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Saturday, January 31, 2009

Is India Planning To Announce Kassab’s Death?

Reliable sources in the Indian capital with links to Indian police told a Pakistani Web portal that senior Indian officials have discussed the elimination of Ajmal Kassab, the lone surviving terrorist in the Mumbai attacks, in a staged attack that would be later blamed on Pakistani intelligence. The Indian police went defensive after the report leaked into the mainstream media. But insider sources in New Delhi insist the plan is real. It's not clear why the Indian government might want to kill Mr. Kassab. The loopholes in the Indian story on the attacks have been increasingly highlighted since Nov. 28, when the Mumbai siege ended.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—In response to PakistanKaKhudaHafiz (PKKH)'s exclusive report about Kassab's death, the Maharashtra government on Friday said the lone terrorist arrested in 26/11 Mumbai attacks is very much alive.

"Kassab is in Mumbai police custody and very much alive," state Home Minister Jayant Patil said. [Rediff]

In addition to the Home Minister, the Mumbai Police Commissioner also denied the reports of Kassab's death.

"Kassab is safe in our custody," Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor told PTI.

PakistanKaKhudaHafiz reported on Tuesday 27th January that Amir Ajmal Kassab, the lone terrorist arrested for carrying out the 26/11 Mumbai attacks may have been killed in custody. Here's the text from our report. (see the link for the full post):

The lone captured terrorist and alleged Pakistani citizen Ajmal Kassab is dead, sources tell PKKH. Whether he was killed in custody immediately after the Mumbai attacks or in recent days is yet to be confirmed.

On Monday 19th January, Kassab was remanded in police custody until February 2nd. It is important to note that he was not brought to court on this occasion.

Earlier, police in Mumbai had backed off plans to produce Kassab in court on Thursday December 11th for a routine hearing, citing security concerns.

Indian authorities have repeatedly denied media access to Ajmal Kassab and have turned down requests from the Pakistani authorities for a DNA sample for Kassab. This is consistent with the inability of the Indian authorities to provide any information (finger prints, DNA) of the other nine alleged perpetrators of the Mumbai Attacks.

Due to the nature of this information and the lack of verifiable sources, we are not able to confirm or dismiss the reports of Kassab's death at the moment. However, India's reluctance to allow the Pakistani authorities access to Kassab and refusal to carry out a joint investigation certainly raises questions about the authenticity of Indian claims.

Times of India links PKKH to – who else? – the ISI.


TOI: Pak's new stint: Kasab may be dead

Reports which security sources suspect to have been planted by Pakistani official agencies, Islamabad alleges that captured Mumbai terrorist Ajmal Amir Kassab is actually dead. Some media reports suggest "whether he was killed in custody immediately after the Mumbai attacks or in recent days is yet to be confirmed".

India, they said, has not provided any DNA samples of Kassab or the other nine terrorists, leading to the conclusion that India actually made him up. Times of India, January 31st. Link


Despite the denial by Indian authorities, PKKH understands through its sources that the lone gunman arrested in the wake of the Mumbai attacks and identified since as 'Amir Ajmal Kassab' has been dead for over two weeks.

The Mumbai Police had originally intended to announce his death this week - in a supposed 'shootout' at the Arthur road jail - pinning the blame on 'Pakistan-controlled gangsters' with links to Dawood Ibrahim.


By
DAN QAYYUM

Saturday, January 31, 2009.

This report was originally posted at Pakistankakhudafafiz website


© 2007-2008. All rights reserved. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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UPDATE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—“Pakistan’s Claims Fall Flat” - screams the headline on Times of India this morning. ‘Nailing Pakistan’s claims that Ajmal Kasab was ‘dead’, TV channel Times Now has got access to the latest pictures of the lone November 26, Mumbai attacks.’ - it says. Strange that, when on the very same page they admit “There is, however, no clear indication about when this picture was taken or where, because the terrorist is not dressed in any prison gear, casually clad in a t-shirt and brown pants. ” [link] So basically, the photograph labeled as ‘latest’ by Times of India could well have been taken weeks ago, if not months (if reports of his kidnapping from Nepal in 2006 are to be believed.) Times of India had previously linked PKKH to the ISI - claiming that ‘Reports which security sources suspect to have been planted by Pakistani official agencies, Islamabad alleges that captured Mumbai terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab is actually dead.’ Needless to say, it is the latest example of extremely poor and lazy journalism by a publication that is read by millions in India and is one of the leading newspapers worldwide in terms of circulation figures. It seems as if the Indian media has taken a leaf out of Bollywood’s book - which thrives on the avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment or imaginative situations / activities - in coming up with ‘reports’ that are far, far from reality.

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Make that 14: Octuplet mom already had 6 kids

How in the world does a woman with six children get a fertility doctor to help her have more — eight more?

An ethical debate erupted Friday after it was learned that the Southern California woman who gave birth to octuplets this week had six children already.

Large multiple births "are presented on TV shows as a `Brady Bunch' moment. They're not," fumed Arthur Caplan, bioethics chairman at the University of Pennsylvania. He noted the serious and sometimes lethal complications and crushing medical costs that often come with high-multiple births.

But Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, who has fertility clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York, countered: "Who am I to say that six is the limit? There are people who like to have big families."

Kaiser Permanente announced the mega-delivery Monday in Bellflower, with delighted doctors saying they had initially expected seven babies and were surprised when the cesarean section yielded an eighth.

Multiple births this big are considered impossible without fertility treatment, but the doctors who delivered the babies would not say whether 33-year-old Nadya Suleman had used fertility drugs or had embryos implanted in her womb.

However, the children's grandmother, Angela Suleman, told The Associated Press her daughter resorted to in vitro fertilization because "her fallopian tubes are plugged up" and she had trouble conceiving.

She said her daughter, who is unmarried, conceived all her children that way and has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager.

Fourteen grandchildren later, Angela Suleman expects her daughter is finished with fertility treatment.

"It's over now," she said. "It has to be. It can't go on any longer. She's got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn't want to get married. So she got the in vitro."

Doctors at Kaiser Permanente said Nadya Suleman first came to the hospital when she was 12 weeks pregnant and rejected an offer from doctors to abort some of the embryos.

More common than in vitro among younger women is the use of fertility drugs that stimulate egg production; doctors are supposed to monitor budding eggs and stop the drugs if too many develop.

Some medical experts were disturbed to hear that the woman was offered fertility treatment, and troubled by the possibility that she was implanted with so many embryos.

Dr. David Adamson, former president of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, said he was bracing for some backlash against his specialty.

In 30 years of practice, "I have never provided fertility treatment to a woman with six children," or ever heard of a similar case, said Adamson, director of Fertility Physicians of Northern California.

Women seeking fertility treatment are routinely asked to give a detailed history of prior pregnancies and births, and "it's a very realistic question to ask about someone who has six children: How does this fit into the concept of requiring fertility treatment?" Adamson said.

Nadya Suleman's fertility doctor has not been identified. Her mother told the Los Angeles Times all the children came from the same sperm donor, whom she declined to identify.

However, birth certificates reviewed by The Associated Press identify David Solomon as the father of Nadya Suleman's four oldest children. Certificates for the others were not immediately available. Nadya Suleman's first six children range in age from 2 to 7.

Records show that she held a psychiatric technician's license from 1997 to 2002. It was unclear whether she is now employed.

It was only the second time in U.S. history that eight babies survived more than a few hours after birth. The six boys and two girls were said to be in remarkably good condition but were expected to remain in the hospital for several more weeks.

The mother of the octuplets lives with her parents in a modest, single-story home on a quiet cul-de-sac in Whittier, a Los Angeles suburb of about 85,000. Children's bicycles, a pink car and a wagon were scattered in the yard and driveway.

