Intelligence agencies have been monitoring conversations between lawyers and their clients for past five years, government admits
The admission comes ahead of a legal challenge brought on behalf of two Libyans, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, over allegations that security services unlawfully intercepted their communications with lawyers. Photograph: PA & AFP
The regime under which UK intelligence agencies, including MI5 and MI6, have been monitoring conversations between lawyers and their clients for the past five years is unlawful, the British government has admitted.
The admission that the activities of the security services have failed to comply fully with human rights laws in a second major area – this time highly sensitive legally privileged communications – is a severe embarrassment for the government.
It follows hard on the heels of the British court ruling on 6 February declaring that the regime surrounding the sharing of mass personal intelligence data between America’s national security agency and Britain’s GCHQ was unlawful for seven years.
The admission that the regime surrounding state snooping on legally privileged communications has also failed to comply with the European convention on human rights comes in advance of a legal challenge, to be heard early next month, in which the security servicesare alleged to have unlawfully intercepted conversations between lawyers and their clients to provide the government with an advantage in court.
The case is due to be heard before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). It is being brought by lawyers on behalf of two Libyans, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, who, along with their families, were abducted in a joint MI6-CIA operation and sent back to Tripoli to be tortured by Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2004.
A government spokesman said: “The concession the government has made today relates to the agencies’ policies and procedures governing the handling of legally privileged communications and whether they are compatible with the European convention on human rights.
“In view of recent IPT judgments, we acknowledge that the policies adopted since [January] 2010 have not fully met the requirements of the ECHR, specifically article 8 (right to privacy). This includes a requirement that safeguards are made sufficiently public.
“It does not mean that there was any deliberate wrongdoing on their part of the security and intelligence agencies, which have always taken their obligations to protect legally privileged material extremely seriously. Nor does it mean that any of the agencies’ activities have prejudiced or in any way resulted in an abuse of process in any civil or criminal proceedings.”
He said that the intelligence agencies would now work with the interception of communications commissioner to ensure their policies satisfy all of the UK’s human rights obligations.
Cori Crider, a director at Reprieve and one of the Belhaj family’s lawyers said: “By allowing the intelligence agencies free reign to spy on communications between lawyers and their clients, the government has endangered the fundamental British right to a fair trial.
“Reprieve has been warning for months that the security services’ policies on lawyer-client snooping have been shot through with loopholes big enough to drive a bus through.
“For too long, the security services have been allowed to snoop on those bringing cases against them when they speak to their lawyers. In doing so, they have violated a right that is centuries old in British common law. Today they have finally admitted they have been acting unlawfully for years.
“Worryingly, it looks very much like they have collected the private lawyer-client communications of two victims of rendition and torture, and possibly misused them. While the government says there was no ‘deliberate’ collection of material, it’s abundantly clear that private material was collected and may well have been passed on to lawyers or ministers involved in the civil case brought by Abdel hakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar, who were ‘rendered’ to Libya in 2004 by British intelligence.
“Only time will tell how badly their case was tainted. But right now, the government needs urgently to investigate how things went wrong and come clean about what it is doing to repair the damage.”
Government sources, in line with all such cases, refuse to confirm or deny whether the two Libyans were the subject of an interception operation. They insist the concession does not concern the allegation that actual interception took place and say it will be for the investigatory powers tribunal hearing to determine the issue.
An updated draft interception code of practicespelling out the the rules for the first time was quietly published at the same time as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruling against GCHQ earlier this month in the case brought by Privacy International and Liberty.
The government spokesman said the draft code set out enhanced safeguards and provided more detail than previously on the protections that had to be applied in the security agencies handling of legally privileged communications.
The draft code makes clear that warrants for snooping on legally privileged conversations, emails and other communications between suspects and their lawyers can be granted if there are exceptional and compelling circumstances. They have to however ensure that they are not available to lawyers or policy officials who are conducting legal cases against those suspects.
To demonstrate that its policies satisfy legal safeguards, MI6 were required in advance of Wednesday’s concession to disclose internal guidance on how intelligence staff should deal with material protected by legal professional privilege.
The MI6 papers noted: “Undertaking interception in such circumstances would be extremely rare and would require strong justification and robust safeguards. It is essential that such intercepted material is not acquired or used for the purpose of conferring an unfair or improper advantage on SIS or HMG [Her Majesty’s government] in any such litigation, legal proceedings or criminal investigation.”
The internal documents also refer to a visit by the interception commissioner, Sir Anthony May, last summer to examine interception warrants, where it was discovered that regulations were not being observed. “In relation to one of the warrants,” the document explained, “the commissioner identified a number of concerns with regard to the handling of [legal professional privilege] material”.
Amnesty UK’s legal programme director, Rachel Logan, said: “We are talking about nothing less than the violation of a fundamental principle of the rule of law – that communications between a lawyer and their client must be confidential.
“The government has been caught red-handed. The security agencies have been illegally intercepting privileged material and are continuing to do so – this could mean they’ve been spying on the very people challenging them in court.
“This is the second time in as many weeks that government spies have been rumbled breaking the law.”
Like many children, 13-year-old Mohammed Tuaiman suffered from nightmares. In his dreams, he would see flying “death machines” that turned family and friends into burning charcoal. No one could stop them, and they struck any place, at any time.
Unlike most children, Mohammed’s nightmares killed him.
Three weeks ago, a CIA drone operating over Yemen fired a missile at a car carrying the teenager, and two others. They were all incinerated. Nor was Mohammed the first in his family to be targeted: drones had already killed his father and brother.
Since president Barack Obama took office in 2009, the US has killed at least 2,464 people through drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones. The figure is courtesy of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which says that at least 314 of the dead, one in seven, were civilians.
Recall that for Obama, as The New York Times reported in May 2012, “all military-age males in a strike zone” are counted “as combatants” – unless “there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent”.
It sounds like the stuff of nightmares.
The week after Mohammed’s death, on February 5, Mr Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast, and discussed the violence of ISIL.
“Lest we get on our high horses”, said the commander-in-chief, “remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
These comments prompted a (brief) media storm, with Mr Obama accused of insulting Christians, pandering to the terrorist enemy, or just bad history.
In fact, the president was simply repeating a point often made by liberals since September 11, namely, that all religions have blots on their copy book through the deeds of their followers.
One of the consequences, however, of this invocation of the Crusades – unintended, and all the more significant for it – is to seal away the West’s “sins”, particularly vis-à-vis its relationship to the Middle East, in events that took place a thousand years ago.
The Crusades were, in one sense, a demonstration of raw military power, and a collective trauma for the peoples of the regions they marched through and invaded.
In the siege of Jerusalem in 1099, a witness described how the Europeans ordered “all the Saracen dead to be cast outside because of the great stench, since the whole city was filled with their corpses”.
He added: “No one ever saw or heard of such slaughter of pagan people, for funeral pyres were formed from them like pyramids.”
Or take the Third Crusade, when, on August 20, 1191, England’s King Richard I oversaw the beheading of 3,000 Muslim prisoners at Acre in full view of Saladin’s army.
Just “ancient history”? In 1920, when the French had besieged and captured Damascus, their commander Henri Gourard reportedly went to the grave of Saladin, kicked it, and uttered: “Awake Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent.”
But the US president need not cite the Crusades or even the colonial rule of the early 20th century: more relevant reference points would be Bagram and Fallujah.
Bagram base in Afghanistan is where US soldiers tortured prisoners to death – like 22-year-old taxi driver and farmer Dilawar. Before he was killed in custody, Dilawar was beaten by soldiers just to make him scream “Allah!”
Five months after September 11, The Guardian reported that US missiles had killed anywhere between 1,300 and 8,000 in Afghanistan. Months later, the paper suggested that “as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the US intervention”.
When it was Iraq’s turn, the people of Fallujah discovered that US forces gave them funerals, not democracy. On April 28, 2003, US soldiers massacred civilian protesters, shooting to death 17 during a demonstration.
When that city revolted against the occupation, the residents paid a price. As Marines tried to quell resistance in the city, wrote The New York Times on April 14, 2004, they had “orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not”.Months later, as the Marines launched their November assault on the city, CNN reported that “the sky…seems to explode”.
In their bombardment and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US and UK armed forces rained fiery death down on men, women and children. Prisoners were tortured and sexually abused. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. No one was held to account.
It is one thing to apologise for the brutality of western Crusaders a thousand years ago. It is quite another to look at the corpses of the victims of the imperialist present, or hear the screams of the bereaved.
In his excellent book The Muslims Are Coming, Arun Kundnani analysed the “politics of anti-extremism”, and describes the two approaches developed by policymakers and analysts during the “war on terror”.
The first approach, which he refers to as “culturalism”, emphasises “what adherents regard as inherent features of Islamic culture”. The second approach, “reformism”, is when “extremism is viewed as a perversion of Islam’s message”, rather than “a clash of civilisations between the West’s modern values and Islam’s fanaticism”.
Thus the American Right was angry with Mr Obama, because for them, it is about religion – or specifically, Islam. Liberals, meanwhile, want to locate the problem in terms of culture.
Both want to avoid a discussion about imperialism, massacres, coups, brutalities, disappearances, dictatorships – in other words, politics.
As Kundnani writes: when “the concept of ideology” is made central, whether understood as “Islam itself or as Islamist extremism”, then “the role of western states in co-producing the terror war is obscured”.
The problem with Mr Obama’s comments on the Crusades was not, as hysterical conservatives claimed, that he was making offensive and inaccurate analogies with ISIL; rather, that in the comfort of condemning the past, he could mask the violence of his own government in the present.
The echoes of collective trauma remain for a long time, and especially when new wounds are still being inflicted. Think it is farfetched that Muslims would still care about a 1,000-year-old European invasion? Then try asking them about Guantanamo and Camp Bucca instead.
