THE HANDSTAND

june 2005

23^rd June, 2005, Istanbul – “The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) has been convened to bring international law to bear on America’s aggressive behaviour around the world, with particular emphasis on the Iraq war.  This represents an historic attempt by the people of the world to hold states and their leaders responsible for severe violations of international law. The Tribunal has both symbolic and substantive significance as a step toward the establishment of global democracy,” said Richard Falk, UNESCO peace prize holder and Professor of International Law, at a press conference held today at Darphane-i Amire in Topkapi Palace Grounds. The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) will start tomorrow, June 24, at 09.00 am.

Professor Richard Falk is the co-coordinator for the Tribunal’s Panel of Advocates together with Turgut Tarhanli, Professor of International Law and Human Rights Law. Speakers at the press conference also included Hilal Küey and Hulya Üçpinar from the Izmir Bar Association and Müge Sökmen from the WTI Coordination.  The Tribunal will be launched by a concert at the same venue tonight at 20.30 with renowned artists from Turkey as well as Omar Bashir from Iraq.

The WTI participants from around the world include Iraqi witnesses and experts as well as distinguished international figures such as Dennis Halliday, former Assistant to the UN Secretary General and Director of the UN Humanitarian Aid Programme, Souad Naji Al-Azzawi, Director of the Doctorate Programme in Environmental Engineering in Iraq and Phil Shiner, a human rights lawyer who has uncovered evidence that U.S. troops have tortured detainees in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The Jury of Conscience is chaired by award-winning author Arundathi Roy and is comprised of 15 people from different parts of the world with different areas of expertise.

The Tribunal will consist of three days of hearings investigating various issues related to the war on Iraq, such as the legality of the war, the role of the United Nations, war crimes and the role of the media, as well as the destruction of the cultural sites and the environment. The session in Istanbul is the culminating session of commissions of inquiry and hearings held around the world over the past two years (1). They have compiled a definitive historical record of evidence about the invasion and the occupation.

The Istanbul session of the WTI will summarize and present further testimony on the (il)legality and criminal violations in the U.S. pretexts for and the conduct of this war. The expert opinion, witness testimony, video and image evidence will address the impact of war on civilians, the torture of prisoners, the (un)lawful imprisonment of Iraqis without charges or legal defense, the use of depleted uranium weapons, the effects of the war on Iraq’s infrastructure, the destruction of Iraqi cultural institutions, and the liability of the invaders before international law for failing to protect these treasures of humanity.

The organisers of WTI have extended an invitation on the17th of May to U.S. President George W. Bush as well as the U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to attend the Tribunal and present their case. No reply has been received as of today.

A United States television network, Deep Dish TV, will provide a global broadcast of the World Tribunal on Iraq. Deep Dish is offering all media outlets a free one hour program for television or audio downlink each of the four days of the conference (2).  

The official web site for WTI www.worldtribunal.org  will be offering live audio and video streaming of the Tribunal hearings in addition to the daily updates.

Notes:

1. Sessions on different topics related to the war on Iraq were held in London, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Brussels, New York, Japan, Stockholm, South Korea, Rome, Frankfurt, Geneva, Lisbon and Spain

2. Satellite Downlink Coordinates and Times for free rebroadcast:

June 24, 2100 – 2200 GMT / 1700 – 1800 US (ET) / 0000 – 0100 Turkish Time (6/25)

June 25, 2100 – 2200 GMT / 1700 – 1800 US (ET) / 0000 – 0100 Turkish Time (6/26)

June 26, 2100 – 2200 GMT / 1700 – 1800 US (ET) / 0000 – 0100 Turkish Time (6/27)

June 27, 1000 – 1100 GMT / 0600 – 0700 US (ET) / 1300 – 1400 Turkish Time (6/27)

Transponders:

Europe and the Middle East – Eutelsat WI, Transponder B3

U.S – Galaxy 10R, Transponder 9K, Slot A.