Court records show Angela Suleman filed for bankruptcy last March, but after she failed to make required payments and appear at a creditors' meeting, the case was dismissed. She reported liabilities of $981,371, mostly money owed on two houses she owns in Whittier.

The births were a hot topic of conversation on the Internet, with many people incredulous that a woman with six children would try to have more — and that a doctor would help her do so. Some criticized the doctor and suggested that the mother would be overwhelmed trying to raise her brood and would end up relying on public support.

Jessica Zepeda, who identified herself as a friend of the mother, said the woman and family would have enough money to raise 14 children. "She is not on welfare," Zepeda said. "She is an awesome mom, and will be able to take care of her babies."

Several doctors said it is not their role to dictate family size.

"I am not a policeman for reproduction in the United States. My role is to educate patients," said Dr. James Grifo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the New York University School of Medicine.

But Caplan said not enough attention is paid to the well-being of the children in high-multiple births. Such babies are often premature and underdeveloped, and are almost always found to have some health problem.

Caplan said everyone has a stake in mega-multiple births because they cause insurance premiums to rise when hospitals cannot get reimbursed for the huge costs such babies incur, and because those with disabilities typically require social services.

"To say all you need is cash and the will to have more kids should not be a sufficient standard to access services," he said. "It is insufficient for adoption. It isn't sufficient to be a foster parent. Why would it be sufficient to run down to the fertility clinic to get embryos transplanted or super-ovulated?"

A few years ago, Caplan and others did a survey of U.S. fertility clinics. They found few had policies for deciding whether to help a woman get pregnant. Most clinics said they had patients meet with financial coordinators, but only 18 percent had them see a social worker or psychologist.

With in vitro fertilization, doctors frequently implant more than one embryo to improve the odds that one will take. Mothers-to-be who are found to be pregnant with several babies are given the option of aborting some of them to increase the chances the others will survive.

The U.S. fertility industry has guidelines on how many embryos doctors can implant, with the number varying by age and other factors. The guidelines call for no more than one or two for a generally healthy woman under 35, and no more than three to five, depending on the embryos' maturity, for women over 40.

If eight embryos were implanted at once, that is "well beyond our guidelines," Dr. R. Dale McClure, president of the reproductive medicine society, said in a statement.

Clinics that clearly violate guidelines can be kicked out of another group, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which in turn affects whether insurance covers their services. But the guidelines do not have the force of law.

___

Thomas Watkins reported from Whittier, while Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard reported from Washington. AP writers Alicia Chang, Jacob Adelman and Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles, Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London and the AP News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.

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Partnering With Pakistan

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan looks forward to a new beginning in its bilateral relationship with the United States. First, we congratulate Barack Obama and the country that had the character to elect him, and we welcome his decision to name a special envoy to Southwest Asia. Appointing the seasoned diplomat Richard Holbrooke says much about the president's worldview and his understanding of the complexities of peace and stability and the threats of extremism and terrorism. Simply put, we must move beyond rhetoric and tackle the hard problems.

Pakistan has repeatedly been identified as the most critical external problem facing the new administration. The situation in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India is indeed critical, but its severity actually presents an opportunity for aggressive and innovative action. Since the end of the Musharraf dictatorship, Pakistan has worked to confront the challenges of a young democracy facing an active insurgency, within the context of an international economic crisis. Ambassador Holbrooke will soon discover that Pakistan is far more than a rhetorical partner in the fight against extremism. Unlike in the 1980s, we are surrogates for no one. With all due respect, we need no lectures on our commitment. This is our war. It is our children and wives who are dying.

Ambassador Holbrooke will encounter a region of interrelated issues crossing borders -- old problems that have been left to fester, new realities in an era of active terrorism, and the residual consequences of past Western support for dictatorships and disregard for economic and social development. Let's delineate them.

For almost 60 years the relationship between Pakistan and America has been based on quid pro quo policies with short-term goals and no long-term strategy. Frankly, the abandonment of Afghanistan and Pakistan after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s set the stage for the era of terrorism that we are enduring. U.S. support for the priorities of dictatorship back then, and again at the start of the new millennium, neglected the social and economic development of our nation, the priorities of the people. We must do better.

President Obama understands that for Pakistan to defeat the extremists, it must be stable. For democracy to succeed, Pakistan must be economically viable. Assistance to Pakistan is not charity; rather, the creation of a politically stable and economically viable Pakistan is in the long-term, strategic interest of the United States.

The Obama administration should immediately encourage Congress to pass the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act. The multiyear, $1.5 billion annual commitment to social progress here would signal to our people that this is no longer a relationship of political convenience but, rather, of shared values and goals. Strengthening our democracy and helping us to improve education, housing and health care is the greatest tool we could wield against extremism. Indeed, such policy is the fanatics' worst fear.

The designation of regional opportunity zones to build a viable economy in Northwest Pakistan and in Afghanistan would give residents an economic and political stake in the success of their democratic governments. Legislation introduced last year by Rep. Chris Van Hollen and Sen. Maria Cantwell should be quickly revisited; it would signal to our region that the United States understands the correlation between a healthy economy, a satisfied people and a stable government.

Over the past several months, remarkable progress has been made in our battle against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Measures include repeated airstrikes by our F-16s and targeted ground assaults. We are willing to act to save our nation. To the extent that we are unable to fully execute battle plans, we urge the United States to give us necessary resources -- upgrading our equipment and providing the newest technology -- so that we can fight the terrorists proactively on our terms, not reactively on their terms. Give us the tools, and we will get the job done.

With his experience, Ambassador Holbrooke surely understands that peace in our region can be secured only by addressing long-term and neglected problems. Much as the Palestinian issue remains the core obstacle to peace in the Middle East, the question of Kashmir must be addressed in some meaningful way to bring stability to this region. We hope that the special envoy will work with India and Pakistan not only to bring a just and reasonable resolution to the issues of Kashmir and Jammu but also to address critical economic and environmental concerns.

The water crisis in Pakistan is directly linked to relations with India. Resolution could prevent an environmental catastrophe in South Asia, but failure to do so could fuel the fires of discontent that lead to extremism and terrorism. We applaud the president's desire to engage our nation and India to defuse the tensions between us.

Pakistan and the United States have much in common and should be partners in peace. This moment of crisis is an opportunity to recast our relationship. We are extending our hand in friendship. Indeed, Pakistan's new democracy has pried open the clenched fists of the extremists, to use a metaphor from President Obama's inaugural address. Let it not be said by future generations that our nations missed an extraordinary opportunity to build lasting peace in South Asia.


By Asif Ali Zardari

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The writer is president of Pakistan.

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PAKISTAN CAN DO THE JOB

The Obama administration well appreciates the critical importance of Afghanistan, Pakistan and by extension India to the security of the United States, NATO, Europe and the region.   More over, its most senior officials have direct experience and deep understanding of the stakes involved.  Vice President Joe Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  National Security Advisor James Jones was the former NATO commander when NATO took command of the International Security Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.  And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent four years on the Senate Armed Service Committee addressing these issues.

That said, reality rather than ideology must dominate the policies that the United States, NATO and other friends pursue if success is to be achieved in the regionBy success, the current security and economic crises confronting Afghanistan and Pakistan must be contained.  That will be a Sisyphean labor even though the conceptual solutions for resolving Pakistan's crises are not difficult to identify.

