699 Four Corners TV documentary: Israelis torturing non-Jewish children

Four Corners TV documentary: Israelis torturing non-Jewish children

Newsletter published on 7 November 2014

(1) Four Corners TV documentary: Israelis torturing non-Jewish children
(2) Australian documentary reveals Israeli torture of Palestinian youth
(3) Al Jazeera documentary on the USS Liberty
(4) USS Liberty: Government Betrayal and Cover-up - Paul Craig Roberts

(1) Four Corners TV documentary: Israelis torturing non-Jewish children

From: Bruce Brown <convertdocs@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2014 19:52:04 -0800
Subject: MUST SEE Four Corners TV documentary

Peter - I urge you to share this with your readers.  It is the most
powerful documentary about Israel that I can recall ever seeing.  No
one except a Zionist can walk away unaffected.

Here in the U.S., airing this documentary would probably cost a
station its license to broadcast.  You're lucky having Four Corners in
Australia.  They did a bang-up job on Scientology too.  Cheers, Bruce.

Israelis torturing non-Jewish children. 2014 Australian documentary
film. Viewer discretion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL048x4msM

(2) Australian documentary reveals Israeli torture of Palestinian youth

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/13/pale-f13.html

Australian documentary reveals Israeli torture of Palestinian youth

By Will Morrow
13 February 2014

A documentary broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s
“Four Corners” television program on Monday night provided a devastating
portrait of the Israeli government’s systematic policy of threats,
arbitrary arrest and torture of Palestinian youth and children.

These measures are aimed at holding the Palestinian population,
particularly the youth, in a permanent state of terror and suppressing
any opposition to the Israeli occupation. An entire generation of youth
is being traumatised as the Israeli security forces sow a climate of
fear, as well as suspicion and division, through the forced recruitment
of young informers.

The well-researched exposé—which also involved the Australian
newspaper—was based on interviews with Palestinian youth themselves, as
well as an Israeli lawyer, a former Israeli soldier and an Australian
lawyer who has spent six years in the country.

Qusai Zamara, one of the boys interviewed, was 14 years old when he was
abducted from his bed during a late-night military raid on his family
home in the West Bank. He was taken to an interrogation facility and
tortured into confessing to throwing stones at Israeli citizens and
security forces. This accusation is commonly used by the Israeli
military to justify the repression, arbitrary arrests and killings meted
out against the Palestinian people.

“There was a big machine with electrical wires on it connected to the
electricity,” Zamara said. “He would throw me on the ground and hit
me... He also had a whip with a hose, which he hit me with... He said,
‘Either confess or we’ll beat you up and bring your parents, beat them
up and break their bones’.” After signing a confession written in
Hebrew, which he did not understand, Zamara later found out that many
additional crimes had been added.

Fifteen-year-old Fahti Mahfouz explained what happened when he refused
to confess. He was kept in prison for 82 days and tortured. Mahfouz said
that the lead interrogator “sent me to a room that had a cross in it and
hung me on it. I was standing on the tips of my toes and all my weight
was on the handcuffs and my toes ... and he kept hitting me.” When he
was taken down five hours later, “white foam started coming out of my
mouth. Two men came and took me to first aid. Then my chest was cramped.
I couldn’t breathe. He took me in and asked me, ‘Where’s the pain?’ Then
he’d press on it and hit it.”

Children are also detained. Wadi’a Mawadeh was just five years old when
six soldiers arrested him after an Israeli man accused him of throwing a
stone. He was held for two hours before being released.

Among the brutal acts committed in interrogation, Australian lawyer
Gerard Horton reported the case of a large dog feeding on food placed on
a child’s bare body. Another interrogator “specialised” in making
detailed threats of rape against children. Horton, from the organisation
Military Court Watch, interviewed hundreds of Palestinian youth about
their experiences.

The interviews make clear that the abuse is not the callous actions of a
few rogue soldiers, but a strategy organised by the Israeli government
and security forces. It is part of the decades-long suppression of the
Palestinian population that has included targeted assassinations of
political opponents and illegal and disproportionate wars of aggression,
most recently the 2008–2009 slaughter in Gaza.

A UNICEF report from March 2013 estimated that for each year over the
past decade, approximately 700 youth aged 12–17 have been arrested,
interrogated and detained—an average of two per day. After being forced
into confessions, they are hauled before military courts, and sentenced
in “hearings” as short as 60 seconds. “Four Corners” revealed that the
courts have a conviction rate of 99.74 percent—that is, they simply
rubberstamp the charges.