For More Information Contact:

Deep Dish TV – tel: 212 473 8933 - email: deepdish@igc.org - http://www.deepdishtv.org

For more information and interview requests please contact:

Tolga Temuge, International Communications and Media Coordinator, on +(90) 533 644 4687 or tolga.temuge@worldtribunal.org,

WTI Office in Istanbul, + (90) 212 244 7370

www.worldtribunal.org

ARUNDATHI ROY
The following is an excerpt from the speech by Arundathi Roy: “The Jury of Conscience at this tribunal is not here to deliver a simple verdict of guilty or not guilty against the United States and its allies. We are here to examine a vast spectrum of evidence about the motivations and consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation, evidence that has been deliberately marginalized or suppressed. Every aspect of the war will be examined - its legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in the occupation, the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as depleted uranium munitions, napalm, and cluster bombs, the use of and legitimation of torture, the ecological impacts of the war, the responsibility of Arab governments, the impact of Iraq’s occupation on Palestine, and the history of U.S. and British military interventions in Iraq. This tribunal is an attempt to correct the record. To document the history of the war not from the point of view of the victors but of the temporarily - and I repeat the word temporarily - vanquished.” The full speech may be downloaded from the official web site of the WTI, www.worldtribunal.org <http://www.worldtribunal.org/
The full text of each presentation is being uploaded to the web site as each speaker concludes.

*The web site is also offering LIVE audio and video streaming of each day’s hearings.*
World Tribunal on Iraq
         Documenting War Crimes

HAIFA ZANGANA, 011-90-538-510-7916, [as of next week in the U.K. at
011-44-208-455-8004], haifa_zangana@yahoo.co.uk,
http://www.bintjbeil.com/articles/en/020917_zangana.html
Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi-born novelist and former political prisoner. She went back to Iraq for the first time in 2004, after 25 years of exile. She
was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib by the Ba'athist regime and tortured. She said
today: "The U.S. managed in the last two years what Saddam Hussein could
not in the past 35, killing our hope for a democratic future. There are
many people from Iraq taking part in this Tribunal because it is very
important for us to document all the crimes we are enduring: the random
killings, the collective punishments, the indiscriminate use of weapons,
including napalm, the looting, the torture. ... Advocates of democracy like
me are now finding their task harder, as the occupation makes a mockery of
any notion of democracy. People in Iraq now laugh at us if we say
democracy, indeed, it has all become laughable with this carnage we are
experiencing, along with a stunning shortage of medicines, of clean water,
of electricity, and of freedom." Zangana can also arrange interviews with
other members of the Iraqi delegation.

TIM GOODRICH, 011-90-535-4770479, [as of next week, in the U.S. at 760-
994-6700], ivaw_west@ivaw.net, http://www.ivaw.net
Goodrich served in the US Air Force and was in the Middle East during the
invasion of Afghanistan and leading up to the war in Iraq. He returned to
Iraq in 2004 as part of a fact-finding delegation. He said today: "I was
there in Iraq in fall of 2002 when the war was already happening even
though it was not officially announced. We were dropping bombs then, and I
saw bombing intensify as a part of the 'softening up' of Iraq's defenses.
All the documents coming out now, the Downing street memo and others,
confirm what I had witnessed in Iraq. The war had already begun while our
leaders were telling us that they were going to try all diplomatic options
first. ... The true picture on Iraq is not what is shown on the American
media. The situation is getting much worse. The soldiers and Iraqis are
suffering more than people know."

BRENDAN SMITH, +011-90-538-510-7613, smithb@lawnet.ucla.edu,
http://www.fpif.org/papers/0506haltbush.html
Brendan Smith is a lawyer and co-editor of the forthcoming book "In The
Name Of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond." He is in
Istanbul attending the Tribunal. He said today: "In America's Wild West,
citizens would seize criminals, hold impromptu hearings, and hand the
guilty over to officials. With global enforcement of the Geneva Conventions
blocked by the U.S. at every turn, the World Tribunal on Iraq is here to
make such citizen's arrest."

