in, the 'systematic torture' of Palestinians by Israel.

In 1979 U.S. Foreign Service officers serving in the Jerusalem Consulate -- an unofficial Embassy responsible for dealing with the Palestinians in the 'Occupied Territories' -- did their job and provided the political leaders in Washington detailed and conclusive information about the ongoing torture of Palestinians. When top officials in Washington did nothing and in fact ordered everything covered up classified State Department cables were leaked from persons inside the State Department and published by Mark Bruzonsky who at the time was Forum Editor of The Middle East Magazine in London. Bruzonsky is now the Publisher of Mid-East Realities (MiddleEast.Org).

In a major censorship story never publicly told, the classified torture documents were first made available by Bruzonsky for exclusive publication in a New York newspaper. But severe pressure from the U.S. government and persons associated with the Israeli-Jewish lobby forced the story to be spiked at the last minute even after the front-page banner-headline had been set in type and personally approved by the editor and publisher. This is the story of the once secret "Torture Cables" as published in the April 1979 issue of The Middle East Magazine.
http://www.MiddleEast.org/mabarticles/5-05-04.html

Please forward MER articles to others in their entirety with proper attribution. We welcome your comments and information in the new MER FORUM.

MID-EAST REALITIES www.MiddleEast.Org (202) 362-5266 (815) 366-0800 fx MER@MiddleEast.Org

Copyright © 2004 Mid-East Realities, All rights reserved

ALSO: TORTURE IN ISRAEL

http://www.stoptorture.org.il/