Ben White is a journalist and author of Israeli Apartheid
DB – “As soon as the Palestinian Authority national unity government was announced in April, Israel set its sights on destroying it. It did so by first pressing for the government’s isolation and, when that failed, it used the deaths of three Israelis (kidnapped in an area of the West Bank that is entirely under Israel’s control) to demonize Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Within 18 days of the Israelis going missing, Israel arrested hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank including 11 Parliamentarians and 59 former prisoners who were released in a prisoner exchange three years ago. These people were arrested without any proof that these individuals were in any way involved in the deaths of the three Israelis. In addition, Israel killed 10 Palestinians, including three children in the West Bank and demolished three houses. Israel launched air raids on the Gaza Strip, as documented by the UN, killing two, including a 10-year-old child. This happened before a single Hamas rocket was fired from Gaza. When Israel failed to break up the unity government diplomatically, it turned to a brutal military attack. What is clear is that the status quo is not the answer. Returning to the 2012 ceasefire will not work as it was easily abused by Israel.”
GB – “Israel instrumentalized the tragic deaths of three Israeli youths, abducted and killed on June 12, to attack Hamas in the West Bank and disrupt Palestinian national reconciliation – a goal it had failed to achieve diplomatically. Israel arrested more than 400, searched 2,200 homes and other sites, and killed at least nine Palestinians in the process. We now know that Israel concealed evidence the youths were killed virtually immediately after abduction, and incited Israeli public opinion to a frenzy, directly leading to the brutal immolation of Muhammad Abu Khdeir. These cynical acts led to the escalation of violence along the Gaza border.”
NH – “Israel used the June 12 kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenage settlers to launch a brutal Israeli crackdown on the West Bank and East Jerusalem that human rights organizations have condemned as collective punishment. Israel particularly targeted Hamas members despite the lack of evidence and the organization’s denial of responsibility. The real target was the national unity agreement achieved by Hamas.
“The truth is, though, that this all-out Israeli assault on Gaza would have happened sooner or later. Israelis call their approach to Gaza “mowing the grass”. That is, they must attack and weaken Hamas every two or three years, even though Hamas has proven willing and able to respect a ceasefire, including by reining in other factions. This is one of the ways Israel “manages” its occupation and colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and its occupation and siege of Gaza.”
Q – Is Israel acting in self-defense?
DB – “No. Israel cannot claim self-defense owing to the fact that it initiated the assault on the Gaza Strip and continues to maintain a brutal military occupation over the Gaza Strip (and the West Bank). Rather, Israel has an obligation under international law to protect Palestinians living under its military rule.”
GB – “Self-defense may not be claimed by a state that initiates violence, as Israel did in its violent assault on Hamas in the West Bank.”
NH – “No. A member state of the United Nations that has signed international conventions pledging to respect the laws of war has no right to indiscriminately attack civilians and civilian infrastructure. The very high number of Palestinian civilian casualties – men, women, children – give the lie to Israel’s claims to self-defense, as does Hamas’ proven willingness to uphold a ceasefire.
“Moreover, Israel cannot claim self-defense against a people whose land it has been militarily occupying and colonizing for decades, part of whose population it has placed under siege. Only a ceasefire can protect Palestinians and Israelis alike, and only an end to the occupation and siege can pave the way to a permanent peace.
“Hamas should also refrain from targeting civilian infrastructure but it is not a UN-member state and has not signed conventions binding it to uphold international law.”
Q – Is Israel attacking “Hamas targets”?
DB – “No. Israel appears to be attacking civilian homes and civilian infrastructure. To date, according to UN estimates, 80 percent of those killed are civilians, including over 150 children. Israel has bombed hospitals, schools and mosques – all illegitimate targets under international law. More than 2,000 homes and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed by Israel’s attacks. This is inconsistent with international law. Civilian structures, such as homes, are only lawful targets when they are being used for military purposes. The Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Convention on the Law of War provides that, ‘in case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.’ While Israel has argued that Palestinian homes are command centers, Human Rights Watch has dismissed those claims.
“Attacks that do not discriminate between civilians and combatants are illegal. Using Israel’s logic, this also means that any home of any past or present Israeli soldier or police officer is a legitimate target or any civilian area where military is present (such as the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv). Clearly, this is not acceptable.
“This is not a video game in which the Israeli army is allowed to hunt down anyone associated with Hamas, irrespective of whether they are a combatant and without regard for civilian infrastructure.”
GB – “Israel appears to be categorizing any upper-level Hamas member as a ‘combatant,’ regardless of function. For example, it deliberately targeted Gaza police chief Taysir al-Batsh, injuring him and killing 18 members of his family, while he visited his cousin’s home. Police are civilians in international law, and this, on the face of it, appears to have been a clear war crime. So, likely, are the many other attacks that have been launched against private homes, although definitive conclusions must be left to further investigation. Israel has also attacked hospitals, water treatment facilities and sewer lines, and other civilian infrastructure that has nothing to do with Hamas. In fact, despite Israel’s claims to respect the international legal requirement of distinction between military targets and civilians, its actions speak of a policy to deliberately kill civilians as a means of weakening Hamas politically.”
NH – “No. The figures of civilian dead and injured undermine this claim. Compare the 433 Palestinian civilians killed by July 22 according to UN figures, out of an overall total of over 640 Palestinians killed, to two Israeli civilians killed.”
Q – Why has Hamas declined to accept a ceasefire?
DB – “Hamas and other factions were not consulted on the ceasefire proposal; Egypt was. Egypt does not represent or speak on behalf of Palestine or Palestinians; only Palestinians do. It is silly to think that any progress can be made without a major party to the agreement present at the table. Moreover, Israel has currently rejected a humanitarian cease-fire to allow much-needed supplies into the Gaza Strip and to allow Palestinians to bury their dead.”
GB – “Hamas declined to accept a ceasefire offer about which it had not been consulted and which failed to meet basic requirements of fairness. Within 24 hours, however, Hamas and other Palestinian groups offered Israel a ten-year truce that would have ended Israel’s siege against the Gaza Strip, thus guaranteeing long-term stability in the region. Israel had not responded to that offer, but appears to prefer to periodically ‘mow the lawn.’”
NH – “Hamas is willing to accept a ceasefire, but one that would be respected by Israel and that would lift the siege on Gaza. The Palestinians in Gaza, the vast majority of whom are civilians, as well as the members of Hamas or other factions, have since 2007 faced the choice between a slow death or a quick one. Either they die through ill health and disease due to lack of potable water, poor nutrition, and lack of medical care as a result of the draconian siege imposed by Israel on Gaza that has also been upheld by Egypt. Or they die quickly when Israel decides to ‘mow the lawn.’
“Until the border crossings are open for the movement of people and goods, the Gaza Palestinians will be forced to live without the most basic rights.”
Q – Does Hamas use Palestinians as human shields?
DB – “The Gaza Strip is an area that is 26 miles (40 km) long and seven miles (12 km) wide at its widest point. With nearly 1.8 million Palestinians, the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Moreover, prior to this attack, 35 percent of the Gaza Strip was off limits – by threat of death – to Palestinians with Israel maintaining a ‘no-go’ zone in these areas. That said, while Hamas fights from within this small area, it does not use Palestinian civilians as cover. To date, international investigations have concluded that there is no evidence to substantiate these long-made Israeli claims and yet the claims continue to be accepted by many, unchallenged. Ironically, the converse has been well-established: Israel has used Palestinian civilians as human shields when carrying out its military operations.”
GB – “Hamas fights from within inhabited areas, as it must in the densely populated Gaza Strip. But few allegations that Hamas deliberately endangers civilians in order to escape attack have ever been substantiated. The claim seems designed to ‘blame the victim.’ Certainly, Palestinians themselves are perfectly clear that it is Israel that is spilling Palestinian blood.”
NH – “Israel has declared 44% of the Gaza Strip – an area less than half the size of New York City – a military “buffer zone.” Who is using whom as a human shield?”
Q – Does the Israel military take all possible precautions to prevent civilian casualties?
DB – “No. The ‘knock on the roof’ procedure – dropping a missile on a house in advance of its bombing – has resulted in deaths. According to Philip Luther of Amnesty International, ‘There is no way that firing a missile at a civilian home can constitute an effective “warning.” Amnesty International has documented cases of civilians killed or injured by such missiles in previous Israeli military operations on the Gaza Strip,’ he said.
“In addition, while Israel claims that it distributes leaflets, these leaflets do not tell people where they are to go to be safe. As noted by Israeli human rights organizations, ‘Dispersal of leaflets does not grant the military permission to consider the area as if it were so-called “sterile,” assume that no civilians were left in the area and then proceed to attack civilian sites. The military must not assume that all residents have indeed left their homes.’
“Moreover, Israel claims that the Iron Dome defense system has been effective at preventing Israeli civilian deaths. Given this claim and given that the number of Israeli civilian casualties is 2 (as compared to 650 Palestinian deaths), it is clear that there are alternative means to address any rockets launched toward Israel without harming civilians in the process.”
GB – “Of course not, as several responses above indicate. Warnings to civilians to leave areas when they have no effective refuge are meaningless, and a number of Palestinians, including three boys of the Shuhaibar family, have been killed by Israel’s practice of ‘knocking on the roof’ – that is, firing what is supposed to be a warning missile before heavier ordnance is used.”
NH – “Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth. It is impossible to hit it from air, land, and sea without killing hundreds of civilians. The only way to prevent the killing and injuring of Gaza civilians is a ceasefire – and Hamas has honored past ceasefires. And the only way to achieve peace is through an agreement that ends Israel’s occupation and colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the siege of Gaza and respects other Palestinian rights long denied.”
Israel’s defence minister has confirmed that military plans to ‘uproot Hamas’ are about dominating Gaza’s gas reserves.