JODIE EVANS, 310-621-5635, 011-212-638-8200 room 126, jodie@codepinkalert.org
Jodie Evans is the co-founder of Code Pink. She is attending the World
Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul. She said today: "I'm here to gather evidence
to indict Bush. . I also just came back from Iran where I did 400
interviews. Many people I spoke with said that they do not like the
domestic policies of their own government, but actually like the fact that
it stands up to the United States. They told me that they will stand behind
even this government, however opposed to it they may be, if the United
States takes military action against their nation."

DAVID BARSAMIAN, barsamian@riseup.net, 011-90-538-510-7617
Barsamian, co-author of "Terrorism: Theirs & Ours", is in Istanbul for the
Tribunal. He said today: "The Nuremberg trials and the U.N. charter have
established in international law the idea that aggression constitutes crime
against peace and that this is the supreme international war crime. The
invasion of Iraq is an example of violation of Nuremberg principles and the
U.N. charter."

For more information, contact the Institute for Public Accuracy at (202)
347-0020; or David Zupan at, (541) 484-9167


I Wish You Knew by Hannah

June 8

I've been meaning to write for days. I've been meaning to sit down, have a free moment, compose my thoughts, figure out how to translate my experiences into something understandable to a world where injustice is not quite as daily, quite as random, quite as violent. I wish I could just say "There was curfew in Marda today" and that you all would understand. That you would know without my telling you that that meant Israeli army jeeps were driving through the village at 5:30 am (and for many, many, many hours after that), that they were throwing sound bombs and tear gas, and shooting rubber-coated bullets randomly, that there was a complete atmosphere of fear. I wish you would know that when three international observers arrived, we were kept out of the village by army, detained by border police, and threatened with arrest. That we were told we could only enter if we were press, but then when the press arrived they weren't allowed in either.

I wish you would know that a boy's id was taken from his home and he was told to come to the next village to pick it up, but that his father wouldn't send him because he was afraid his son would be killed. Or that a young man was arrested and his family couldn't locate him all day (they now know he's in Qedumim settlement / detention center). Or that each time soldiers were asked for justification of their actions, they would say, "it's closed because we say so. This is our territory." I wish more than anything that you could know everything that is behind this statement, every way in which it manifests itself, every way in which the world completely ignores what is happening here.

I wish I could trust that the media would tell you that a group of disabled palestinians (in wheelchairs and on crutches, many blind people, etc.) were shot at with tear gas by the army at a demonstration today in Bil'in before they got anywhere near their destination (which was on their land).

I can't even remember what is usual and not anymore. I am not surprised by things. I am only angry. And resentful. And even hateful sometimes. I don't know how to change this. I don't know how to get away. I don't think anyone should be able to get away, not when others can't. And yet how can I think clearly? Saturday was a wonderful demonstration in Marda, although even as I say that I  think about the hundred or so soldiers who lunged towards the crowd - but they only beat a couple people, only arrested a couple Israelis, and only temporarily. Only Sunday we tried to accompany farmers to their land and were shot at by a private security company that guards wall work. Monday we tried again to accompany farmers to their land, and this time were met by hundreds of soldiers who began firing tear gas before they could even tell who was there. 200 rounds of tear gas. Before they could even see us. It's better, of course, in the grand moral scheme of the world, that no distinction be made between Palestinian farmers and International peace workers. But it's scary. It's confusing. And of course, the result should be that we are all treated as human, not that we are all treated as expendable.

There's a newly involved Israeli who has come to a couple demos recently. The other day we were standing in Marda looking up to the top of the hill with the bulldozers, and she said, "this is just crazy. They're just taking someone else's land." As a taxi driver noted a few days ago, "if I don't like my neighbours and want to build a fence to separate us, I'd build it on my yard, not my neighbour's." Even more simply, after I explained to a new IWPS volunteer yesterday a few of the happenings of the past couple days, she said, "now that's not nice." And still, I can't even bring myself to think any of this. Because I am not surprised anymore. Only angry.