Regarding Afghanistan, make no mistake.  The West is losing.  The insurgencies and instabilities in Afghanistan cannot be defeated by military force.  Unless or until the civil sector is reformed—meaning creating jobs, establishing the rule of law, fielding a fair and effective judicial and police system, reducing corruption, stemming the narcotics epidemics and instituting better governance—-Afghanistan will remain a failed state.  Tragically, neither NATO nor the European Union has been able to respond to this necessity and the United States has fared no better.

The strategic conclusion is that to bring a measure of stability to Afghanistan, the key is to pacify Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and its North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
To accomplish that, Pakistan must resolve its own economic and security crises.  Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, given the proper tools, Pakistan can do the job without the need for foreign forces that would be rejected by the Pakistani people who have a solemn view of sovereignty and will not tolerate its infringement.

Tools in this case mean money and assistance.
Pakistan needs an additional $4-5 billion a year above what it is getting from the international community.  The bulk of that money would go into its economy that is in dire shape.  Beyond the balance of payments deficit that has only been temporarily closed by IMF loans, money for food, energy and critically needed infrastructure development is essential.

A little more than an additional billion dollars a year is needed for Pakistan's security forces.  About $200 million would be used to recruit, train and equip an additional 15,000 police and Frontier Corpsman a year.  Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan has the manpower and the infrastructure to accomplish that task.  It lacks the money.  The remainder would buy the equipment the Army desperately needs to fight and win the counterinsurgencies in FATA and NWFP including more helicopters, surveillance and electronic systems, precision guided weapons and force protection gear for its troops, trucks and bases as well as training to maintain this equipment.

But huge roadblocks impede providing Pakistan the tools to let them do the job.  In the midst of the worst economic implosion since the great depression, who can afford the increased funding?  Given Pakistan's history, guarantees are vital to ensuring the proper use of that money with full oversight and transparency.  Unfortunately, the prior government of Pervez Musharraf chose to spend over 2/3 of America's $10 billion in total coalition support funding intended for the Pakistani army on other items without informing anyone–a revelation unlikely to go down well in Washington.

To overcome these obstacles, the new Pakistani government is developing strategies to cope with the economic and security crises and will soon take them on the road.  Those strategies must answer the tough questions that will be raised by skeptical friends who, while understanding the criticality of succeeding in the region, need reassurances that future monies will be worth the investment and well spent.  And only Pakistan can make those guarantees work.

Two recommendations are vital if Pakistan is to succeed.  First, in addition to creating workable economic and security strategies, the Pakistani government must demonstrate that it is capable of executing them.  That means it needs to coordinate far better both its policies and the means to articulate the message.  Second, the West must recognize that Pakistan is the key to success in the region and thus to safeguarding our security in the process.  Unlike global bailouts for the financial systems that total trillions and stimulative packages of about the same level, Pakistan can succeed with a mere fraction of that largesse.  Still, this will be a very tough sell.

To paraphrase Churchill, if we are to succeed,  "give Pakistan the tools and Pakistan can do the job."


 

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

by Harlan Ullman

January 31ST, 2009


 

Harlan Ullman is senior advisor to The Atlantic Council in Washington, DC and to US European Command. He is a frequent visitor to Pakistan.

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Incredible India: The Indian Taliban - A Group of Barbarians

A few days back, Mangalore, India witnessed an incident which has brought shame and utter disrespect for the so called Indian fundamentalists. Workers of the Shri Ram Sena (Lord Ram's Army) entered a pub and started beating up women who were partying.

According to the Sena, all these activities, when done by women are unethical and against moral grounds of Indian culture. Women must not drink, smoke, dance in public places, and must be dressed in ethnic wear only, is what the Indian Fundamentalists, like the Sena think. When asked about the incident, women from metropolitan cities condemned it as an act of Hooliganism and Terrorism. Should we, the Youth take such acts quietly?


No where in the culture does it specify that women should not be allowed to indulge in such social activities. Director Pooja Bhatt said that the act was akin to what the Taliban or a hardline group from Pakistan would do.

More often than not, attacks on women are backed by so called cultural and religious reasons. Often, the culprits do not realise that the culture or religion does not allow bashing up of women. And if a culture does allow such acts, I condemn it.

These acts are not only acts of Hooliganism backed by lame excuses, but also violate a person's fundamental right to choose. If a certain group, community or an individual has a particular ideology, he/she/they must deliver their message in a non radical, peaceful manner and not through violence.

India has been witness to such criminal acts earlier as well. In 2001, fundamentalists of Bajrang Dal burned down streets, houses, property and killed a number of Muslims in Gujrat in a communal rage. Hindu fundamentalists burned down houses and killed a number of Christians in Kandhamal, forcing them to convert to Hinduism. Forceful conversion in the Kandhamal district had also been done by Evangelical Christian Fundamentalists a few years back. Not only this, there have been a number of incidents of women bashing, communal violence and forceful imposition of power and rules by such groups in the past.

The rise of violent fundamental groups has put forward security questions in the minds of many of us. Political backing of these groups forwards their path towards violence. The question here is that 'Are these groups in any way less than the hardcore elements prevailing in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Will India be subject to similar domestic terrorism?'

A country of cultural and communal diversity, India must not be ruled by these perpetrators of violence and injustice. These groups must be banned without second thoughts. This is certainly not the future what we want to see or want our future generations to witness. We must condemn such acts of hooliganism and terrorism and hold hands to fight back against them.

Row over Mangalore pub incident deepened

NEW DELHI, Jan 29 (APP): The row over pub incident in which girls and boys were beaten up by a group of Sri Rama Sene outside a pub in Mangalore in Karnataka state last Saturday has further deepened as the Hindu outfits have started a campaign against pub culture in India.

Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa and Ashok Gehlot, Rajasthan Chief Minister have joined the campaign by saying they will not allow growth of pub culture in their states, but said people should not take law in their hands.

Yeddyurappa, who has been accused of bowing to RSS pressure, said, "we won't allow this pub culture in Karnataka to grow. But on the other hand, those who take law in their hand will be dealt with very firmly."

Yeddyurappa has also refused to ban Sri Rama Sene whose activists have been arrested for pub incident by saying "he will discuss the issue with the police officers and the cabinet."

Meanwhile, Pramod Muthalik, chief of Rama Sene said BJP government in Karnataka has been formed on the Hindutva plank and asked the party not to sacrifice Hindu organisations for the sake of expediency.

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was of the view that there was nothing wrong in boys and girls going out together.

The Human Rights Commission of India, human rights organisations and women rights activists have strongly criticised the Mangalore incident describing it an act of "Hindu Talibnisation."

Click the link below

Video Footage & Interview of a Victim



Update : Mangalore pub attack: Muthalik, 27 supporters get bail


Bangalore, Jan 31 (IANS) Sri Rama Sene president Pramod Muthalik and 27 Sene activists arrested for last week’s attack on women in a Mangalore pub were Saturday released on bail.

A Mangalore court granted them bail with conditions including one that says they should report to the Mangalore North police station once a fortnight.

Prasad Attavar, vice president of the Karnataka Sri Rama Sene, also got bail.

The Sene had claimed ‘credit’ for the Jan 24 attack by about 40 men who slapped, abused, pushed, pulled hair and molested several young women at Amnesia - The Lounge on Balmatta Road in the centre of Mangalore, about 350 km from here.

Muthalik and Attavar did not take part in the attack but had defended it saying the women were ‘violating traditional Indian values’.

Attavar and 26 others were arrested two days after the incident and Muthalik three days back.

Muthalik was also questioned Saturday by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra on his alleged links with a bombing in Malegaon town of that neighbouring state on Sep 29.

Talking to reporters before he was granted bail, Muthalik denied he had links with the key accused in the Malegaon incident. He said he will convey this to the ATS team from Mumbai which arrived in Mangalore Friday.