Yesterday, Israeli defence minister and former Israeli Defence Force (IDF) chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon announced that Operation Protective Edge marks the beginning of a protracted assault on Hamas. The operation “won’t end in just a few days,” he said, adding that “we are preparing to expand the operation by all means standing at our disposal so as to continue striking Hamas.”
A Palestinian boy plays in the rubble of a house destroyed in an Israeli air strike on Beit Hanoun, Gaza. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP
This morning, he said:
“We continue with strikes that draw a very heavy price from Hamas. We are destroying weapons, terror infrastructures, command and control systems, Hamas institutions, regime buildings, the houses of terrorists, and killing terrorists of various ranks of command… The campaign against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organization will pay will be very heavy.”
But in 2007, a year before Operation Cast Lead, Ya’alon’s concernsfocused on the 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas discovered in 2000 off the Gaza coast, valued at $4 billion. Ya’alon dismissed the notion that “Gaza gas can be a key driver of an economically more viable Palestinian state” as “misguided.” The problem, he said, is that:
“Proceeds of a Palestinian gas sale to Israel would likely not trickle down to help an impoverished Palestinian public. Rather, based on Israel’s past experience, the proceeds will likely serve to fund further terror attacks against Israel…
A gas transaction with the Palestinian Authority [PA] will, by definition, involve Hamas. Hamas will either benefit from the royalties or it will sabotage the project and launch attacks against Fatah, the gas installations, Israel – or all three… It is clear that without an overall military operation to uproot Hamas control of Gaza, no drilling work can take place without the consent of the radical Islamic movement.”
Since the discovery of oil and gas in the Occupied Territories, resource competition has increasingly been at the heart of the conflict, motivated largely by Israel’s increasing domestic energy woes.
Mark Turner, founder of the Research Journalism Initiative, reported that the siege of Gaza and ensuing military pressure was designed to “eliminate” Hamas as “a viable political entity in Gaza” to generate a “political climate” conducive to a gas deal. This involved rehabilitating the defeated Fatah as the dominant political player in the West Bank, and “leveraging political tensions between the two parties, arming forces loyal to Abbas and the selective resumption of financial aid.”
Ya’alon’s comments in 2007 illustrate that the Israeli cabinet is not just concerned about Hamas – but concerned that if Palestinians develop their own gas resources, the resulting economic transformation could in turn fundamentally increase Palestinian clout.
Meanwhile, Israel has made successive major discoveries in recent years – such as the Leviathan field estimated to hold 18 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – which could transform the country from energy importer into aspiring energy exporter with ambitions to supply Europe, Jordan and Egypt. A potential obstacle is that much of the 122 trillion cubic feet of gas and 1.6 billion barrels of oil in the Levant Basin Province lies in territorial waters where borders are hotly disputed between Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Cyprus.
Amidst this regional jockeying for gas, though, Israel faces its own little-understood energy challenges. It could, for instance, take until 2020 for much of these domestic resources to be properly mobilised.
But this is the tip of the iceberg. A 2012 letter by two Israeli government chief scientists – which the Israeli government chose not to disclose – warned the government that Israel still had insufficient gas resources to sustain exports despite all the stupendous discoveries. The letter, according to Ha’aretz, stated that Israel’s domestic resources were 50% less than needed to support meaningful exports, and could be depleted in decades:
“We believe Israel should increase its [domestic] use of natural gas by 2020 and should not export gas. The Natural Gas Authority’s estimates are lacking. There’s a gap of 100 to 150 billion cubic meters between the demand projections that were presented to the committee and the most recent projections. The gas reserves are likely to last even less than 40 years!”
As Dr Gary Luft – an advisor to the US Energy Security Council – wrote in the Journal of Energy Security, “with the depletion of Israel’s domestic gas supplies accelerating, and without an imminent rise in Egyptian gas imports, Israel could face a power crisis in the next few years… If Israel is to continue to pursue its natural gas plans it must diversify its supply sources.”
Israel’s new domestic discoveries do not, as yet, offer an immediate solution as electricity prices reach record levels, heightening the imperative to diversify supply. This appears to be behind Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announcement in February 2011 that it was now time to seal the Gaza gas deal. But even after a new round of negotiations was kick-started between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and Israel in September 2012, Hamas was excluded from these talks, and thus rejected the legitimacy of any deal.
Earlier this year, Hamas condemned a PA deal to purchase $1.2 billion worth of gas from Israel Leviathan field over a 20 year period once the field starts producing. Simultaneously, the PA has held several meetings with the British Gas Group to develop the Gaza gas field, albeit with a view to exclude Hamas – and thus Gazans – from access to the proceeds. That plan had been the brainchild of Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair.
But the PA was also courting Russia’s Gazprom to develop the Gaza marine gas field, and talks have been going on between Russia, Israel and Cyprus, though so far it is unclear what the outcome of these have been. Also missing was any clarification on how the PA would exert control over Gaza, which is governed by Hamas.
According to Anais Antreasyan in the University of California’s Journal of Palestine Studies, the most respected English language journal devoted to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel’s stranglehold over Gaza has been designed to make “Palestinian access to the Marine-1 and Marine-2 gas wells impossible.” Israel’s long-term goal “besides preventing the Palestinians from exploiting their own resources, is to integrate the gas fields off Gaza into the adjacent Israeli offshore installations.” This is part of a wider strategy of:
“…. separating the Palestinians from their land and natural resources in order to exploit them, and, as a consequence, blocking Palestinian economic development. Despite all formal agreements to the contrary, Israel continues to manage all the natural resources nominally under the jurisdiction of the PA, from land and water to maritime and hydrocarbon resources.”
For the Israeli government, Hamas continues to be the main obstacle to the finalisation of the gas deal. In the incumbent defence minister’swords: “Israel’s experience during the Oslo years indicates Palestinian gas profits would likely end up funding terrorism against Israel. The threat is not limited to Hamas… It is impossible to prevent at least some of the gas proceeds from reaching Palestinian terror groups.”
The only option, therefore, is yet another “military operation to uproot Hamas.”
In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, the Jerusalem-based Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (Pcati) found that the IDF had adopted a more aggressive combat doctrine based on two principles – “zero casualties” for IDF soldiers at the cost of deploying increasingly indiscriminate firepower in densely populated areas, and the “dahiya doctrine” promoting targeting of civilian infrastructure to create widespread suffering amongst the population with a view to foment opposition to Israel’s opponents.
This was confirmed in practice by the UN fact-finding mission in Gaza which concluded that the IDF had pursued a “deliberate policy of disproportionate force,” aimed at the “supporting infrastructure” of the enemy – “this appears to have meant the civilian population,” said the UN report.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is clearly not all about resources. But in an age of expensive energy, competition to dominate regional fossil fuels are increasingly influencing the critical decisions that can inflame war.
Channel 4 FactCheck goes behind the spin to dig out the truth and separate political fact from fiction.
The claim
“We have British citizens going over to fight in the Israeli army. Yesterday we know they are taking part in the collective punishment of a civilian population. That’s a crime.” Farooq Siddiqui, 3 July 2014
An ex-adviser to the government on tackling extremism in Britain’s Muslim communities raised an interesting point on Channel 4 News in relation to Brits who fight in conflicts abroad.
Farooq Siddiqui, formerly of the Prevent programme, is calling for the UK to stop criminalising young Muslims who travel to Syria to fight against Bashar al-Assad.
Security service estimates suggest around 500 Britons have travelled to Syria to take part in the civil war.
Mr Siddiqui asked why the government has threatened to arrest British Muslims who return from Syria while it allows young people to fight for Israel and other countries with impunity.
“If we’re talking about stopping people, Muslims, stopping them from going over to other countries and fighting, why are we not doing that as a blanket for stopping anyone that goes over abroad to fight in other countries?”
Is Mr Siddiqui right to say that young Brits are fighting for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while the Israelis are engaged in controversial strikes against Palestinian targets following the murder of three Jewish teenagers?
The analysis
Most Israeli citizens are obliged to do national service of up to two-and-a-half years in the country’s military, and so a significant number of British-born Israelis or immigrants with dual nationality will inevitably join Israel’s armed forces for a spell.
But you don’t have to be a citizen of the Jewish state to fight for the IDF.
The Israeli military runs a programme called “mahal” which allows non-Israeli nationals of Jewish descent to join the ranks of the armed forces for an 18-month tour of duty.
According to the rules, British men under 24 or women under 21 who have one parent or grandparent who is or was Jewish are eligible.
That’s Jewish (you need to prove it by getting a rabbi to sign a confirmation) not Israeli.
Overseas recruits get the same pay and conditions as Israelis and “serve always shoulder to shoulder with regular Israeli soldiers”.
The numbers of volunteers from the UK are small but significant: the IDF told Channel 4 News there are “around one hundred Brits currently serving” in its ranks.
There is a even a support group for British parents of IDF soldiers called Mahal Mums.
We’re not aware of anyone questioning the legality of this arrangement.
Unlike some other countries, Britain does not have an effective law prohibiting its citizens from fighting for foreign armies.
There is an obscure piece of legislation still on the statute books – the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 – which ostensibly makes it illegal for British citizens to join the armed forces of a country fighting a state at peace with Britain.
But this proved to be embarrassingly ineffective when prosecutors attempted to stop British volunteers from fighting in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
The lack of any practical ban on foreign enlistment leads to the slightly odd situation where a teenager can travel to Syria to fight for the brutal Assad regime with impunity, but if he sides with enemies of the regime he could face prosecution as a terrorist back in Britain.
This is because of the broad scope of anti-terror legislation. In the Queen’s Speech last month, the government set out new laws which mean Brits who travel overseas to train for acts of terrorism against any government will be prosecuted as if their actions had taken place in the UK.
In May Mashudur Choudhury, 31, from Portsmouth, became the first Briton to be convicted of engaging in conduct in preparation for terrorist acts after attending a training camp in Syria.