I was in west Jerusalem for about an hour today, walking down the street looking at the half-naked teenagers with their orange ribbons in solidarity with the settlers of gush katif, and I just thought, "you have no idea." If Palestinians could see this, I thought, I'm not sure they would be quite as patient as they are. Although they probably already know. They're probably already so used to this, more used to this than I am, that nothing fazes them at all. Some have a patience that I can't always quite fathom ("this too shall pass"), and others just use avoidance ("if I stay in my home and don't let my kids out then everything will be tolerable").

I am going to sleep in Marda now, going to be a presence in case the army returns.

I will send this only so you have a little bit of news from here. Realize not all the pain in the world is here. This is only my little corner. And I do only what I can. We all do. And it's never enough. Never ever enough.

Silwan, the arab east jerusalem that Israel is now destroying

Professor David Shulman
Taayush / Hacampus-lo-shotek*
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=4142
June 8, 2005


We are in the city of David, literally—the oldest part of Jerusalem, below the Temple Mount, not far from the Siloam Tunnel carved in the living rock, almost three millennia ago, by King Hezekiah. Today they call it Silwan: some 50,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites live here, nearly all with blue Jerusalem identity-cards. A few days ago the municipality stuck demolition notices on 88 houses in this neighborhood; some 1500 innocent people are about to lose everything. The ostensible rationale is the creation of an archaeological park in the heart of this Arab quarter. The truth, of course, is very different: this is the creation of another Jewish island in East Jerusalem, a new settlement carved by brute coercion on this densely inhabited slope. And it is only the beginning—once the wedge is inserted, they will widen it and connect it to other pockets of Jewish settlers to the north and south and east (Jabal Mukabber, for example, or the ugly monstrosity of Har Homa). The goal is to cut the organic, continuous links among existing Palestinian communities—to “Judaize” and strangle the eastern reaches of the city through settlement, land confiscation, the demolition of houses, state terror and massive military control.

You have to imagine what it feels like to wake up one morning in your own house, the house your grandfather built long before the state of Israel existed, and to find the official notice on the wall. Your home, where you have lived your life, is soon to be destroyed; you and your children will be refugees. It must seem unreal; a house is so stolid and enduring a presence, a thing of mortar and stone as well as intimate refuge. Now the intimacy has been violated; you are threatened, afraid, exposed. A long line of condemned homes stretches all the way up the hill, toward the wall of the old city. In the protest tent where we have come to plan the next moves, a large-scale aerial photograph is pinned to the wall, each of the 88 buildings circled and numbered. Abed points to number 9, his grandmother’s home: the man who built it, her grandfather, died 100 years ago, so the house goes back to the 19th century, Turkish times. Anywhere else it would be preserved as a historic monument, but in Israel-Palestine such considerations are irrelevant; Israel, or Sharon, wants this plot of land, like all the rest.

Can a house be executed as if it were a criminal? What tribunal has tried these homes and found them guilty? What would they have pleaded in their defense? Eloquent placards hang from the walls of the tent, in Arabic, Hebrew, and English: “Where will 1500 people go?” “We pay our taxes to the municipality and what we get is demolition orders.” “Why are they pushing us into the abyss?” “How can we educate for peace when they are destroying our homes?” “No to the confiscation of lands.” “We will not give in.” And, most poignantly and simply: “Please save me” and “Why me?”

I look around at the hills, heavy with the lovely stone buildings of Jerusalem. There isn’t much room; the houses climb vertically with hardly any space between. Children are running in the narrow street outside the tent. Men and women wander in and out, some peering curiously at the strange delegation of some dozens of Israelis who have come to see with their own eyes, to try to help. It is late afternoon, the sun still very hot. Some ten Palestinian women sit clustered on one side of the tent, many with covered heads and long dark dresses. There is a table at the back, spread with petitions and maps; Abed, Muhammad, and a few other men stand behind it, eager to tell us their story.