Attavar told reporters after getting bail that the Sene was happy that its action had brought country-wide publicity. ‘Our popularity will increase because of this and there will be opposition to the growth of pub-culture in all states.’

The attackers have been charged with outraging the modesty of women, assault, criminal conspiracy and unlawful assembly.

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Incredible India : Girl weds dog to break ‘evil spell’

A nine-year-old tribal girl in eastern India has married a stray dog as part of a ritual to ward off an "evil spell" on her, Indian newspapers have reported.


An Indian villager poses with his dog and Karnamoni Handsa



The girl promised to "take care of the dog"

The girl, Karnamoni Handsa, had to be married quickly because she had a tooth rooted to her upper gum, which is considered a bad omen by her Santhal tribe in the remote village of Khanyhan, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Calcutta.

"Members of the village jury asked us to get her married to a dog or to face the bad omen," the girl's father was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

The tribe elders said the marriage would not affect the girl's life, and that she would be free to marry again later and did not need to divorce the dog.

"It will not spoil her future. We will marry her off to eligible bachelor when she grows up," the girl's mother told AFP.


'No regret'

The wedding - which took place on 11 June - was attended by more than 100 guests, who danced to the beating of drums and drank home-made liquor.

"I have no regret in marrying the dog Bacchan. I am fond of the dog who moves around our locality," the girl told the AFP.

"Bacchan is a stray dog who survives on left-overs. I will take care of the dog," she added.

Indian newspapers reported that local police officials had ordered an inquiry into the incident.

The Santhals - most of whom are sharecroppers - are a large tribe living in the states of West Bengal and neighbouring Bihar and Jharkhand.

BBC
Thursday, 19 June, 2003

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Secret Israeli database reveals full extent of illegal settlement

Just four years ago, the defense establishment decided to carry out a seemingly elementary task: establish a comprehensive database on the settlements. Brigadier General (res.) Baruch Spiegel, aide to then defense minister Shaul Mofaz, was put in charge of the project. For over two years, Spiegel and his staff, who all signed a special confidentiality agreement, went about systematically collecting data, primarily from the Civil Administration.

One of the main reasons for this effort was the need to have credible and accessible information at the ready to contend with legal actions brought by Palestinian residents, human rights organizations and leftist movements challenging the legality of construction in the settlements and the use of private lands to establish or expand them. The painstakingly amassed data was labeled political dynamite.

The defense establishment, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, steadfastly refused to publicize the figures, arguing, for one thing, that publication could endanger state security or harm Israel's foreign relations. Someone who is liable to be particularly interested in the data collected by Spiegel is George Mitchell, President Barack Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, who came to Israel this week for his first visit since his appointment. It was Mitchell who authored the 2001 report that led to the formulation of the road map, which established a parallel between halting terror and halting construction in the settlements.

The official database, the most comprehensive one of its kind ever compiled in Israel about the territories, was recently obtained by Haaretz. Here, for the first time, information the state has been hiding for years is revealed. An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements - about 75 percent - construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued. The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents.


 

Click here to view the secret Defense Ministry database on illegal construction in the territories. It should be noted that the information is given in Hebrew


 

The data, it should be stressed, do not refer only to the illegal outposts (information about which was included in the well-known report authored by attorney Talia Sasson and published in March 2005), but to the very heart of the settlement enterprise. Among them are veteran ideological settlements like Alon Shvut (established in 1970 and currently home to 3,291 residents, including Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun); Ofra (established in 1975, home to 2,708 residents, including

former Yesha Council spokesman Yehoshua Mor Yosef and media personalities Uri Elitzur and Hagai Segal); and Beit El (established in 1977, population 5,308, including Hagai Ben-Artzi, brother of Sara Netanyahu). Also included are large settlements founded primarily for economic motives, such as the city of Modi'in Illit (established in 1990 and now home to 36,282 people), or Givat Ze'ev outside Jerusalem (founded in 1983, population 11,139), and smaller settlements such as Nokdim near Herodion (established in 1982, population 851, including MK Avigdor Lieberman).

The information contained in the database does not conform to the state's official position, as presented, for instance, on the Foreign Ministry Web site, which states: "Israel's actions relating to the use and allocation of land under its administration are all taken with strict regard to the rules and norms of international law - Israel does not requisition private land for the establishment of settlements." Since in many of the settlements, it was the government itself, primarily through the Ministry of Construction and Housing, that was responsible for construction, and since many of the building violations involve infrastructure, roads, public buildings and so on, the official data also demonstrate government responsibility for the unrestrained planning and lack of enforcement of regulations in the territories. The extent of building violations also attests to the poor functioning of the Civil Administration, the body in charge of permits and supervision of construction in the territories.

According to the 2008 data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, approximately 290,000 Jews live in the 120 official settlements and dozens of outposts established throughout the West Bank over the past 41 years.

"Nothing was done in hiding," says Pinchas Wallerstein, director-general of the Yesha Council of settlements and a leading figure in the settlement project. "I'm not familiar with any [building] plans that were not the initiative of the Israeli government." He says that if the owners of private land upon which settlements are built were to complain and the court were to accept their complaint, then the structures would have to be moved somewhere else. "This has been the Yesha Council's position for the past years," he says.

You'd never know it from touring several of the settlements in which massive construction has taken place on private Palestinian lands. Entire neighborhoods built without permits or on private lands are inseparable parts of the settlements. The sense of dissonance only intensifies when you find that municipal offices, police and fire stations were also built upon and currently operate on lands that belong to Palestinians.

On Misheknot Haro'im Street in the Kochav Yaakov settlement, a young mother is carrying her two children home. "I've lived here for six years," she says, sounding surprised when told that her entire neighborhood was built upon private Palestinian land. "I know that there's some small area in the community that is in dispute, but I never heard that this is private land." Would she have built her home on this land had she known this from the start? "No," she answers. "I wouldn't have kicked anyone out of his home."

Not far away, at the settlement's large and unkempt trailer site, which is also built on private land, a young newlywed couple is walking to the bus stop: 21-year-old Aharon and his 19-year-old wife, Elisheva. They speak nearly perfect Hebrew despite having grown up in the United States and having settled permanently in Israel just a few months ago, after Aharon completed his army service in the ultra-Orthodox Nahal unit. Now he is studying computers at Machon Lev in Jerusalem. Asked why they chose to live here of all places, they list three reasons: It's close to Jerusalem, it's cheap and it's in the territories. In that order.

The couple pay their rent, NIS 550 a month, to the settlement secretariat. As new immigrants, they are still exempt from having to pay the arnona municipal tax. Aharon doesn't look upset when he hears that his trailer sits on private land. It doesn't really interest him. "I don't care what the state says, the Torah says that the entire Land of Israel is ours." And what will happen if they're told to move to non-private land? "We'll move," he says without hesitation.


 

A complicated problem

Even today, more than two years after concluding his official role, Baruch Spiegel remains loyal to the establishment. In a conversation, he notes several times that he signed a confidentiality agreement and so is not willing to go into the details of the work for which he was responsible. He was appointed by Shaul Mofaz to handle several issues about which Israel had given a commitment to the United States, including improving conditions for Palestinians whose lives were adversely affected by the separation fence, and supervision of IDF soldiers at the checkpoints.

Two years ago, Haaretz reporter Amos Harel revealed that the main task given Spiegel was to establish and maintain an up-to-date database on the settlement enterprise. This was after it became apparent that the United States, as well as Peace Now's settlement monitoring team, was in possession of much more precise information about settlement construction than was the defense establishment, which up to then had relied mostly on information collected by Civil Administration inspectors. The old database had many gaps in it, which was largely a consequence of the establishment preferring not to know exactly what was going on in this area.