Choudhury wasn’t threatening the UK, he was training to fight Assad – who David Cameron also wanted to target with military action before losing a Commons vote last year.
But a supreme court judgement from last year ruled that the legal definition of terrorism can include “any or all military attacks by a non-state armed group against any or all state or inter-governmental organisation armed forces in the context of a non-international armed conflict”.
So if someone fights in a civil a war against a regime the British government hates – even if they fight for a moderate faction not banned as a terror organisation – they can still be prosecuted as a terrorist.
War crimes?
Mr Siddiqui is not the only person to have accused Israel of war crimes over its recent actions in the West Bank and Gaza in the wake of the killings of three Israeli teens.
Amnesty International has echoed his use of the words “collective punishment”, saying: “Justice will not be served by Israel seeking revenge by imposing collective punishment, or committing other violations of Palestinians’ rights.”
Collective punishment against a civilian population is banned under the fourth Geneva Convention.
But in the absence of any legal case brought against the IDF, the suggestion that Israeli air strikes, arrests, shootings and demolition of buildings constitute “collective punishment” of the Palestinians remains an unproven allegation.
How likely is it that Britons have been directly involved in clashes with Palestinians in recent days? Not surprisingly, we don’t have information on the movements of individual IDF soldiers.
But there is no reason why they would not be involved. The rules of mahal state that overseas recruits are liable to be picked for the same frontline combat units as Israeli conscripts, including infantry, tanks and special forces.
The verdict
It was news to FactCheck, but there are around 100 British nationals serving with the IDF as we speak, apparently with no legal difficulties.
But a Brit who trains or fights with any anti-Assad rebel group runs the risk of being jailed as a terrorist.
If we are worried about young British Muslims heading off to the Middle East to receive military training, should we be equally worried about Jews?
That depends on whether Mr Siddiqui is justified in comparing the experience of serving in a professional army overseas to fighting alongside Islamist militant groups in Syria. Of course this is a politically-charged and highly debatable point.
He insisted in the interview: “It is a fighting force, whether you want to say it’s disciplined or it’s a militia. The effect on the individual, the effect on the combatant is still the same.”
When, in response to the threat of potential Palestinian reconciliation and unity, the Israeli government suspended “negotiations” with the Palestine Liberation Organization on April 24 (five days before they were due to terminate in any event), Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement asserting: “Instead of choosing peace, Abu Mazen formed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel.”
In a series of related media appearances, Netanyahu hammered repeatedly on the “destruction of Israel” theme as a way of blaming Palestine for the predictable failure of the latest round of the seemingly perpetual “peace process.”
The extreme subjectivity of the epithet “terrorist” has been highlighted by two recent absurdities—the Egyptian military regime’s labeling of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has won all Egyptian elections since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, as a “terrorist” organization, and the labeling by the de facto Ukrainian authorities, who came to power through illegally occupying government buildings in Kiev, of those opposing them by illegally occupying government buildings in eastern Ukraine as “terrorists.” In both cases, those who have overthrown democratically elected governments are labeling those who object to their coups as “terrorists.”
It is increasingly understood that the word “terrorist,” which has no agreed definition, is so subjective as to be devoid of any inherent meaning, and that it is commonly abused by governments and others who apply it to whomever or whatever they hate in the hope of demonizing their adversaries, thereby discouraging and avoiding rational thought and discussion and, frequently, excusing their own illegal and immoral behavior.
Netanyahu’s assertion that Hamas “calls for the destruction of Israel” requires rational analysis as well.
He is not the only guilty party in this regard. The mainstream media in the West habitually attaches the phrase “pledged to the destruction of Israel” to each first mention of Hamas, almost as though it were part of Hamas’ name.
In the real world, what does the “destruction of Israel” actually mean? The land? The people? The ethno-religious-supremacist regime?
There can be no doubt that virtually all Palestinians—and probably still a significant number of Native Americans—wish that foreign colonists had never arrived in their homelands to ethnically cleanse them and take away their land, and that some may even lie awake at night dreaming that they might, somehow, be able to turn back the clock or reverse history.
“Destruction” sounds much less reasonable and desirable than “democracy.”
However, in the real world, Hamas is not remotely close to being in a position to cause Israel’s territory to sink beneath the Mediterranean, or to wipe out its population, or even to compel the Israeli regime to transform itself into a fully democratic state pledged to equal rights and dignity for all who live there. It is presumably the latter threat—the dreaded “bi-national state”—that Netanyahu has in mind when he speaks of the “destruction of Israel.”
For propaganda purposes, “destruction” sounds much less reasonable and desirable than “democracy,” even when one is speaking about the same thing.
In the real world, Hamas has long made clear, notwithstanding its view that continuing negotiations within the framework of the American-monopolized “peace process” is pointless and a waste of time, that it does not object to the PLO’s trying to reach a two-state agreement with Israel; provided only that, to be accepted and respected by Hamas, any agreement reached would need to be submitted to and approved by the Palestinian people in a referendum.
In the real world, the Hamas vision (like the Fatah vision) of peaceful coexistence in Israel/Palestine is much closer to the “international consensus” on what a permanent peace should look like, as well as to international law and relevant U.N. resolutions, than the Israeli vision—to the extent that one can even discern the Israeli vision, since no Israeli government has ever seen fit to publicly reveal what its vision—if any exists beyond beyond maintaining and managing the status quo indefinitely—actually looks like.
As the Fatah and Hamas visions have converged in recent years, the principal divergence has become Hamas’ insistence (entirely consistent with international law and relevant U.N. resolutions) that Israel must withdraw from the entire territory of the State of Palestine, which is defined in the U.N. General Assembly resolution of Nov. 29, 2012, recognizing Palestine’s state status as “the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967” (including, significantly, the definite article “the” missing from “withdraw from territories” in the arguably ambiguous U.N. Security Council Resolution 242), in contrast to Fatah’s more flexible willingness to consider agreed land swaps equal in size and value.
An Establishment Party
After winning the last Palestinian elections and after seven years of responsibility for governing Gaza under exceptionally difficult circumstances, Hamas has become a relatively “moderate” establishment party, struggling to rein in more radical groups and prevent them from firing artisanal rockets into southern Israel, a counterproductive symbolic gesture which Israeli governments publicly condemn but secretly welcome (and often seek to incite in response to their own more lethal violence) as evidence of Palestinian belligerence justifying their own intransigence.
Netanyahu’s “destruction of Israel” mantra should not be taken seriously, either by Western governments or by any thinking person. It is long overdue for the Western mainstream media to cease recycling mindless—and genuinely destructive—propaganda and to adapt their reporting to reality, and it is long overdue for Western governments to cease demonizing Hamas as an excuse for doing nothing constructive to end a brutal occupation which has now endured for almost 47 years. ❑
John V. Whitbeck is an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel.
The author found some difficulties in finding a proper title for this post, which is based on a TV interview with the founder of Jihadist movement in Egypt and a former top Al-Qaeda commander. Each line of the interview is a title by itself, each piece of information is more than enough to put tens of western officials and their regional stooges behind bars for long times, those who are acting as the Humanitarian Bastards crying for the suffering of the innocent they only inflicted their suffering.
Finally, I decided to post the text of the interview as it is without my usual adding in noting how the western citizens are played by their governments, so I’ll leave you with the interview conducted by pan Arab Al-Maydeen TV with Sheikh Nabeel Naiem, who was introduced by the TV presenter as: ‘the former founder of Jihad Organization & expert in Islamist groups’, enjoy:
The interview text:
– With us here in the studio Sheikh Nabeel Naim former founder of Jihad Organization & expert in Islamist groups, welcome..
Noting that you were in Afghanistan with Osama Bin Laden & Dr. Ayman Zawahri, in accommodation and also in prison with Dr. Ayman Zawahri, can we say now you retired from Al-Qaeda?
Nabeel Naiem: Not really, they are the ones who deviated, we went there to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and there was almost a unanimous agreement among Islamic clerics that time on that (Jihad against Soviets), and after that they deviated and turned their activities against Islamic and Arabic countries, and they committed the prohibited which is killing Muslims, and at the same time after the death of Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda turned into a mercenary (group)..
– You are one of the founders of Jihad in Egypt, and you were at the beginning times of Al-Qaeda so to speak, can a member of that rank distance himself from Al-Qaeda, leave the organization? Will the organization leave him? Some say it is not accepted in the ideology of the organization..
Nabeel Naiem: No, the organization deviated, they became Takfiris, they are killing Muslims.. Am I fighting Jihad (holy war) to go to hell or seeking heaven?!
What is the cause of Jihad? (whoever kills a believer intentionally – his recompense is Hell, wherein he will abide eternally, and Allah has become angry with him and has cursed him and has prepared for him a great punishment) [Quran 4:93]
– Did they call you a Kafir (non-believer) now?
Nabeel Naiem: The high ranks, like Ayman, no they did not, but the small lads they’re the ones who consider me Kafir.
– The natural question one would ask: Why wouldn’t some who consider you Kafir try to assassinate you?
Nabeel Naiem: No, I’m a legend.. I have a history those same boys are astonished with my history, and they wonder why I changed, I was the cloud above those boys..
I was a solid warrior and I fought and have a horrible history whether inside Egypt or outside it, I’m not just a lad, or someone who just joined, I was everything in the organization..
I mean now after the Takfiri ideology (labeling people as Kuffar – non-believers) why nobody tried to liquidate you with this Takfiri ideology?
This is with God’s grace upon me, and then I have a history.. When they get to know my history.. none of them have achieved the history I did.
– Back to the questions I understand you’re telling me the main structure of Al-Qaeda does not exist anymore.. Are we
talking now about schism? Can we say that (Daesh) ISIS is part of Al-Qaeda?
Nabeel Naiem: No, the old commanders have left the whole organization, only Ayman is left and around him a few we call them mentally retarded or crazy, Takfiri people.. But all the founders have left, some died and the others just left..