First Amiel introduces us: we are from Ta’ayush, committed to what the name means—Arab-Jewish coexistence. He explains how we work, cites some of our successes; we will gladly join the struggle here. A young woman, dressed in the modern mode, is the first to respond. She speaks a lucid, forceful Arabic; Khulud translates into Hebrew for the benefit of the guests. She welcomes us, but she is skeptical: What kind of ta’ayush is possible in the shadow of this injustice? What will these mothers tell their children who will see their homes destroyed by Israeli bulldozers? Do we expect them to grow up wanting peace? All that these families are asking is for fairness, a just peace; they want two states, living side by side, and an end to the eternal nightmare. Why should they be forbidden, as they are, to build on their own land? Why do the Jews come to rob them of lands and homes? Why do they forge documents of ownership, and how can the state stand behind the Ateret Cohanim—the most nefarious and unscrupulous of the settlers, who have already taken over buildings in Silwan? The people of the neighborhood pay their taxes, they belong to this city, yet the city gives them nothing, no services—and now comes to destroy them in their own homes. Very angry, articulate, she thanks us for coming to see.

It has not been easy, we learn later, for these women to agree to our visit. They want nothing to do with Israelis, not even with those who are prepared to stand with them against the government and the army. Somehow the men—all of them veterans of long years of imprisonment by the Israelis for mostly trivial offenses, such as throwing stones at the soldiers during the first Intifada, in the late 1980’s—persuaded them that we could be of use. Now it is the men’s turn to speak. First Muhammad, in a husky Arabic: Here, in al-Bustan, in Silwan, Palestinian houses are routinely destroyed. The city will never issue building permits to Arabs; families keep growing; eventually, in desperation, they build “illegally.” Then the city tears down the house and fines the owners, sometimes enormous sums. One house on this street has been demolished and rebuilt three times. They love their neighborhood: “People say that there is a jannah, a Garden of Eden, in Allah’s heaven, a place of water and green trees; but for us there is only one jannah, and that is Silwan.”

Abed chooses to speak in Hebrew, which he commands with consummate grace. He is a graduate of the finest language school in Israel—nine years in prison. He had plenty of time to polish his skills; he would read every word in the Hebrew papers, even the death notices, and he also acquired perfect English and passable French. There is spice in all his sentences. “We, in Silwan, have two mothers: the Palestinian Authority, which has turned its back on us, and our evil stepmother, the Jerusalem municipality, which is at war with us, a low-level war. They lie to us all the time; they claim we don’t live here, that we came here from Hebron; they say they have to thin out the urban core lest a Tsunami wreak havoc. Has there ever been a Tsunami in Jerusalem?” He says his heart is full of resentment against the Israeli left: there was never anything to hope for from the right, they are as they are, but why is the left—their true partner—so silent and complicit? They have stopped watching television, they never see the news, for the pain is too great. Yesterday the Minister of Tourism came to Silwan in his elegant Volvo, surrounded by soldiers with weapons drawn; he wanted to inspect some ruins. Abed came close enough to say to him: “Instead of visiting these ruins you should visit the ones that you are about to create out of our homes.” He speaks of despair; they have no recourse, catastrophe is upon them; they are not afraid, but they may reach the point of throwing themselves and their children under the bulldozers when they begin their attack.

As he speaks, I stare at the faces of the Palestinian women, many of them old. Mediterranean faces—we could be in a village in Greece or Morocco-- weather-worn, eroded by life; they seem to me bewildered, unable to contain the immensity of what has happened. It is as if they had wandered into a story that makes no sense, a story without end or exit, without hope. Watching them in their helplessness, I, too, cannot contain my grief and fury. I rage inwardly, bitter and anguished, wanting only the privilege of facing the bulldozers together with these families; no, also wanting them to know that I understand.

