Portsmouth and South Down’s PSC Rally in Guildhall Square, Portsmouth, 11 am Saturday 5 July – Come and join us! (about an hour)
To protest against Israel’s onslaught on the Palestinians
– shootings, mass arrests, detention without trial, bombing and now – authority to use torture during interrogations.
In the last PSDPSC update I reported:
“Israel has used the apparent kidnapping of three settler teenagers to launch a wave of collective punishment on Palestinians in the West Bank. Five Palestinians have been shot dead; 529 have been arrested, including the Speaker and 11 other members of the Legislative Assembly. Only about 30 are actually being interrogated. 200 of those arrested are held in indefinite “administrative detention”. Hundreds of homes have been searched, many ransacked, and demolishing the homes of suspects is back on the agenda. This whole campaign seems to be using the teenagers’ kidnap as an excuse to humiliate, weaken and destabilise the new Palestinian unity government.”
To this I can now add (Jonathan Cook reporting from Nazareth, 28 June):
“Officially reintroducing torture
But with the search proving fruitless, Israel’s attorney-general approved the reintroduction of the notorious “ticking bomb” procedure. In doing so, he turned the clock back 15 years to a time when Israel routinely used torture against prisoners. Israel may not have been alone then in using torture, but it was exceptional in flaunting its torture dungeons alongside claims to democratic conduct. Only in 1999 did the country’s supreme court severely limit the practice, allowing interrogators one exemption: a suspect could be tortured only if he was a ticking bomb, hiding information of an attack whose immediate extraction could save lives.
Now Israel’s law chief has agreed that the Palestinian politicians, journalists and activists swept up in the latest mass arrests will be treated as “ticking bombs”. Israel’s torture cells are back in business.”
I will bring leaflets for distribution, a banner and a megaphone so we can tell the public what is going on in Palestine. With all the news from Iraq there is not much in the media on the Israeli action.
See you there on Saturday!