As for ISIS, it follows the ideology of Al-Qaeda organization, which was found by Sayyed Imam Sherif and put it in his book Al Jamei Fi Talab Al-ilm Al Sharif (Bible of Seeking Honorable Learning), & it’s one of the most dangerous books circulated in the world, and it’s translated to all languages by the way, Kurdish, Urdu, Persian, Turkish.. etc.
– You say that ISIS is a branch of Al-Qaeda?
Nabeel Naiem: It adopts the ideology of Al-Qaeda. ISIS was established in 2006, we created Al-Qaeda since 1989.
– Explain to me now the position of Dr. Ayman Zawahri from ISIS and Abu Bakr Baghdadi (head of ISIS), what do they consider him?
Nabeel Naiem: He (Zawahri) asked Abu Bakr Baghdadi to pledge allegiance to him (as the Emir..) but Abu Bakr Baghdadi, since he’s basically a U.S. agent, told him: we are the people of cause, the cause of liberating Iraq, Syria and so.. You’re the one who should pledge allegiance to us, Ayman (Zawahri) refused so there was a dispute and a fight between them.
– How he is an American agent? Explain to us how?
Nabeel Naiem: It is known that the USA released him from prison and he spent 20 to 30 million US Dollars to establish these ISIS groups and the first ISIS camps were established in Jordan, and Jordan doesn’t allow camps for charity, when Jordan establish camps to train terrorist groups, it doesn’t do that out of good will and charity, these camps were supervised by the Marines, and the arming of ISIS is all American.. and how do they arrange their expenses? I was in charge of a camp for 120 men, we were spending thousands of thousands (of dollars).. food, drinks, weapons, munition, training..
– Excuse me, you’re talking about ISIS? You were in charge of an ISIS camp?
Nabeel Naiem: No, I am telling you I was once in charge of a camp of 120 men and we were spending that time thousands (of Dollars), imagine how much this ISIS is spending?! Let me tell you something.. The wounded from ISIS during (terrorist) operations, are they being treated here in Lebanon? No, neither in Syria, nor in Saudi nor in Egypt, where do they go? They go to Israel. Now as we speak there are 1,500 of ISIS & Nusra (Front) are in Tel Aviv hospitals.
– From where this information?
Nabeel Naiem: Where are their wounded? Don’t they have wounded? Where are they being treated? This is well known..
– They have field hospitals, and it’s remarkable that they have a number of doctors in their ranks, even doctors from
European countries..
Nabeel Naiem: Yes, the field doctor would only give first aid until you reach the hospital.
– You mentioned an important point about financing, I read for your a lot actually when at the beginning of Al-Qaeda when talking about Osama Bin Laden you were talking about self-financing..
Nabeel Naiem: Osama was spending by himself, but before Osama there was the International Islamic Relief Organization and the connection between us and them was Dr. Abdulla Azzam, then we had some issues with Adbulla Azzam so he cut off from us the money and expenses so we replaced him with Osama Bin Laden, and the brothers in Al-Qaeda, mainly from the GCC countries called him Emir of Arabs.
– You just mentioned that 120 members required thousands, we are talking about a structure spread worldwide, could this be understood in the context of self-financing reaching ISIS today? I’ll read what the British Independent Newspaper said, it reveals there are a number of donors from Saudi who played an essential role in establishing Jihadist groups since over 30 years, that’s why I ask you about the beginnings as you were there then.. It’s a CIA report and it’s after September 11 attacks and it suggests Al-Qaeda had relied on middlemen who collected money from Saudi & other GCC donors..
Nabeel Naiem: This is ‘crab’ what the Independent says, these are foolish people, a fool journalist who doesn’t know what to say. First of all, the donations of GCC citizens to the Jihadist groups in Afghanistan was known and done publicly and it was advertised in newspapers and on TV, what this Independent guy adding?
I’m one of the people who took more than a thousand free air tickets from the International Islamic Relief Organization
– Please explain what are you aiming at with the International Islamic Relief Org.?
Nabeel Naiem: It was paying our expenses while we were in the Afghani Jihad, bring weapons, ammunition, training, food, drinks.. all of this we were getting from the Islamic Relief Org.. they were spending..
– This is what I meant, Islamic Relief Org. is specialized in collecting Zakat (charity) and it’s in Saudi (Arabia)..
Nabeel Naiem: These are fools.. Prince Sulaiman Bin Abdul Aziz was in charge of it, it was not running loose you grab what you want and go on.. It was Saudi Intelligence and Prince Sulaiman Bin Abdul Aziz was in charge of it, it wasn’t a loose charity you fill your pockets and walk, No.
Secondly, there was a hospital called Kuwaiti Crescent Hospital, it had 250 beds, it had all kinds of operations, and it had doctors employed there, money (budget), medicine, used to spend millions, it was under Kuwaiti (Red) Crescent.
So what new this Independent is telling? USA itself was supporting Hikmatyar, Who brought Stinger missiles to the Afghani Mujahideen? The missiles which badly hurt the USSR? It was brought by the USA..
– This is the point you mentioned when talking about Al-Qaeda, USA supported Al-Qaeda because it was fighting Russia, today when we come closer to this region, who supports who in favor of who? ISIS works for who?
Nabeel Naiem: Look, there’s nothing constant in these matters, take for example after Russia was defeated (in Afghanistan) the Americans wanted to get rid of the Arab Afghanis, and in fact the Arab Afghanis were arrested, deported and some like us were jailed, so Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was struck by September 11 attacks and after Osama Bin Laden’s death Al-Qaeda was bought by the Qatari Intelligence, and I tell you during the International Conference of Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) in Istanbul, Qatar decided to create a fund to sponsor Free Egyptian Army and paid 1 billion dollar for it, and the person in charge of this fund is Ali Kurrah Zadah, Muslim Brotherhood official in Turkey, this is the finance, not like someone says 1 sheikh is donating..!
– This is one side, what’s important to know is what ISIS wants from Iraq? Is it the issue of borders? The borders strategy? Borders war? But this ideology is trans-borders it seems, how did ISIS expand from Syria into Iraq? What does it want exactly from Iraq?
Nabeel Naiem: No dear, ISIS started in Iraq, and Ibrahim Abu Bakr Baghdadi is Iraqi (national), and after that they were given camps to train in Jordan and they smuggled into Syria from Jordan and they were defeated in Syria then they moved back into Iraq once again.
As to what’s happening in Iraq, it’s bigger than ISIS, Mosul city has 4 million residents & it’s second largest province, in Iraq there’s a problem between the Arabs in Anbar and (Prime Minister) Maliki, and ‘Maliki Army’ who handed over their weapons had Shiite commanders, so nobody would argue ISIS and Shiites, those commanders handed over their weapons to Arab tribes but ISIS is in the headlines.
ISIS has something called Management of Savagery, a book titled Management of Savagery..
– We have shown some details about this book on our channel..
Nabeel Naiem: Abu Bakr Muhammad Maqdisi in this book has taken the same policy of Genghis Khan, thanks God they didn’t claim they derived their policies from prophet Muhammad, because God said: ‘There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and [who] remembers Allah often.’ [Quran 33:21].. So their ‘excellent pattern’ was Genghis Khan.
Genghis Khan used to enter a village and annihilates all living in it, even animals he’d slaughter it, and burn down the houses, so the next village hears that Genghis Khan is coming they flee away and this is what ISIS is doing in Iraq, and what’s the goal of ISIS? When ISIS entered Samerra they killed a thousand Sunni, and now killing Shiites, and this is the American policy.
Henry Kissinger wrote a memo in 1982 or 1984, don’t remember exactly, it’s titled The 100 Years War. When asked where this 100 years war will occur? He said in the Middle East when we ignite the war between the Sunnah and the Shiites.
So they’re working on igniting the war between the Sunna and the Shiites, just like what Abu Mussab (Zarqawi) used to blow up Sunnah mosques then blow up Shiite mosques, to start the sectarian war in the region; and this is of course an American plot, and I tell you ISIS didn’t kill a single American.
ISIS didn’t behead a single American and didn’t play football with his head, they beheaded Muslims and ate livers of Muslims and didn’t kill a single American though it’s established since 2006..
– You’re talking about ISIS’s brutality and ideology but it finds popularity among the youth.. and popularity among many sides and it practices the highest level of violence and brutality, can you explain to us what makes all these groups with all its diversities to join this organization?
Nabeel Naiem: It’s the Takfiri ideology, the problem with this Takfiri ideology it’s widely spread among the European Muslims, why?
I sat with them.. The European Muslims denounced everything they saw in Europe..
– But they also come from GCC countries and Islamic countries even..
Nabeel Naiem: I’m with you, it’s spread among the Muslims in Europe and it’s spread in Saudi because Wahhabism is the closest to Takfir than others. And when I sat with them I found out they have a single-sided Takfiri thinking, like when I spoke with Sayyed Imam in the judgment against the ruler’s assistants, where he said there’s no ruler who can rule by himself, he must have the support of the police and army thus the police & army are all also Kuffar (infidels) like him, so I asked what about who goes to the polls to elect the ruler? He replied: He’s a Kafir (infidel).
I told him: you have labeled the Army, police and the people as Kuffar (infidels), you’re a Takfiri..
The religion (Islam) is not so strict, it includes prevention excuses like ignorance, circumstances, causes.. they didn’t study all this, for them the ruler is an infidel that means all of those with him are infidels.. Bashar (Assad) is a Nusairi then all of those with him are Nusairis, although that the Syrian Army 90% of it is Sunni, because that’s the Sunni percentage of Syrians.
But they are one-sided thinking and they’re ignorant..
– Ignorant in what sense?
Nabeel Naiem: Ignorant of the religion (Islam). I was living with Ayman (Zawahri), Ayman is ignorant, he wasn’t saying anything without consulting me first..