We consult among ourselves. On balance, there is a good chance we can save these houses—by creating public awareness in Israel, through the courts, by galvanizing an international response. We will bring the press, we will plan a joint workday with some hundreds of volunteers; together with the people of Silwan, we will clean and paint and adorn the condemned houses. We will join them in their march next week from this street to the municipality building downtown. If the police try to stop us with their usual methods, tear gas, clubs, arrests, so much the better—it will make the evening news. We have done it many times by now, we are weary from fighting this government house by house and street by street, but we will not give in. Perhaps this is a case we can win.

Chatting afterwards, Abed is amused to discover I teach at the University. He used to work there, caring for the lawns and gardens, until they discovered he had been in prison; they fired him immediately, and now he cannot even visit—he is not allowed to enter the campus. “Give the flowers my regards.” He describes being summoned recently to see Ophir, the Internal Security (mukhabbarat) operative in charge of Silwan. One day his cell-phone rang, and Ophir was on the other end; how did he get the number? But then Ophir claims to know everything that happens in the neighborhood. He warned Abed that he had his eye on him all day long, even knows when he sleeps with his wife. Still, Abed is clearly not cowed; there is a certain self-assurance, an insouciance; and he is eager to work with us.

Of the 1500 shortly to be dispossessed, a majority are children. Muhammad wants to have a day of the children; let them color and paint what they are feeling, let the television show their pictures to the world. Who would have the heart to hurt these children? He can’t believe the government intends to do it. He can’t accept the awful injustice, zulm, though he gives it its true name. He asks my name, I tell him: David, Da’ud. His face flowers into a vast, craggy smile: “Da’ud, King David, he was from here—he was a Silwani.” And for one brief moment the entire mad overlay of identities and claims, bulldozers, houses, Jews, Palestinians, their flags, their postage stamps, the guns, the wickedness of power, all of it falls away before this simple, undeniable fact: whoever he was, if he ever was, King David was a Silwani. Maybe that is all that matters. He would certainly be astounded, also horrified, to see what one party of his children was doing to another, in the name of the all-consuming absurdity of the nation state. This David was, they say, a poet. Muhammad, still smiling, watches me as I think this through. But there is more: Ayyub, the prophet Job, was also here; his well, Bir Ayyub, is just around the corner. So Job, he whose pain was beyond bearing, was also a Silwani. No wonder. It seems to fit the terrain, the grey dust, the dying summer sun, the dark tent, the wrinkled faces of the women. But Job was lucky, after a fashion. After enduring, after refraining from cursing an enigmatic God, he received a whole new set of children, herds of cattle, wealth; what is more, God was stirred to speak to him, not exactly to explain, but at least to recite the magnificent Chapter 38. (He too was once a poet). Today’s Silwanis face a different riddle, perhaps no less intractable, although their suffering has a cause and a rationale—that of deliberate, systemic, remorseless human malice, cruelty and greed. It doesn’t
come from any god, although the cry of the innocent is the same: “Why me?”

* Students and Faculty against the Occupation

Bush Administration Attacks on Amnesty International

By Stephen Zunes

In what appears to be a concerted effort to discredit independent human rights advocates, the Bush administration and its allies in the media have been engaging in a series of attacks against Amnesty International, the world’s largest human rights organization and winner of the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize.

Amnesty International has received support from literally millions of individuals around the world because of its steadfast defense of civil and political rights against repressive governments regardless of a given regime’s ideology, economic system, or strategic alliances. Avoiding politics, Amnesty provides regular reports of the human rights situation in every country in the world based upon certain objective criteria, and focuses its advocacy work on letter-writing campaigns to free individual prisoners. Such consistent and credible reporting and advocacy to advance the cause of human rights does not sit well with the U.S. government, however, long the world’s number one military and financial backer of autocratic regimes and whose armed forces in recent years have engaged in widespread torture, extrajudicial killings, and other violations of international humanitarian law.