Spiegel's database contains written information backed up by aerial photos and layers of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) data that includes information on the status of the land and the official boundaries of each settlement. "The work took two and a half years," says Spiegel. "It was done in order to check the status of the settlements and the outposts and to achieve the greatest possible accuracy in terms of the database: the land status, the legal status, the sector boundaries, the city building plan, government decisions, lands whose ownership is unclear. It was full-time, professional work done with a professional team of legal experts, planning people, GIS experts. And I hope that this work continues, because it is very vital. One has to know what's going on there and make decisions accordingly."


 

Who is keeping track of all of this now?

"I suppose it's the Civil Administration."


 

Why was there no database like this before your appointment?

"I don't know how much of a focus there was on doing it."


 

Why do you think the state is not publicizing the data?

"It's a sensitive and complex subject and there are all kinds of considerations, political and security-related. There were questions about the public's right to know, the freedom of information law. You should ask the officials in charge."


 

What are the sensitive matters?

"It's no secret that there are violations, that there are problems having to do with land. It's a complicated problem."


 

Is there also a problem for the country's image?

"I didn't concern myself with image. I was engaged in Sisyphean work to ensure that, first of all, they'll know what exists and what's legal and what's not legal and what the degree of illegality is, whether it involves the takeover of private Palestinian land or something in the process of obtaining proper building permits. Our job was to do the meticulous work of going over all the settlements and outposts that existed then - We found what we found and passed it on."


 

Do you think that this information should be published?

"I think they've already decided to publish the simpler part, concerning areas of jurisdiction. There are things that are more sensitive. It's no secret that there are problems, and it's impossible to do something illegal and say that it's legal. I can't elaborate, because I'm still bound to maintain confidentiality."


 

Dror Etkes, formerly the coordinator of Peace Now's settlement monitoring project and currently director of the Land Advocacy Project for the Yesh Din organization, says, "The government's ongoing refusal to reveal this material on the pretext of security reasons is yet another striking example of the way in which the state exploits its authority to reduce the information at the citizens' disposal, when they wish to formulate intelligent positions based on facts rather than lies and half-truths."

Following the initial exposure of the material, the Movement for Freedom of Information and Peace Now requested that the Defense Ministry publish the database, in accordance with the Freedom of Information law. The Defense Ministry refused. "This is a computerized database that includes detailed information, in different cross-sections, regarding the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria," the Defense Ministry said in response. "The material was collected by the defense establishment for its purposes and includes sensitive information. The ministry was asked to allow a review of the material in accordance with the Freedom of Information law, and after consideration of the request, decided not to hand over the material. The matter is pending and is the subject of a petition before the Administrative Affairs Court in Tel Aviv."


 

Ofra, Elon Moreh, Beit El


 

The database surveys settlement after settlement alphabetically. For each entry, it notes the source of the settlement's name and the form of settlement there (urban community, local council, moshav, kibbutz, etc.); its organizational affiliation (Herut, Amana, Takam, etc.), the number of inhabitants, pertinent government decisions, the official bodies to which the land was given, the status of the land upon which the settlement was built (state land, private Palestinian or Jewish land, etc.), a survey of the illegal outposts built in proximity to the settlement and to what extent the valid building plans have been executed. Beneath each entry, highlighted in red, is information on the extent of construction that has been carried out without permission and its exact location in the settlement.

Among all the revelations in the official data, it's quite fascinating to see what was written about Ofra, a veteran Gush Emunim settlement. According to a recent B'tselem report, most of the settlement's developed area sits on private Palestinian land and therefore falls into the category of an illegal outpost that is supposed to be evacuated. The Yesha Council responded to the B'tselem report, saying that the "facts" in it are "completely baseless and designed to present a false picture. The inhabitants of Ofra are careful to respect the rights of the Arab landowners, with whom they reached an agreement regarding the construction of the neighborhoods as well as an agreement that enables the private landowners to continue to work their lands."

But the information in the database about Ofra leaves no room for doubt: "The settlement does not conform to valid building plans. A majority of the construction in the community is on registered private lands without any legal basis whatsoever and no possibility of [converting the land to non-private use]." The database also gives a detailed description of where construction was carried out in Ofra without permits: "The original part of the settlement: [this includes] more than 200 permanent residential structures, agricultural structures, public structures, lots, roads and orchards in the old section of the settlement (in regard to which Plan 221 was submitted, but not advanced due to a problem of ownership)." After mentioning 75 trailers and temporary shelters in two groups within the old settlement, the database mentions the Ramat Zvi neighborhood, south of the original settlement: "There are about 200 permanent structures as well as lots being developed for additional permanent construction, all trespassing on private lands." Yesha Council chairman Danny Dayan responds: "I am not familiar with that data."

Another place where the data reveals illegal construction is Elon Moreh, one of the most famous settlements in the territories. In June 1979, several residents of the village of Rujib, southeast of Nablus, petitioned the High Court, asking it to annul the appropriation order for 5,000 dunams of land in their possession, that had been designated for the construction of the settlement. In court, the government argued, as it did regularly at the time, that the construction of the settlement was required for military needs, and therefore the appropriation orders were legal. But in a statement on behalf of the petitioners, former chief of staff Haim Bar-Lev asserted that, "In my best professional judgment, Elon Moreh does not contribute to Israel's security."

The High Court, relying on this statement and the statements of the original core group of settlers of Elon Moreh, who also argued that this was not a temporary settlement established for security purposes, but a permanent settlement, instructed the IDF to evacuate the settlement and return the lands to their owners. The immediate consequence of the ruling was to find an alternative site for construction of the settlement, on lands previously defined as "state lands." Following this ruling, Israel stopped officially using military injunctions in the territories for the purpose of establishing new settlements.

The lands that were originally taken for the purpose of building Elon Moreh were returned to their Palestinian owners, but according to the database, also in the new site where the settlement was built, called Har Kabir, "most of the construction was done without approved, detailed plans, and some of the construction involved trespassing on private lands. As for the state lands in the settlement, a detailed plan, no. 107/1, was prepared and published on 16/7/99, but has yet to go into effect."

The Shomron regional council, which includes Elon Moreh, said in response: "All the neighborhoods in the settlement were planned, and some were also built, by the State of Israel through the Housing Ministry. The residents of Elon Moreh did not trespass at all and any allegation of this kind is also false. The State of Israel is tasked with promoting and approving the building plans in the settlement, as everywhere else in the country, and as for the plans that supposedly have yet to receive final validity, just like many other communities throughout Israel, where the processes continue for decades, this does not delay the plans, even if the planning is not complete or being done in tandem."

Beit El, another veteran settlement, was also, according to the database, established "on private lands seized for military purposes (In fact, the settlement was expanded on private lands, by means of trespassing in the northern section of the settlement) and on state lands that were appropriated during the Jordanian period (the Maoz Tzur neighborhood in the south of the settlement)."

According to the official data, construction in Beit El in the absence of approved plans includes the council office buildings and the "northern neighborhood (Beit El Bet) that was built for the most part on private lands. The neighborhood comprises widespread construction, public buildings and new ring roads (about 80 permanent buildings and trailers); the northeastern neighborhood (between Jabal Artis and the old part of the settlement) includes about 20 permanent residential buildings, public buildings (including a school building), 40 trailers and an industrial zone (10 industrial buildings). The entire compound is located on private land and has no plan attached."

Moshe Rosenbaum, head of the Beit El local council, responds: "Unfortunately, you are cooperating with the worst of Israel's enemies and causing tremendous damage to the whole country."