– In spite that you mentioned that Ayman Zawahri was refusing at one stage of time to accept the Takfiris (in Al-Qaeda)..
Nabeel Naiem: Yes, we were the ones who didn’t allow them. I told him: If your brother Muhammad joins the organization we will dissolve it because your brother is Takfiri. So he agreed until we entered jail and we’re separated, his brother came in and took over the whole organization, and his brother is retarded actually, he’s Takfiri and retarded, if you talk with him you feel you’re talking with someone who is brainless..
– That’s what’s strange as I mentioned we’re talking about different segments of societies from different countries and even from different education levels, we see PHD holders, how do you call all of these ignorant?
Nabeel Naiem: Ignorance in religion is something and being a doctor is something else.. I’ll give you an example. If I’m a doctor in a clinic, and with me is a nurse, and for 30 years he will be with me, will he become a doctor after 30 years?
Will this nurse become a doctor after 30 years being a nurse?
– This is as a description, right?
Nabeel Naiem: They’re like this, they educate themselves by themselves, they’re like the nurses, they’ll never become doctors. I am specialized in Islamic Sharia, for me he’s ignorant, ignorant in the religion, he doesn’t understand the religion.
– We should explain, you’re talking about Jihad? Salafist Jihad or Takfiris? These are the segments?
Nabeel Naiem: Yes, they’re ignorant..
– All of them?
Nabeel Naiem: I argued with their top sheikh (cleric) – Salafists, Salafist Jihadist and Takfiris, these are 3 different samples, all of them are ignorant?
They’re not different they’re all ignorant, I was living with Sayyed Imam Sharif, he’s the international founder of the whole ideology spread in the region from Jakarta to Nouakchott (in Mauritania), he wrote them a book titled ‘Al Jamei Fi Talab Al-ilm Al-Sharif (Bible in Seeking Honorable Learning), this book is the manifest and ideology of all the Takfiri groups like ISIS, Nusra Front, Ansar Bet Maqdas (Jerusalem House Supporters), Salafist Jihadist, and all of those you can imagine, and nobody wrote after the book of Sayyed Imam (Sharif).
I debated with Sayyed Imam and debated with him about a lot of matters, he told me in the next edition of the book he will rectify & mention the comments I said, he didn’t, he re-issued the book as it is.
I also argued with someone a Takfiri just for sins, a sin is infidelity, like the one committing adultery doesn’t do so and he’s a believer thus he’s a Kafir (infidel), so I argued with him: the punishment for the believer who becomes a disbeliever (leaves Islam) is death, and the adulterer’s punishment is flogging, how does the punishment differ (when committing a sin only)?
The differ in ideology and thinking is long since the beginnings, after Osama Bin Laden (era) between (Ayman) Zawahri & (Abu Bakr) Maqdisi, which resulted in the schism among other organizations, but when we talk now about ISIS, if we compare them with Al-Qaeda, there’s an essential difference between them..
There’s no difference in ideology, only organizational difference..
– Then what is the future of ISIS based on?
Nabeel Naiem: As long as the youth are convinced with the Takfir ideology, ISIS will continue.
Secondly, ISIS is playing on 2 levels: Bashar Assad (Syrian president) is a Nusairi infidel & should be fought, and they use the Fatwas (religious judicial opinion) of Ibn Taymiyyah in regards with the Nusairi sect..
– Depending on feeding these thoughts will ensure its continuity, and maybe other interests..
Nabeel Naiem: And oil.. All sorts of feeding: intellectual, money, gears, munition, all of that.. As long as there are sources feeding this ideology ISIS will continue..
Bernard Lewis founder of Fourth-Generation Warfare said so, he said: we do not need trans-continent armies that would awake nationalism and they return to us as bodies like what happened in Afghanistan & Vietnam, but we should find agents inside the (targeted) country who will carry out the task of the soldiers, and we need a media tool to falsify truths for the people, and money to spend on them..
This is the Fourth-Generation Warfare, agents instead of soldiers..
– This is an alternative army, a war by proxy?
Nabeel Naiem: Yes of course.
– Between who (this war)? We are talking about armies on the ground, Al Qaeda and all what branches out of it, these armies work for the account of which battle and between who?
Nabeel Naiem: It works for the US Intelligence (CIA).
– Who it fights?
Nabeel Naiem: The regimes, they put a plan in 1998 called Clean Break (PNAC)..
– In Iraq, who is it fighting? Is it fighting Nouri Maliki (Iraqi PM)?
Nabeel Naiem: It fights both Sunnah and Shiites, when they entered Sammerra, Sheikh Ali Hatimi, head of Anbar Tribes said: ISIS entered Sammerra and killed a thousand Sunni in cold blood.. and it kills Shiites and kills Christians and kills whoever it faces, ISIS considers all people infidels and their bloods are free.
Who killed Imam Ali appropriated his blood, who slaughtered Hussein wasn’t he a Muslim and from a sect claims they’re Islamist?
All these have a shameless historic extension, the prophet PBuH called them Dogs of Hell, the prophet said: ‘if I meet them I will kill them the same killing of ‘Aad and Iram of the Pillars’, those are the ones behind these ideologies, the ideologies of Khawarij (outlaws in Islam) who the prophet warned of them, and these will continue, as for ISIS, ISIS did not kill a single American. The opposition fighting Bashar Al-Assad fiercefully for 3 years did not shoot a single bullet against Israel..
– What makes the close enemy, so to speak, in the ideology of these groups, the close enemy is these countries and its leaders, geographically speaking, this term as close enemy and far enemy exists in Al-Qaeda, you mentioned Israel which is not far geographically, what makes it far for them?
Nabeel Naiem: No, they don’t say this, they say: fighting an apostate is a more priority than fighting the original infidel, close and far that’s an old saying.. The apostate is us now..
– As per their understanding?
Nabeel Naiem: Yes, we are apostate, the Arab rulers are apostate, the Arab armies are apostate, thus fighting the apostate is a priority over fighting the original infidel, the Jew.
For instance, Issam Hattito, head of Muslim Brotherhood responsible for leading the battles against Bashar Assad, where does he reside? Is he in Beirut? Riyadh or Cairo? He’s residing in Tel Aviv.
Ahmad Jarba, does he stay in Riyadh, Cairo or Tehran? He’s moving between New York, Paris and London, his employers, who pay his expenses..
When Obama was exposed and it was learned that he’s arming ISIS and Nusra Front with American and Turkish weapons said: ‘We will stop the arming because the American weaposn were leaked to Nusra..’ Didn’t Obama say that?
Leaked?! You discovered it was leaked after 2 years war?!
Nusra Front fighters are 10,000 and ISIS fighters are another 10,000, all 20,000 fighters using American weapons, and Obama claims after 2 years he discovers his (American) weapons are leaked to them?! Are you thinking we are fools?
This is a conspiracy against the region, and I told you Netenyahu & Dick Chenney put the Clean Break plan in the year 1998, and it’s destroying 4 countries, they start with Iraq, then Syria then Egypt then Saudi Arabia. It’s called Clean Break plan (PNAC), well known.. Using radical groups in the region.
The legal case (former Egyptian president) Mohammad Morsi is being tried for, the case of communicating (with the enemy) and contacting Ayman Zawahri was an assignment of Issam Haddad by Obama in person on 28 December 2012, he was at the White House in a meeting with the CIA, he says in his confessions when interrogated by the public prosecution in the case..
– How did you get it?
Nabeel Naiem: These public prosecution confessions are published and are available.. Obama entered (the meeting room) and gave the CIA team a paper and left, they read it and told him: it’s required by the Muslim Brotherhood to contain the radical groups in the region starting with Hamas & Al-Qaeda, so he called Ayman Zawahri through Rifa’a Tahtawi, head of presidential court, who happens to be Ayman’s cousin from Rifa’a Tahtawi’s phone.
Ayman (Zawahri) talking to Mohammad Morsi and Morsi says to him: Peace be Upon You Emir (Prince) of Believers, we need your people here in Sinai, and I will provide them with expenses, food and water and prevent security from pursuing them..
This was recorded and sent to the public prosecutor and this is what Mohammad Morsi is being tried for.
If you ask how I got to know this? I was in Channel 2 of Egyptian TV, and with me was General Gamal, 1st secretary of Egyptian Intelligence, who recorded the call and written it down and based on it the memo was written and handed to the Public Prosecutor.
The TV presenter asked him: Is it allowed for the Intelligence Services to tap the telephone of the president of the republic?
He replied: I’m not tapping the president’s phone, I was tapping Ayman’s (Zawahri) phone and found the president talking to him, telling him Peace be Upon You Emir of Believers, so I wrote down the tape, wrote a report and submitted to the head of intelligence..
She asked him: Did you inform the president? He replied: It’s not my job, I do not deal with the president (directly), I deal with the head of intelligence and that’s my limits.
She asked him: What did you write in your investigations and your own report, what did you write after you wrote down the tape (contents)?
I swear to God he told her, & I was in the same studio,: I wrote that Mr. Mohammad Morsi Ayyat president of the republic is a danger for Egypt’s National Security.
So the ignorant should know why the army stood by the side of the people on 30 June, because the president is dealing with Al-Qaeda organization, and it’s recorded, and he’s being on trial for it now, and head of intelligence wrote that the president of the republic is a danger on Egypt’s National Security.
This is the task of these groups in the region. When Obama said he supported Morsi’s campaign with 50 million (Dollars), and when (Yousuf) Qaradawi said: Obama sent us 60 million Dollars for the Syrian ‘Resistance’, God bless you Obama, and we need more..
Did Obama convert to Islam or America became a Hijabi (wore a burqa, veil)?
I ask Qaradawi: When Obama supports the Syrian opposition, is it to establish the Caliphate? And return the days of the Rashideen Caliphates? Or Obama converted to Islam or America became a Hijabi to support the Syrian opposition?