Following publication of a report on May 26 criticizing the abuse of prisoners by the U.S. military in detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere, Vice President Dick Cheney blithely dismissed Amnesty International’s well-documented findings, saying “I frankly just don’t take them seriously.” White House spokesman Scott McClellan claimed that the detailed accounting of U.S. human rights violations was “ridiculous and unsupported by the facts,” while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that Amnesty’s report was “absurd.” President George W. Bush, in a press conference May 31, similarly referred to it as “an absurd report” and implied that the 44-year-old human rights organization was being used by terrorists and those “who hate America.”

Ironically, at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, top Bush administration officials were regularly citing Amnesty International’s human rights reports as evidence of the perfidy of Saddam Hussein’s regime. For example, in reference to the Iraqi government, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumseld asserted that “We know that it’s a repressive regime” as a result of reports by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations “about how the regime of Saddam Hussein treats his people.” Rumsfeld added that a “careful reading” of Amnesty International’s reports document “the viciousness of that regime.” It is one thing to criticize human rights abuses by foreign governments the Bush administration seeks to overthrow and it is quite another thing to criticize human rights abuses by the United States itself.

 Stephen Zunes, Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus, is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003).

ISRAELI INDUSTRIAL SPY RING USED COMPUTER VIRUSES

Police in Israel say they have uncovered a huge industrial spying ring which used computer viruses to probe the systems of many major companies.

At least 15 Israeli firms have been implicated in the espionage plot, with 18 people arrested in Israel and two more held by British police.

Among those under suspicion are major Israeli telecoms and media companies. Police say the companies used a "Trojan horse" computer virus written by an Israeli to hack into rivals' systems. Interpol and the authorities in Britain, Germany and the US are already involved in investigating the espionage, which Israeli police fear may involve major international companies.

Hi-tech rivalry

"This is one of the gravest scandals in... industrial and market espionage in Israel," special fraud investigator Supt Roni Hindi told Israeli media. Israel's investigation has been running since November, uncovering as it expanded an intricate web of alleged espionage among some of the nation's best-known companies.

The country's biggest telecoms company, Bezeq, initially came under suspicion as the parent company of two mobile phone operators accused of spying on a mutual rival. Bezeq now says the Trojan horse virus has been discovered on its own systems. Police now suspect that another mobile phone operator ordered the spying against Bezeq, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reports.

Two rival car import firms are suspected of spying on each other, as are two of Israel's major satellite and cable television companies. No charges have been brought so far and the companies at the centre of the police inquiry say they have done nothing wrong and are co-operating with the authorities. Police fear that as many as 60 Israeli and international companies could be involved or affected.

Trojan horse viruses work by installing themselves within a computer system and then allowing hackers to monitor, track or even control that system.

Police have arrested an Israeli man living in London, 41-year-old Michael Haefrati, on suspicion of writing the software and then selling it onto middle men acting for interested parties within the corporate sector. Company executives, private detectives, and former members of the Israeli state security services are among others already arrested. "Above all it's a story of company fat cats who left their morals in their limousine," said Sever Plotsker, a commentator in Israel's mass-market newspaper Yediot Ahronot.
BBC News Report May2005

Israeli Apartheid
Jamal Juma on the World Bank, international aid and the Bantustanisation of Palestine

As US President George W Bush had his first White House meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- a summit giving Bush a platform for his $200 million "aid" package -- as devastating new realities are being constructed in Palestine. The Apartheid Wall and accompanying infrastructure of Jewish-only bypass roads, military zones and settlements, are rapidly moving towards the permanent ghettoisation of the Palestinian people. Bush's "aid" package, however, neither stops these crimes nor helps Palestinians: most of it is destined for occupation projects such as new checkpoints. As part of global "aid" efforts outlined and coordinated by the World Bank, it supports not liberation but Bantustanisation of Palestine.