 

'One giant bluff'

Ron Nahman, mayor of Ariel, was re-elected to a sixth term in the last elections. Nahman is a long-time resident of the territories and runs a fascinating heterogeneous city. Between a visit to the trailer site where evacuees from Netzarim are housed and a stop at a shop that sells pork and other non-kosher products, mostly to the city's large Russian population, Nahman complains about the halting of construction in his city and about his battles with the Civil Administration over every building permit.

Ariel College, Nahman's pride and joy, is also mentioned in the database: "The area upon which Ariel College was built was not regulated in terms of planning." It further explains that the institution sits on two separate plots and the new plan has not yet been discussed. Nahman confirms this, but says the planning issue was recently resolved.

When told that dozens of settlements include construction on private lands, he is not surprised. "That's possible," he says. The fact that in three-quarters of the settlements, there has been construction that deviates from the approved plans doesn't surprise him either. "All the complaints should be directed at the government, not at us," he says. "As for the small and communal settlements, they were planned by the Housing Ministry's Rural Building Administration. The larger communities are planned by the ministry's district offices. It's all the government. Sometimes the Housing Ministry is responsible for budgetary construction, which is construction out of the state budget. In the Build Your Own Home program, the state pays a share of the development costs and the rest is paid for by the individual. All of these things are one giant bluff. Am I the one who planned the settlements? It was Sharon, Peres, Rabin, Golda, Dayan."

The database provides information attesting to a failure to adhere to planning guidelines in the territories. For example, an attempt to determine the status of the land of the Argaman settlement in the Jordan Rift Valley found that "the community was apparently established on the basis of an appropriation order from 1968 that was not located." About Mevo Horon, the database says: "The settlement was built without a government decision on lands that are mostly private within a closed area in the Latrun enclave (Area Yod). There was an allocation

for the area to the WZO from 1995, which was issued as in a deviation from authority, apparently on the basis of a political directive." In the Tekoa settlement, trailers were leased to the IDF "and installed contrary to the area's designation according to a detailed plan? and some also deviate from the boundaries of the plan."

Most of the territories of the West Bank have not been annexed to Israel, and therefore regulations for the establishment and construction of communities there differ from those that apply within Israel proper. The Sasson report, which dealt with the illegal outposts, was based in part on data collected by Spiegel, and listed the criteria necessary for the establishment of a new settlement in the territories:

    1. The Israeli government issued a decision to establish the settlement

    2. The settlement has a defined jurisdictional area

    3. The settlement has a detailed, approved outline plan

    4. The settlement lies on state land or on land that was purchased by Israelis and registered under their name in the Land Registry.

According to the database, the state gave the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and/or the Construction and Housing Ministry authorization to plan and build on most of the territories upon which the settlements were constructed. These bodies allocated the land to those who eventually carried out the actual construction of the settlement: Sometimes it was the Settlement Division of the WZO and other times it was the Construction and Housing Ministry itself, sometimes through the Rural Building Administration. In several cases, settlements were built by Amana, the Gush Emunim settlement arm. Another body cited in the database as having received allocations and being responsible for construction in some of the settlements is Gush Emunim's Settler National Fund.

Talmud Torah

@Text: Regular schools and religious schools (Talmudei Torah) have also been built on Palestinian lands. According to the database, in the southern part of the Ateret settlement, "15 structures were built outside of state lands, which are used for the Kinor David yeshiva. There are also new ring roads and a special security area that is illegal." Kinor David is the name of a "yeshiva high school with a musical framework." The sign at the entrance says the yeshiva was built by the Amana settlement movement, the Mateh Binyamin local council and theWZO settlement division.

The data regarding Michmash also make it very clear that part of the settlement was built on "private lands via trespassing." For example, "In the center of the settlement (near the main entrance) is a trailer neighborhood that serves as a Talmud Torah and other buildings (30 trailers) on private land."

On a winter's afternoon, a bunch of young children were playing there, one of them wearing a shirt printed with the words "We won't forget and we won't forgive." There were no teachers in sight. A young woman in slacks, taking her baby to the doctor, stopped for a moment to chat. She moved here from Ashkelon because her husband's parents are among the settlement's founders. When her son is old enough for preschool, she won't send him to the Talmud Torah. Not because it sits on private land, but just because that's not the type of education she wants for him. "I don't think there's been construction on private land here," she said. "I don't think there ought to be, either."

In the Psagot settlement, where there has also been a lot of construction on private land, it's easy to discern the terracing style typical of Palestinian agriculture in the region. According to the database, in Psagot there are "agricultural structures (a winery and storehouses) to the east of the settlement, close to the grapevines cultivated by the settlement by trespassing." During a visit here, the winery was abandoned. Its owner, Yaakov Berg, acquired land from the Israel Lands Administration near the Migron outpost and a new winery and regional visitors' center is currently under construction there.

"The vineyards are located in Psagot," says Berg, who is busy with the preparations for the new site. From the unfinished observation deck one can see an enormous quarry in the mountains across the way. "If I built a bathroom here without permission from the Civil Administration, within 15 minutes, a helicopter would be here and I'd be told that it was prohibited," Berg complains. "And right here there's an illegal Palestinian quarry that continues to operate."


 

The politicians did it

Kobi Bleich, spokesperson for the Ministry of Construction and Housing: "The ministry participates in subsidizing the development costs of settlements in Priority Area A, in accordance with decisions of the Israeli government. Development works are carried out by the regional councils, and only after the ministry has ascertained that the new neighborhood is located within an approved city plan. This applies throughout Israel as well as in the areas over the Green Line. Let me emphasize that the ministry's employees are charged with implementing the policies of the Israeli government. All of the actions in the past were done solely in keeping with the decisions of the political echelon."

Danny Poleg, spokesperson for the Judea and Samaria district of the Israel Police: "The issue of the construction of police facilities is the responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Security, so any questions should be addressed to them."

The Internal Security Ministry spokesman responds: "And for construction by the police is allocated by the Israel Lands Administration in coordination with the Internal Security Ministry. There is no police station in Modi'in Ilit, but a rapid response post for the local residents on land allocated by the local authority. The land in Givat Ze'ev was allocated by the local council and the police station is located within the municipality. The road to the police headquarters was built by the Housing and Construction ministry and is maintained by the local council."

Avi Roeh, head of the Mateh Binyamin regional council (whose jurisdiction includes the settlements of Ofra, Kochav Yaakov, Ateret, Ma'aleh Michmash and Psagot): "The Mateh Binyamin regional council, like the neighboring councils in Judea and Samaria, is coping with political decisions regarding the manner of the the communities' expansion. However, this does not remove the need for proper planning procedures in order to expand the settlements in an orderly manner and in accordance with the law."

For its response, the WZO sent a thick booklet, a copy of which was previously sent to attorney Talia Sasson in response to her report. "Settlement in Judea and Samaria, as in Israel, has been accompanied by the preparation of regional master plans," says the booklet. "Steering committees from various government ministries, the Civil Administration and the municipal authorities were involved in the preparation of these plans? The (settlement) department worked solely on lands that were given to it by contract from the authorities in the Civil Administration and all the lands that were allocated to it by contract were properly allocated."

The Civil Administration, which was first asked for a response regarding the database more than a month ago, has yet to reply

By Uri Blau

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For first time, U.S. professors call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel

In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, a group of American university professors has for the first time launched a national campaign calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

While Israeli academics have grown used to such news from Great Britain, where anti-Israel groups several times attempted to establish academic boycotts, the formation of the United States movement marks the first time that a national academic boycott movement has come out of America. Israeli professors are not sure yet how big of an impact the one-week-old movement will have, but started discussing the significance of and possible counteractions against the campaign.