Last June, a UN report documented the use of torture, solitary
confinement and death threats in Israeli prisons. It was also revealed
late last year that the Israeli government kept children overnight in
outdoor cages during snowstorms, a practise that the government claims
to have since stopped.

One Palestinian man interviewed on the documentary pointed to another
purpose of the government program: to expel sections of the population
from the occupied territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war. The
man was told by an Israeli soldier that in “five years ... you’ll be out
of the houses. Your houses have been sold. You have no houses.”

The documentary revealed a practice known as “mapping,” in which young
people are woken from their beds at night during heavily-armed military
raids, photographed, checked for ID, and forced to detail where they
sleep. During interrogations, they are coerced into becoming regular
informants for the Israeli state about family members, friends and
neighbours.

Islam Darayyoub was 14 when he and his brothers were awoken at 2 a.m.
and “mapped.” Several days later, security forces arrested Islam and
demanded that he inform on his uncle, Bassem Tamimi, reportedly the
leader of a local protest movement.

The broadcast pointed to significant opposition among Israelis to the
government’s program. It included footage of Guy Pavia, an Israeli
civilian who carries a video camera to escort school children walking
past Israeli settlements in the hope of preventing attacks from Israeli
thugs. The program revealed that Israeli soldiers are ordered to not
intervene if such attacks take place.

Pavia stated: “I can’t describe this in words because I feel myself as a
holocaust survivor. My grandfather was a holocaust survivor... All his
family died in the Holocaust. And I don’t get it. How one who is
suffering from all that stuff, we became people who made other people
suffer. It breaks me.”

The program also interviewed Gaby Lasky, an Israeli lawyer who has
defended Palestinians in court and opposed the two-tier justice system
between Israeli citizens and Palestinians, and Yehuda Shaul, the founder
of Breaking the Silence. This is an organisation of 950 current and
former Israeli soldiers who have written testimonies exposing their
previous human rights abuses. Shaul recounted: “I have never broken into
houses in the middle of the night here in Jerusalem and torn apart
apartments. But in Hebron where I served for 14 months 24-7, that’s what
we’ve done, in order to make our presence felt.”

The Israeli government simply rejected the revelations and blamed the
Palestinian people themselves. Interviewed in the documentary, foreign
ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declared: “A policy to create fear?
There is no such thing. The only policy is to maintain law and order,
that’s all.”

The Australian government responded by stressing its full support for
the Israeli regime. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop claimed to be “deeply
concerned by allegations of the mistreatment of Palestinian children,”
but in the same breath said the “Australian government welcomes Israel’s
ongoing efforts to address these issues.” Both the ruling
Liberal-National Coalition and opposition Labor Party in Australia have
long been apologists for the Israeli state and all its crimes.

(3) Al Jazeera documentary on the USS Liberty

Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2014 16:30:15 +0000 (UTC)
From: leo schmit <leoschmit@yahoo.com>
Cc: Willem Wolters <willemwolters@me.com>
Subject: Re: Al Jazeera documentary on the USS Liberty: the Day Israel
  attacked America

Peter,

There seem to be two explanations for the attack by Irgun forces on the
USS Liberty in 1967.

- The USS Liberty intelligence task would reveal the intention of Irgun
to take the Golan Heights and the West Bank later on. This is suggested
in the Al Jazeera video and it seems to me quite plausible (hiding their
intentions - with success, because the terrified Liberty crew destroyed
all their evidence of this intention), except for the fact that LBJ and
the US congress probably would not have objected against taking Golan,
or the West Bank or whatever the zionist expansion would require, even
when they would have picked up those signals. Should the Liberty have
caught the signals from Irgun re.: their intention to take more ground,
the LBJ givernment would have done nothing about it, as they were
already in the zionist pocket and continue to be so to this day, more
than 50 years later. So why burn the ship and murder its crew? Are we
looking at a case of over-zealous zionists. No We are looking at a
murderous gang that has started its racket way back in the 1920's and
continues its terror until july 2014, with another onslaught on Gaza.

- the other explanation for the attack by Irgun on the Liberty would be
to attempt a false flag type of thing to draw the US into a war with
Egypt. Not plausible at all. Irgun needs US guns and money, but not open
involvement. It's a zionist enterprise, after all with full support from
US congress and European holocaust tear-jerkers..

One more critical comment:

- the suggested 'gifts' in the presentation elude me. After destroying
'Liberty' and sweeping this under the carpet the US jews were more
lenient on Vietnam? This supposes an incredible level of Jew control in
the US, way over and beyond the Jew control over Congress and every
whatsoever politician in the US.


I pity the US folks and the guilty - feeling  European Holocaust  tear
jerkers to be fooled by Irgun.