The Bank's latest publication -- Stagnation or Revival? -- leaves no doubt about these aims as it meticulously maps out a vision of economic development "for" Palestine that serves to provide long-term financial support of the Israeli Apartheid system. It begins by repeating the lie that Israeli "disengagement" will provide Palestinians with a "significant amount of land" and an ideal environment for development. In reality, Gaza will be totally imprisoned, surrounded by a second eight- metre high wall, with all borders, coastline and airspace controlled by Israel.

In the West Bank, just four tiny settlements are being disbanded. Simultaneously, 46 per cent of the West Bank is being annexed through the wall and Apartheid infrastructure to further expand colonies such as Maale Adumim and the Gush Etzion bloc. Against international law, the Bank sees the economic boundaries of "Palestine" as dictated by the Apartheid Wall and the "disengagement" plan, which translates into active engagement in the colonisation of the remaining lands of Palestine.

Despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling the wall illegal and instructing all nations "not to render any aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by it," the World Bank steps in with an economic formula to sustain and prop up this system of expropriation, dispossession and permanent occupation.

These plans can be broken down into two key areas: the exploitation of Palestinian labour and achieving total control over Palestinian movement.

Massive industrial zones are to be built on Palestinian land annexed by the wall, where ghettoised Palestinian labour will work in the dirtiest and most toxic industries. The so-called Tulkarm Peace Park, an archetype of this project, is to be built on farmland stolen from the village of Irtah; land that sustained 50 families for generations and formed an integral part of community and family life.

Moreover, the World Bank praises the wall for acting as a device by which to control Palestinians, using this as a motivation for Israel to maintain the current permit system so that cheap Palestinian labour can be herded over the Green Line to continue to undertake the most demeaning and worst paid jobs.

In fact, the most fundamental cog, if this high-tech system of Apartheid is to be sustainable, is the cementing of the checkpoint system as a permanent feature of Palestinian life, to facilitate freedom of movement for goods but not people. This will enable the transfer of Palestinians from their ghettos to work places. It will necessitate funding -- which the US has already promised -- for prison gates in the wall, to maintain the humiliating and degrading checkpoint system imposed on the Palestinian people.

Agriculture, traditionally the core sector of the economy, is barely mentioned in the report, presumably because the Bank realises that Palestinians will be left with no land to cultivate. The World Bank's vision of "co-existence" involves Palestinian natural water supplies, systematically stolen by the occupation (to the tune of 80 per cent of output every year), being bought back by Palestinians under occupation "at Israeli commercial rates".

That the World Bank's co-ordination with the occupation serves to the detriment of Palestinian liberation and international law requires little elaboration.

The World Bank and donor community, however, follow their own laws and logic: they seek to impose, on top of the occupation, neo-liberal economics for "free" markets owned by Israeli and foreign capital and the restriction of Palestinian people into disparate ghettos. The World Bank, alongside the US and significant portions of the international community, are using the Palestinian Authority (PA) as an institution through which these policies can be implemented and an "attractive environment for investors" created.

The PA will be given the role of prison guard, preventing the Palestinian people from defending their lands and rights. The responsibility of the authority towards the Palestinian people necessitates that it stands up against these projects -- not by "modifying" or "only partially backing" them, but by completely refusing and opposing them.

The industrial zones and Bantustans are not new ideas; they represent the same type of economic "development" pursued by racist South Africa. Like black South Africans, Palestinians will not tolerate economic models of subservience. Nor do they struggle for ways to make the wall and the occupation more bearable, but to break them down.

The partnership between Israel and the World Bank highlights the extent to which international support sustains the occupation. Without the $5 billion of annual US aid, the World Bank investment and the contributions of countless governments, corporations and organisations, the Zionist project is simply not sustainable.

Palestinians are not asking for the bogus aid which the USA imposes, but genuine political support by which the massive economic backing to Israel can be cut.

Individuals and civil society the world over have enormous leverage and responsibility to strengthen the movement to pressure and isolate Apartheid Israel, in support of the Palestinian struggle for justice and liberation.

* The writer is coordinator of the grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign -- www.stopthewall.org.