This is the work of agents (spies), exposed and debunked, and we don’t want to fool ourselves and hide our heads in the sand, the region is under a conspiracy and it’s to drag Iran to a war of attrition..
The first statement ISIS announced after the fight with Maliki it said: ‘We will head to Najaf & Karballa and destroy the sacred shrines’, they dragged the legs of Iran (into Iraq).
Iran said they’ll defend the sacred shrines, it has to, it cannot (not defend them), this is what’s required,
It’s required to clash Saudi and Iran in the 100 years war, an endless war, it exhausts Saudi resources and its monies, and it exhausts Iran resources and its monies, like what they did during the days of Saddam in Iraq (with Iran). This is what we should understand, fight and stand against..
– You mentioned Egypt, Syria and Iraq, we see in all of it similar activities, and you also mentioned Saudi, is it in a coming phase Saudi will be targeted?
Nabeel Naiem: It was meant when Muslim Brotherhood lay their ground in ruling Egypt, problems would start in Saudi in 2016 and in the whole Gulf (GCC), this is not my words, this what the head of national security in United Arab Emirates Dhahi Khalfan said, he arrested those who confessed.
From where did Dhahi Khalfan get this? They arrested cells which confessed in details: If Muslim Brotherhood settles in Egypt, they’ll start exporting problems to the Gulf (GCC) through their existing cells, and destabilize the security of the Gulf, and this is what Dhahi Khalfan, head of national security in UAE said, not what I say.
– The circumstances and factors we saw in Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad, in the countries: Syria, Egypt and Iraq, there was a security vacuum and repercussions of so called Arab Spring, what vacuum we are talking about in Saudi Arabia? Where to find the circumstances and factors that would allow these organizations to enter the (Saudi) kingdom? Opening gaps? Where?
Nabeel Naiem: Look, they have a book being circulated in London titled The Rule of Al Saud, in this book they called the Saudi family as Kuffar (infidels), and that it is unjust, and it steals the monies of the Saudis, and it’s an infidel doesn’t rule by God’s commands, and only applies Sharia law on the weak while the strong and the princess no law being applied on them, a book to educate the Saudi youths abroad to fight a war against the Saudi government, they also say: we call on the kingdom to become a constitutional monarchy, ie. the king doesn’t rule, like the British queen, and this trend is being supported by America and Britain and the people working on this are residing in London, the nest of spies, all the spies of the world reside in London..
Their goal is to divide the region in order to achieve Israel’s security.
Israel is a weak and despicable state, by the way, geopolitical, Israel is not a state, like Qatar, is Qatar a state? Qatar is only a tent and a man sitting it with his money and that’s it..
There are countries like Iran, Saudi and Egypt, in geography it exists until the end of times, and there are countries called the Satanic Shrubs, it’s just found you don’t know how, like Israel and Qatar, it can vanish in one day and you won’t find it..
So for Israel to guarantee its existence, all the surrounding entities around it should be shredded.. Kurds to take one piece, Sunnah take one piece, Maliki takes one piece.. each sect has their own piece just like Lebanon they keep fighting between each other, once they finish beating each other they drink tea then go for a second round beating each other..
– I want to get back to the factors in regards with the Saudi Kingdom, you mentioned what is planned for based on this ideology, and you know better, you have experience and you talk about examples and evidences, but how they will enter?
True there was a statement by the Saudi ministry of interior in last May claiming they dismantled a cell that follows ISIS of 62 members, as they stated, but how they’ll enter (Saudi), what are the factors they’ll be depending on to enter?
Nabeel Naiem: I’m telling you they are preparing for the revolution against the ruling family, that it’s a corrupt family, this family steals the money of the Saudis, talks about the roots of the family..
– From inside the kingdom?
Nabeel Naiem: From inside the kingdom, and there are strong Takfiri members inside the kingdom, because as you know the difference beteween Wahhabi and Takfiri ideologies is as thin as a single hair, thus there are a lot of youths who follow this (Takfiri) ideology, add to it the feeding against the kingdom and its government and against the ruling family, it’s very easy for him to blow himself up with anything..
– So it will be only based on these factors, we don’t want to disregard an important point that groups of the ISIS are from the Gulf countries, and there are reports that the (governments of GCC) are turning a blind eye away from recruiting a number of them and sending them to fight in Syria and in a number of other countries including Iraq, as per these reports, could there be recruiting to use inside the kingdom? To move inside the kingdom?
Nabeel Naiem: Yes, yes, most are Saudis & the move will be like that but they were hoping for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt to settle in power, that’s why when (Saudi) king Abdallah supported the 30 June revolution (in Egypt), he did so based on the information he has of what will happen in the region
Why did he stand against the Muslim Brotherhood? Saudi was always containing the MBs, and if the MBs (Muslim Brotherhood) ever made money, it was from Saudi, and Mohammad Qotb, the father of all Takfir in the world, spent 40 years of his life in Saudi, he wrote a book called The Ignorance in the Twentieth Century, and he claims we’re living in an ignorance more than the one in the days of the prophet PBuH, and Saudi hosted him and he was teaching in the university.. What made them go against them (MBs)?
Because the Muslim Brotherhood have no religion, no nation, not safe to be with them, they’ll betray anyone.
– On the other hand, how to deal with such an organization and such an ideology?
Nabeel Naiem: The voices of the Islamic moderation very low, throaty, so to speak..
– We do not hear that loud voice who would stand against them, is it not convincing? Or need mediums?
Nabeel Naiem: No, the sapien voice doesn’t have a vim, they’re employees, they’d say let ISIS burn out with who brought it..
It doesn’t have the vim to respond, doesn’t feel the danger, secondly, Azhar in Egypt, which was leading the movement of religious enlightenment, is absented for the past 40 years, the reason for its absent for 40 years is the oil boom, and the voices of the Saudi clergy becoming higher than the Azhar clergy. Salafism was found in Egypt just to fight Azhar (Islamic University), then, the scholars duty is to respond to the ideology of ISIS, detail it and respond to it, scholars should come and say this is what ISIS is saying and the right respond is this.. and I sat with people who came from London to fight in Syria, they sat with me and thanks to God they went from Egypt back to London.
They came to ask me, and I told them, let’s assume that Bashar (Assad) died in the morning, would I be saying: Why God did you take Bashar while the war is not over yet? Who will replace Bashar?
They replied: (Ahmad) Jarba..
I said: Jarba is worth of Bashar shoes only.. They said: true. And they went back.
I told them you are going to fight in favor of America and Israel, will you be the one to rule Syria?
If you were the one who will rule Syria I will come and fight on your side, I swear by God I’ll come and fight on your side..
But are you going to rule Syria after Bashar? He said no, I told him you are being used to remove Bashar and then Jarba, Salim Idress, Issam Hattito will come, all of those are being raised in the spy nest in London, it’s not you who will rule.
– How can we differentiate between religious commitment and the national responsibility? Is there a problem in combining both?
Nabeel Naiem: Yes, yes, of course, there is a strong fault between the national responsibility and the religious commitment. I’ll tell you what the General Guide (leader) of (Muslim) Brotherhood said? He said Toz (B.S.) with Egypt. This is their vision of the national responsibility.
And when the MBs ruled Egypt.. I’ll give you one evidence for their despise to the nation (Egypt), in the last interview done by the Consular Adli Mansour, the interim president of Egypt with Mrs. Lamis Hadidi, the last question she asked him was about the background picture of the map of Egypt behind him, she asked him to tell her the story about this picture behind him..
He said: this picture was done by King Fouad a 100 years ago, we know that first was King Fouad, then King Farouq then Abdul Nasser, Sadat then Mubarak. He told her since King Fouad did this photo a 100 years ago and it’s hanged there, it was removed for 1 year only, when the Muslim Brotherhood ruled Egypt. They removed it and put in the stores..
And they were working on a plot to concede 600 square kilometers to Hamas to resolve the Palestinian cause..
There is a link between the national responsibility and the religious commitment, and this contradicts with the understanding of the Salafists clerics, and I’ll tell you the political theory of imam Ibn Taymiyyah, who people consider him the most strict imam, Ibn Taymiyyah was asked: if the nation’s interest conflicts with applying Sharia, if we apply Sharia will lose the country, what to do?
He said: Maintaining the homeland is a priority over applying Sharia, because if you lose the country, where will you apply Sharia?
I’ll give you an example to make it clearer, if someone is naked and will fall from the 10th floor, will you rescue him or get him something to wear?
Thus, to preserve the country is more important than to apply Sharia if there’s interest conflict.
– And the interest now?
Nabeel Naiem: To preserve the nation.
– And in fact this is the most absented side between the politics, we called the national responsibility and..
Nabeel Naiem: This is because of ignorance, not knowing what’s the national responsibility, there’s no conflict between national responsibility and religious commitment, it’s because those are ignorants the conflict is happening between the nation and the belief.
– This topic needs more discussing, especially in regards with the relations with regional countries, western countries, in regards with the nature of these countries, its backgrounds and its beliefs, we see relations are allowed with India and China, and when we talk about countries like Iran then the religious backgrounds are mentioned and this also might require further research if possible we can get a comment from you on it?
Nabeel Naiem: What I want to tell you, the efforts of all Islamic countries, Sunnah and Shiites, must combine, to eradicate these groups, because these groups are the claws of colonialism in the region, it’s not on religious bases, there are members of ISIS who do not pray, so in Al-Qaeda, there are members who didn’t pray a single kneeling, there must be a combination of the countries efforts to organically eliminate these groups by security and by intellect, disprove their ideology..
There must be a response to these groups and explaining its ideology is a stray ideology, contrary to the Islamic Sharia, and this is the ideology that the prophet warned from when he said about Khawarij (Outlaws in Islam):
‘Newly in the religion, ribald in their aims, they go through the religion like how an arrow goes through the bow, if I meet them I will kill them the way Iram and A’ad were killed, they’re the worse killers under the skies, blessed who they kill or who kills of them..’ and he called them: ‘the dogs of hell.’