People in Latin America, Chile, Argentina, who had nothing to do with
this holocaust guilt syndrome and who have suffered US terror in their
cities and villages, well they see clearly the threat that Irgun and the
US pose to world peace, which is further away than ever.

  Best,

Leo

(4) USS Liberty: Government Betrayal and Cover-up - Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.globalresearch.ca/uss-liberty-government-betrayal-and-cover-up-finally-exposed/25186

USS Liberty: Government Betrayal and Cover-up Finally Exposed

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, June 08, 2014

This article was published by Global Research June 8, 2011. Today marks
the 47th anniversary of this attack.

Author’s Note:

This article was written by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts in 2008.  It was
published in July 2008, and is based entirely on documented sources and
on interviews with the survivors.  Today marks 44 years since this
heinous war crime was not only committed but has been covered up — by
all succeeding administrations and mainstream media.  It is a “must
read” for those concerned about an attack on America; the needless
slaughter of American citizens. ==

June 8, 1967 — the fourth day of the Six Day War between Israel and
Egypt, Syria and Jordan — was a beautiful day in the Mediterranean. The
USS Liberty was in international waters off the coast of Egypt. Israeli
aircraft had flown over the USS Liberty in the morning and had reported
that the ship was American. The crew, in close proximity to the war
zone, was reassured by the presence of Israeli aircraft. But at 2:00
p.m. sailors sunbathing on the deck saw fighter jets coming at them in
attack formation. Red flashes from the wings of the fighters were
followed by explosions, blood and death. A beautiful afternoon suddenly
became a nightmare. Who was attacking the USS Liberty and why? The
attack on the Liberty was an attack on America.

The Liberty was an intelligence ship. Its purpose was to monitor Soviet
and Arab communications in order to warn both Israel and Washington
should the Soviets enter the war on behalf of its Arab allies. The
Liberty was armed only with four machine guns to repel boarders. Its
request for a destroyer escort had been denied.

The assault on the Liberty is well documented. With no warning, the
Liberty was attacked by successive waves of unmarked jets using cannon,
rockets and napalm. The attacking jets jammed all of the US
communications frequencies, an indication they knew the Liberty was an
American ship.

The air attack failed to sink the Liberty. About 30 minutes into the
attack three torpedo boats appeared flying the Star of David. The
Israeli boats were not on a rescue mission. They attacked the Liberty
with cannon, machine guns and torpedoes. One torpedo struck the Liberty
mid-ship, instantly killing 25 Americans while flooding the lower decks.
The Israeli torpedo boats destroyed the life rafts the Liberty launched
when the crew prepared to abandon ship, sending the message there’d be
no survivors.

At approximately 3:15 two French-built Israeli helicopters carrying
armed Israeli troops appeared over the Liberty. Phil Tourney could see
their faces only 50/60 feet away. He gave them the finger. Surviving
crew members are convinced the Israelis were sent to board and kill all
survivors.

The Israeli jets destroyed the Liberty’s communication antennas. While
under attack from the jets, crew members strung lines that permitted the
ship to send a call for help. The USS Saratoga and the USS America
launched fighters to drive off the attacking aircraft, but the rescue
mission was aborted by direct orders from Washington.

When the Liberty notified the Sixth Fleet it was again under attack,
this time from surface ships, the Fleet commander ordered the carriers
America and Saratoga to launch fighters to destroy or drive off the
attackers. The order was unencrypted and picked up by Israel, which
immediately called off its attack. The torpedo boats and the hovering
helicopters sped away. Israel quickly notified Washington that it had
mistakenly attacked an American ship, and the US fighters were recalled
a second time.

The USS Liberty suffered 70% casualties, with 34 killed and 174 wounded.
Although the expensive state of the art ship was kept afloat by the
heroic crew, it later proved unsalvageable and was sold as scrap.

Why didn’t help come?

No explanation has ever been given by the US government for Defense
Secretary Robert McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s orders for
the Sixth Fleet to abort the rescue mission. Lt. Commander David Lewis
of the Liberty told colleagues that Admiral L. R. Geis, commander of the
Sixth Fleet carrier force, told him that when he challenged McNamara’s
order to recall the rescue mission, LBJ came on the line and said he
didn’t care if the ship sank, he wasn’t going to embarrass an ally. The
communications officer handling the transmission has given the same account.

A BBC documentary on the Israeli raid reports confusion about the
attacker’s identity almost resulted in a US assault on Egypt. Richard
Parker, US political counsel in Cairo, confirms in the BBC documentary
he received official communication an American retaliatory attack on
Egypt was on its way.