"As educators of conscience, we have been unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel's indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions," the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel stated in its inaugural press release last Thursday. Speaking in its mission statement of the "censorship and silencing of the Palestine question in U.S. universities, as well as U.S. society at large," the group follows the usual pattern of such boycotts, calling for "non-violent punitive measures" against Israel, such as the implementation of divestment initiatives, "similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era."

The campaign was founded by a group of 15 academics, mostly from California, but is, "currently expanding to create a network that embraces the United States as a whole," according to David Lloyd, a professor of English at the University of Southern California who responded on behalf of the group to a Haaretz query. "The initiative was in the first place impelled by Israel's latest brutal assault on Gaza and by our determination to say enough is enough."

"The response has been remarkable given the extraordinary hold that lobbying organizations like AIPAC exert over U.S. politics and over the U.S. media, and in particular given the campaign of intimidation that has been leveled at academics who dare to criticize Israel's policies," Lloyd wrote in an e-mail to Haaretz Monday. "Within a short weekend since the posting of the press release, more than 80 academics from all over the country have endorsed the action and the numbers continue to grow."

Asked if the group would accept the endorsement of Hamas supporters, Lloyd said, "We have no a priori policy with regard to the membership or affiliation of supporters of the boycott so long as they are in accord with the main aims stated in the press release."

He argued that, "on several occasions Hamas has sought direct negotiations with Israel, a pursuit that constitutes de facto recognition of Israel, and has openly discussed abandoning its call for the destruction of the state of Israel conditional on reciprocal guarantees from Israel."

Lloyd wrote that to the best of his knowledge, all supporters of the anti-Israel boycott were also opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Asked if logic wouldn't dictate that he and his colleagues boycott themselves, he responded, "Self-boycott is a difficult concept to realize. But speaking for myself, I would have supported and honored such a boycott had it been proposed by my colleagues overseas."

Durban bred, British approved

The idea of an academic boycott against Israel originated in 2001 at the "World Conference Against Racism" in Durban, South Africa. A first attempt to implement a boycott was undertaken by British professors in the wake of Israel's 2002 Operation Defensive Shield and the Jenin massacre claim. Since then, British academics tried several times to establish boycotts, with the latest such effort failing because legal advisers a few months ago pointed out that academic boycotts are discriminatory and thus illegal. Yet, analysts say that another British boycott campaign is to be expected in the follow up of Cast Lead.

In the U.S., on the other hand, only a few professors have supported the idea of an academic boycott. In 2006, the American Association of University Professors declared its objection to the British boycott, saying members, "especially oppose selective academic boycotts that entail an ideological litmus test."

In 2007, nearly 300 university presidents across the United States signed a statement denouncing the boycott, under the motto "Boycott Israeli Universities? Boycott Ours, Too!"

First indications that the climate might change in light of the Gaza operation could be seen earlier this month when the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario proposed, "Israeli academics be barred from speaking, teaching or conducting research at the province's universities unless they condemn Israel's actions in Gaza," as the Inside Higher Ed Web site reported.

Not a mass movement

Israeli academics are hesitant to sound the alarm bells in light of the recent development. "One has to look at this with some degree of caution," said Gerald Steinberg, the American-educated chair of Bar Ilan University's political studies department. "Yes, the organization's declarations are coming from the United States, but this is not at all yet a mass movement."

Jonathan Rynhold, who also teaches political science at Bar Ilan, explained that boycott movements are rare in America, "because the U.S. has much stronger political culture and laws about freedom of speech than the UK. In America, there is stronger sense that one should be able to think and say whatever one wants."

"What they're trying to do," Rynhold continued in his analysis of anti-Israel boycotts, "is blurring the distinction between criticism of Israeli policies and criticism of Israel's existence. Their game is to move the liberals, who accept Israel's right to exist and don't think Israel is wrong every time but criticize Israeli policies as and when they think it's right, and turn them into radical left-wing critics [who believe] Israel is racist in its core and everything it does is wrong."

Rynhold and Steinberg said that the new U.S. campaign is a clone of its British predecessors. The two professors, who were both born in England, speak out of experience. When the original boycott movement arose - initially attacking only Bar Ilan and Haifa University - they were among the co-founders of the International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom, which was fighting the boycott but ultimately folded for lack of funding. Although none of the previous boycott efforts were successful, Steinberg is concerned about every new round. While he said that it's too early to predict the impact of the U.S. boycott, he sharply criticized the Israeli government and local universities for their handling of the previous boycott.

"The government and the universities have completely neglected not just the academic boycott but in general this kind of soft war," he said. "The military prepared to go into Gaza for two and half years. But in terms of the boycott movement, both the ministry of education and the foreign ministry - which had pledged support for the existing anti-boycott frameworks - completely failed to prepare their own portfolios for this."

"The battle is just beginning now," Steinberg added. "The main response will have to come from American academics who find this kind of bias to be unacceptable and will fight it. But for those of us in Israel who are interested in helping to be a catalyst in that process, the funding has been completely cut off. There was the naive view that having won a few battles in Britain meant the war had been won." Yet, giving the boycotters too much attention might be counterproductive, Steinberg emphasized.

Effective counterattacks need to be prepared, he said, "but at the same time we must not overreact and provide stimulation and amplification to this process - that is precisely what they're seeking."

Other pro-Israel advocates are less hesitant and soft-spoken in their assessment of the U.S. boycott.

"The usual anti-Israel suspects in U.S. universities may sign on to the petition, but it won't amount to much," predicted Mitchell Bard, executive director at the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, which seeks to strengthen the pro-Israel camp at American colleges. "If it becomes a widespread effort, I'm sure some effort will be given to countering it, but it is out of touch with the mood in the country," he said. "Israel has near record high support, [U.S. President Barack] Obama has just taken office with a positive message and the focus will be on moving the peace process forward, not sideshows by anti-Semites and cranks among American pseudo-academics."


 

By Raphael Ahren

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Consent and advise

On the first day of Operation Cast Lead, the air force bombed the graduation ceremony of a police course, killing dozens of policemen. Months earlier, an operational and legal controversy was already swirling around the planned attack. According to a military source who was involved in the planning, bombing the site of the ceremony was authorized with no difficulty, but questions were raised about the intent to strike at the graduates of the course. Military Intelligence, convinced the attack was justified, pressed for its implementation. Representatives of the international law division (ILD) in the Military Advocate General's Office at first objected, fearing a possible violation of international law.

"This was a very large group of people who at that moment were ostensibly civilians and the next day would become legitimate military targets," says an operational source. "You take these dozens of policemen and put them in your gunsights. That certainly came up in all the discussions and soul-searching."

Over the course of several months, the operational echelons, particularly Military Intelligence, kept up the pressure on the army's legal staff. In the end, ILD authorized the air strike as it was carried out. The "incrimination" of the policemen (that is, justifying an attack on them) was based on their categorization as a resistance force in the event of an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip; not on information about any of them as individuals.

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"Underlying our rationale was the way Hamas used the security forces," says a senior ILD figure. "Actually, one can look at the totality as the equivalent of the enemy's armed force, so they were not perceived as police. In our eyes, all the armed forces of Hamas are the equivalent of the army, just as in the face of the enemy's army every soldier is a legitimate target."

Experts in international law term the justification for the bombing raid problematic. "In a properly run state, attacking policemen as though they are soldiers is prohibited," says Prof. Yuval Shany, who teaches public international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "When we are dealing with a government like Hamas, in which the boundaries between the different forces are not clear, the police force may have a combat role. But if you follow that line, there is not much that differentiates them from [Israeli] reservists or even from 16-year-olds who will be drafted in two years. You have to draw the line and restrict attacks to those in active service. This is not the only case in which the IDF offered a flexible interpretation of the law. The army attacked the infrastructure of the Hamas government and hit ministries. But unless you can show that there was military equipment in those offices, an attack on structures that do not serve a military purpose is a violation of the rules of war. The buildings are civilian sites and must not be attacked."