– Thank you a lot sheikh Nabil Naiem, our guest here in the studio, founder of Jihad Organization formerly, and expert in the Islamist groups. – end of interview.
Yours truly kept saying: ‘They fool you, they keep fooling you and they enjoy fooling you, not because they’re smart, but because you’re foolable‘, so I repeat it once again.
It would seem that recurring exposure to Israel and its repulsive Zionist leaders over the past nine months is forcing the truth upon the US secretary of state, John Kerry.
Speaking at a closed meeting of the Trilateral Commission on 25 April, he warned that if Israel doesn’t make peace soon, it could become “an apartheid state”, like the old South Africa, the Daily Beast news website reports.
“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens – or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the gathering of senior officials and experts from the US, Western Europe, Russia and Japan. “Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to,” he added.
In a further outburst of truth at the same meeting, Kerry lashed out against Israel’s Jewish squatter colony-building programme. “There is a fundamental confrontation and it is over settlements. Fourteen thousand new settlement units announced since we began negotiations. It’s very difficult for any leader to deal under that cloud,” he said.
Kerry’s rendezvous with the truth about Israel had surfaced in earnest on 7 April, when he openly blamed Israel for the breakdown of peace talks during a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Tip of the apartheid iceberg
But Kerry doesn’t seem to be quite ready to admit the full extent to which Israel is already an apartheid state.
When people call Israel an apartheid state, they are referring to the crime of apartheid as defined in international law. According to the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, apartheid comprises inhumane acts “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”.
In this regard, Israeli apartheid is far wider than the institutionalized discrimination practised against the Palestinians in the occupied territories and the preferential treatment enjoyed by the Jewish squatters in the territories.
As Cook reminds us,
Israel has nationalized 93 per cent of Palestinian-owned land in the country so that Jewish citizens can exclude Palestinian Arab citizens;
Israel has separate citizenship laws – the Law of Return (1950) and the Citizenship Law (1952) – based on ethnic belonging;
Israel has designed its citizenship laws to confer rights on Jews who are not actually yet citizens or present in the state, privileging them over Palestinian Arabs who do have citizenship and are present in the state;
Israel has more than 55 laws that explicitly discriminate based on which ethnic group a citizen belongs to;
Israel defers some of what should be its sovereign powers to extra-territorial bodies – the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund – whose charters obligate them to discriminate based on ethnic belonging;
Israel does not recognize its own nationality, and makes it possible to join the dominant national group (Jews) or to immigrate only through conversion.
That is apartheid pure and simple.
Déjà vu
John Kerry has taken a few small steps towards publicly acknowledging the unpleasant reality of Zionist Israel. His journey is reminiscent of that of a former US secretary of state, James Baker, who 24 years ago publicly rebuked the Israelis for obstructing US efforts to start peace talks with the Palestinians, and invited them to call the White House when they are ready for peace.
The question now is whether Kerry will go where Baker did not and actually do something about it, or whether he will sit back and content himself with airing his frustration, as if that would magically resolve the problem.
In his 25 April speech to the Trilateral Commission, Kerry hinted at what he might do if the Israelis continue to obstruct peace.
According to the Daily Beast, he said that he was considering publicly laying out a comprehensive US plan for a final agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, in a last-ditch effort to forge a deal before the Obama administration leaves office in 2017.
“We have enough time to do any number of things, including the potential at some point in time that we will just put something out there. ‘Here it is, folks. This is what it looks like. Take it or leave it,’” Kerry said
If that is literally Washington’s final trump card, then it does not take a genius to guess how the Israelis will respond.
But if Kerry’s “take it or leave it” is a diplomat’s way of saying “there will be consequences for taking it and other, unpleasant consequences for leaving it, then Tel Aviv might begin to take him seriously.
Although minority communities have long complained of racial profiling by police, their claims have generally been dismissed until proven by empirical evidence. And so it was with the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program. As early as 1999, New York state’s attorney general criticised the effort as racially skewed. Stop and frisk was the subject of a class action lawsuit, which was settled in 2003. But it wasn’t until the police were required to report on the number of people stopped and their race that both public opinion and the legal landscape shifted. The result was the recent federal court decision in Floyd v. City of New York, finding that the NYPD’s stop-and frisk program violated two provisions of the U.S. Constitution: the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fourteenth Amendment ban on race-based laws and policies.
The stop-and-frisk numbers tell much of the story:
Between January 2004 and June 2012, the NYPD conducted more than 4.4 million stops; of those stopped, 88 percent were completely innocent of any offence.
More than half the people stopped were black, even though only a quarter of the city’s population is black.
Although stop-and-frisk disproportionately targets minorities, weapons were seized in only 1 percent of stops of blacks, 1.1 percent of stops of Hispanics, and 1.4 percent of stops of whites.
In many ways, these statistics were at the centre of the case. The NYPD argued that the data did not reflect any racial disparity because one should not compare the race of those stopped to the general population. The better comparison, according to the police, is between the proportion of minorities stopped and the proportion of minorities who are suspects in reported crimes. If minorities are identified as suspects in 90 percent of the violent crimes in New York City, then one should expect that 90 percent of those stopped on suspicion of crime would be minority. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg bluntly put it, the problem is that the NYPD actually ‘stop whites too much and minorities too little.’
Federal JudgeShira Scheindlin rightly rejected this argument, noting that suspect descriptions were irrelevant because the population being stopped was largely innocent of any crime. It also contradicts a core premise of the U.S. Constitution: individualised suspicion is required for police action. As the judge noted, the NYPD’s contention was not so much a defence against racial profiling as it was a defence of racial profiling.
Police also asserted that so many minorities were stopped was because operations were concentrated in high-crime neighbourhoods, which were largely minority. But Prof. Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University, an expert witness for plaintiffs, made short shrift of this argument. He showed the judge that even when neighbourhood crime rates were taken into account, the police were stopping minorities disproportionately.
But Judge Scheindlin relied on more than just the numbers. She found that on several occasions the police had stopped plaintiffs without the ‘reasonable suspicion’ required under the Fourth Amendment. She also found, based on the testimony of witnesses (including several police officers) that the NYPD intentionally targeted those it considered to be ‘the right people’ – i.e., minorities. And that the police commissioner and the mayor, rather than heeding complaints about biased policing, had not just condoned, but enthusiastically supported, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program.
Testimony from those who had been stopped repeatedly clearly moved Judge Scheindlin to recognise the human toll of stop-and-frisk. ‘While it is true that any one stop is a limited intrusion in duration and deprivation of liberty, each stop is also a demeaning and humiliating experience,’ she wrote. Routinely stopping people of colour as they go about their daily lives makes them distrustful of the police. Such suspicion of law enforcement, the judge pointed out, ‘cannot be good for the police, the community, or its leaders.’
Unfortunately, just as it has ignored the voices of minority communities for the last decade, the NYPD’s leadership obstinately refuses to hear the judge. It has already filed a notice of appeal. A better course would be to recognise that maybe, just maybe, there is something wrong with the way the police have conducted stop-and-frisk, and work to reform it. Other cities have achieved safety without ferociously targeting minorities. New York can as well.
People march in Washington on July 19, 2013 during a demonstration against the acquittal of George Zimmermann in the killing of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin. (AFP Photo / Nicholas Kamm)
Rallies throughout America are scheduled outside federal buildings on Saturday to protest a Florida jury’s decision last week to find neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman not guilty of shooting dead unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.
It is expected that Trayvon Martin’s parents will join the protests organized by the veteran civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton to push the USJustice Department to bring a civil rights case against Zimmerman.
Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton will lead the Saturday rally along with Sharpton just outside police headquarters in New York.
Martin’s father is to lead the demonstration in Miami, where Trayvon lived with his mother and older brother.
Reverend Al Sharpton said the protests are planned for more than 100 cities throughout America and expressed hope that they would be peaceful. Earlier this week, protests against the ruling in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay turned violent, resulting in a number of arrests.
Police officers push back a protestor on the 10 Freeway after demonstrators angry at the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of black teen Trayvon Martin walk onto the 10 Freeway stopping highway traffic, in Los Angeles, California July 14, 2013. (AFP Photo / Robyn Beck)
Trayvon Martin was shot dead over a year ago by Zimmerman, who claimed he acted in self-defense. The prosecution argued that Zimmerman was guilty of second-degree murder, stating that he racially profiled the unarmed teen and assumed he was a criminal when he saw him walking through a gated community in Sanford, Florida. They further claimed that Zimmerman tracked the teenager down and started the fight that led to the shooting.
On July 13, Zimmerman, whose voter registration record listed him as hispanic, was acquitted of all charges relating to the fatal shooting of the black teen by a panel of six women jurors. The former neighborhood watch volunteer could have been sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder or up to 30 years for manslaughter if he was found guilty.
Zimmerman’s acquittal sparked nationwide protests last weekend as thousands took to the streets in major American cities protesting against the verdict and related issues regarding race, profiling and vigilantism.
Federal prosecutors are pursuing an investigation into whether Zimmerman violated civil rights laws, but civil rights experts doubt new charges are likely.
On Thursday Florida Governor Rick Scott met with sit-in demonstrators outside his office in Tallahassee. He said he supports the Stand Your Ground law and has no intention of convening a special legislative session to change the self-defense statute that have been adopted in 30 states.
On Friday American President Barack Obama warned the public against violence while protesting.
He agreed that “There is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws,” and that “If a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario … both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.”
“Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago,” Obama said.
Police officers push back a protestor on the 10 Freeway after demonstrators angry at the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of black teen Trayvon Martin walk onto the 10 Freeway stopping highway traffic, in 
| truthaholics 