The US government’s official position on the USS Liberty corresponds
with Israel’s: The attack was unintentional and a result of Israeli
blunders. This is the official position despite the fact that CIA
Director Richard Helms, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Assistant
Secretary of State Lucius Battle, and a long list of US Navy officers,
government officials and Liberty survivors are on record saying the
Israeli attack was intentional.

According to Helms, Battle and the minutes of a White House meeting,
President Johnson believed the attack was intentional. Helms says LBJ
was furious and complained when The New York Times buried the story on
page 29, but that Johnson decided he had to publicly accept Israel’s
explanation. “The political pressure was too much,” Helms said.

US communications personnel, intelligence analysts and ambassadors
report having read US intercepts of Israeli orders to attack the
Liberty. In one intercept an Israeli pilot reports that the Liberty is
an American ship and asks for a repeat and clarification of his orders
to attack an American ship. One Israeli who identified himself as one of
the pilots later came to America and met with US Representative Pete
McCloskey and Liberty survivors. The pilot said he had refused to
participate in the attack when he saw it was an American ship. He was
arrested upon returning to base.

The Liberty flew the US flag. The ship’s markings, GTR-5, measured
several feet in height on both sides of the bow. On the stern the ship
was clearly marked USS LIBERTY. Mistaking the Liberty for an Egyptian
ship, as Israel claims to have done, was impossible.

Tattered flags show ferocity of the attacks

The Israelis claim the Liberty flew no flag, but two US flags full of
holes from the attack exist. When the first flag was shot down, crewmen
replaced it with a flag 7-feet by 13-feet. This flag, with its battle
scars, is on display at NSA headquarters at Ft. Mead, Maryland.

Admiral John S. McCain Jr., the father of the current US senator,
ordered Admiral Isaac C. Kidd and Captain Ward Boston to hold a court of
inquiry and to complete the investigation in only one week. In a signed
affidavit Captain Boston said President Johnson ordered a cover-up and
that he and Admiral Kidd were prevented from doing a real investigation.
Liberty survivors were ordered never to speak to anyone about the event.
Their silence was finally broken when Lt. Commander Jim Ennes published
his book, Assault on the Liberty .

It is now established fact that the attack on the Liberty was
intentional and was covered up by President Johnson and every
administration since. There has never been a congressional
investigation, nor has the testimony of the majority of survivors ever
been officially taken. Moreover, testimony that conflicted with the
cover-up was deleted from the official record.

Disgusted by the US government’s official stance discounting the
survivors’ reports, Admiral Tom Moorer, retired Chief of Naval
Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, organized the
Moorer Commission to make public the known facts about the attack and
cover-up. The Commission consisted of Admiral Moorer, former Judge
Advocate General of the US Navy Admiral Merlin Staring, Marine Corps
General Raymond G. Davis and former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James
Akins.

The Commission’s Report concluded:

“That there is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack was a deliberate
attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew.

“That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately
prevented the US Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty by
recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under
attack.

“That surviving crew members were threatened with “court-martial,
imprisonment or worse’ if they exposed the truth; and [the survivors]
were abandoned by their own government.

“That there has been an official cover-up without precedent in American
naval history.

“That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected
officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any
foreign nation.”

Why did Israel attack the Liberty? Was something super secret going on
that is so damaging it must be protected at all cost?

Some experts believe Tel Aviv decided to sink the Liberty because the
ship’s surveillance capability would discover Israel’s impending
invasion and capture of Syria’s Golan Heights, an action opposed by
Washington. Others believe Israel was concerned the Liberty would
discover Israel’s massacre of hundreds of Egyptian POWs, a war crime
contemporaneous with the attack on the US ship. Still others believe
that Israel intended to blame the attack on Egypt in order to bring
America into the war. It is known the US was providing Israel with
reconnaissance and that there were joint US-Israeli covert operations
against the Arabs that Washington was desperate to keep secret.

Survivors with whom I spoke said the attack was the easy part of the
experience. The hard part has been living with 40 years of official
cover-up and betrayal by the US government. One survivor said that he
was asked to leave his Baptist church when he spoke about the Liberty,
because the minister and fellow church-goers felt more loyalty to Israel
than to a member of the congregation who had served his country. His
church’s position was that if our government believed Israel, the
survivors should also.

Survivor Phil Tourney said that “being forced to live with a cover-up is
like being raped and no one will believe you.”

Survivor Gary Brummett said he “feels like someone who has been locked
up for 40 years on a wrongful conviction.” Until the US government
acknowledges the truth of the attack, Brummett says the survivors are
forced to live with the anger and dismay of being betrayed by the
country they served.

Survivor Bryce Lockwood has been angry for 40 years. The torpedo that
killed his shipmates, wrecked his ship and damaged his health was made
in the USA.

Survivor Ernie Gallo told me he “has been haunted for four decades” by
the knowledge that his commander-in-chief recalled the US fighters that
could have prevented most of the Liberty’s casualties.

Every American should be troubled by the fact that the President of the
United States and the Secretary of Defense prevented the US Sixth Fleet
from protecting a US Navy ship and its 294-man crew from foreign attack.
They should also be troubled that the President ordered the Navy to
determine the attack was unintentional.

For more information, visit the USS Liberty site.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an
Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  His latest book, HOW THE
ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Pres

http://open.salon.com/blog/anti-terrorust/2014/11/01/the_day_israel_attacked_america

NOVEMBER 1, 2014 6:04AM

The Day Israel Attacked America

By Richard Belfield

I was first told about the attack on the USS Liberty in 1980 over dinner
with a former analyst from the National Security Agency (NSA) in
Washington DC.

Back in 1980, I promised my friend that if I ever got the chance I would
make a film about it. Over the years, I pitched the idea to numerous
broadcasters and always got the same response: eyes rolled upwards,
usually followed by the statement, "Are you completely mad?"

Fast forward to 2009 and I was a guest speaker at the NSA's biennial
conference on historical cryptography, talking about an unsolved code on
an 18th century monument in an English stately home.

While there, I went to two other sessions - both about attacks on
American signal intelligence naval vessels.

The first was the capture of the US spy ship, the Pueblo (boarded by
North Korean forces in 1968 - and never returned). The survivors of that
incident were treated like heroes and feted on stage.

The next day there was a session about the USS Liberty. James Scott, who
has written easily the best book on the Liberty attack, was on stage and
limited to his allotted 20 minutes. Ranged against him were three
Israeli apologists, all of whom were allowed to overrun their time.
Survivors from the Liberty affair were allowed to sit in the audience,
but they were denied any say in proceedings.

As an Englishman, I was brought up with a strong sense of fair play and
I thought this was a disgrace. It was gruesome to watch. First, the crew
had been attacked in broad daylight by a close ally, then they were
betrayed by their government and now they were being humiliated by the
same agency many had worked for back in 1967. ...

... (in early 2014) we began filming interviews.

The (USS Liberty) veterans were extraordinary. One after another, they
were generous with their time, uniformly eloquent and passionate and
above all, honest in their recollections.

They all felt betrayed by the American government but were keen to
exonerate ordinary Jewish people both in Israel and without, for any
responsibility for the incident. Their beef was simply with the senior
Israeli officers in the control room and their superiors higher up the
command chain who had ordered the attack.  ...

...In Texas we interviewed Bobby Ray Inman, an intelligence officer with
a glittering track record at the CIA, Naval Intelligence and as a former
director of the NSA. My contacts in the UK intelligence world had always
told me "he is one of the good guys" and I quickly discovered why. He
was frank and clear. The top Israeli commanders, he explained, had known
exactly what they were doing when they attacked the Liberty and when it
came to holding them to account, the US government rolled over for them.

...an interview with one of the other survivors, Jim Kavanagh came
suddenly to mind. "I went through hell," he had said about his
shipmates. "But they left this earth."

Finally, we filmed on a sister ship to the Liberty, now moored in San
Francisco. The crew hauled an outsized US flag up a mast for us. The
flag - known as the "holiday colours" - was identical to that which was
flown from the Liberty on June 8, 1967. It was huge, clearly visible for
miles, and I knew immediately that no one could ever have been in any
doubt about the nationality of the ship beneath it.

  --
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2014/10/day-israel-attacked-america-20141028144946266462.html

  ===

ON JUNE 8, 1967, while patrolling in international waters in the Eastern
Mediterranean Sea, USS Liberty (AGTR-5) was savagely attacked without
warning or justification by air and naval forces of the state of Israel.
  Of a crew of 294 officers and men (including three civilians), the
ship suffered thirty four (34) killed in action and one hundred seventy
three (173) wounded in action.  The ship itself, a Forty Million
($40,000,000) Dollar state of the art signals intelligence (SIGINT)
platform, was so badly damaged that it never sailed on an operational
mission again and was sold in 1970 for $101,666.66 as scrap. At 1400
hours, while approximately about 17 nautical miles off the northern
Sinai coast ...

USS Liberty Veterans Association
http://www.usslibertyveterans.org/