However, after entertaining initial doubts, ILD authorized the bombing of Hamas governmental targets. "As we understand it," says a senior figure in ILD, "the way Hamas operates is to use the entire governmental infrastructure for the organization's terrorist purposes, so that the distinctions are a bit different. We adjust the targets to the case of a terrorist regime."

Civilian on the roof


The ILD is based in a neglected building in the Kirya, the defense establishment compound in Tel Aviv. The unit consists of about 20 officers who hold a legal education. The department has existed in its present form and name since the start of the 1990s. Until then the unit was known as the International Law Branch, or 'Debil' in the Hebrew acronym, a word that means imbecile, until a senior officer in the unit demanded a change of name.

ILD takes pride in the influence its officers exerted on the character of the war in Gaza. For example, the unit induced the IDF to warn people before their homes were bombed by means of a procedure known as 'knock on the roof'; echoing the 'knock on the door campaign' in Israel in which funds are raised to fight cancer; in which munitions are fired harmlessly at roof corners. Sources in the unit say they tried to draw lessons from the warnings that were given in the Second Lebanon War. According to human rights organizations, the civilians in Lebanon were not told which places were safe and the roads on which they fled were bombed and became death traps. Once a warning is issued, say senior ILD officers, a strike against civilians who are bodily defending a structure can be validated as though they were combatants. Other legal experts dispute this. Among them is Colonel (res.) Daniel Reisner, who headed ILD until about five years ago. In his view, as he told Haaretz after Operation Cast Lead, such civilians retain their civilian status. I don't think you can incriminate someone who is standing on a roof just because he is there," Reisner said. "Possibly the attack on him will be considered legitimate -collateral damage," but he will not be a target."

A senior ILD figure explains: "The people who go into a house despite a warning do not have to be taken into account in terms of injury to civilians, because they are voluntary human shields. From the legal point of view, I do not have to show consideration for them. In the case of people who return to their home in order to protect it, they are taking part in the fighting."

What about a civilian who positions himself in front of a tank?


"If someone stands in front of a tank in order to block its progress, he is participating in warfare." But he says that in practice, the IDF does not attack civilians in such cases.

ILD's permissive posture comes as no surprise to jurists who monitor the unit's legal opinions. According to one of them, the unit is considered -more militant than any other legal body in Israel, and is ready to adopt the most flexible interpretations of the law in order to justify IDF operations." Pressure from operational elements and an understanding of their considerations on the part of ILD appear to affect the unit's legal opinions. "The army knows what it wants. For the operational echelon things are very clear," says an IDF operational source. "When the legal advisers thought something was objectionable or problematic, they definitely came under pressure to produce a positive bottom line."

"Our goal is not to fetter the army, but to give it the tools to win in a lawful manner," says an ILD officer. Reisner, the unit's former commander, says he understands why it has acquired a reputation for permissiveness: "We defended policy that is on the edge: the "neighbor procedure" [making a neighbor knock on the door of a potentially dangerous house], house demolitions, deportation, targeted assassination; we defended all the magic formulas for dealing with terrorism. In that sense, ILD is a body that restrains action, but does not stop it. The army says, "Here is a magic formula, is it within the bounds of what is possible? To which I will reply, I am ready to try to defend it, but I am not sure I will succeed. If it's white I will allow it, if it's black I will prohibit it, but in cases of gray I will be part of the dilemma: I do not stop at gray."

The dilemma of the gray areas and ILD's attempts to discover untapped potential in international law may perhaps explain the unit's great enthusiasm for providing legal advice to the army and the glint in advisers' eyes when certain terms roll off their tongue: 'proportional equilibrium,' 'legitimate military target,' 'illegal combatants.' 'What we are seeing now is a revision of international law,' Reisner says. 'If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries. If the same process occurred in private law, the legal speed limit would be 115 kilometers an hour and we would pay income tax of 4 percent. So there is no connection between the question 'Will it be sanctioned?' and the act's legality. After we bombed the reactor in Iraq, the Security Council condemned Israel and claimed the attack was a violation of international law. The atmosphere was that Israel had committed a crime. Today everyone says it was preventive self-defense. International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal moulds. Eight years later it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."

Did the attacks of September 11 influence your legal situation?

"Absolutely. When we started to define the confrontation with the Palestinians as an armed confrontation, it was a dramatic switch, and we started to defend that position before the Supreme Court. In April 2001 I met the American envoy George Mitchell and explained that above a certain level, fighting terrorism is armed combat and not law enforcement. His committee [which examined the circumstances of the confrontation in the territories] rejected that approach. Its report called on the Israeli government to abandon the armed confrontation definition and revert to the concept of law enforcement. It took four months and four planes to change the opinion of the United States, and had it not been for those four planes I am not sure we would have been able to develop the thesis of the war against terrorism on the present scale."

Individual approach

One of the core reasons for ILD's permissive approach may be its desire to preserve a modicum of relevance and influence in periods when the atmosphere in the General Staff and the territorial commands is particularly militant. A former senior commander notes that in the period when Daniel Reisner; an articulate, charismatic officer; headed the unit, its staff, and above all Reisner himself, acquired a respected status within the IDF officer corps. By the same token, the influence of the current staff, under the command of Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, is not self-evident. Sources involved in the work of Southern Command note that the commanding general, Yoav Gallant, is quite suspicious of the advisers and is known as a 'wild man,' a 'cowboy' or a 'sheriff' in terms of the importance; meaning lack of importance; he attaches to legal advice. The legal adviser to Southern Command was not invited to the situation appraisal ahead of the Gaza offensive and was excluded from smaller planning forums. Yet it was actually Operation Cast Lead that led to something of an improvement in relations between ILD and Gallant.

At first the impression was that the forces were taking great liberty in demolishing homes and uprooting vegetation. Soldiers reported that they were destroying whole streets and neighborhoods. This was contrary to the directive contained in the legal annex to the General Staff order for Operation Cast Lead: 'Where an operational alternative exists that will meet the military need while minimizing the scale of damage to non-involved property, that alternative is to be chosen.'

To ILD it appeared that some field commanders did not grasp that they were subject to intra-IDF review. The unit therefore pressed for a more orderly set of tools for receiving authorization to carry out demolitions and 'flattening' (hisuf, a newspeak word from Hebrew for 'expose,' meaning the leveling of large areas, both built-up and agricultural, to flush out people in hiding or for other reasons'). In other cases, ILD staff expressed their concern over the delay by troops in evacuating wounded Palestinians, including some who had been trapped in their homes for days.

In practice, the legal unit's approach did not always have an effect on the field forces. The legal annex to the General Staff order spelled out the principles of international law, explained the essence of war crimes and demanded an investigation of every case of a suspected war crime. The document directed commanding officers to take a particularly cautious approach in the use of cluster bombs, 'incendiary' munitions (such as those containing phosphorus), antipersonnel mines and booby traps. "Before using these weapons, the military advocate general or the ILD must be consulted in each specific case," the document stated.

There was quite comprehensive legal advice provided by ILD personnel to the General Staff in the operation's planning stages and in the course of its execution. ILD staff regularly attend the 'operations and sorties' meetings held on Wednesdays under the head of the operations division or the operations directorate. The legal advisers receive the list of proposed targets and the relevant intelligence material ahead of the meeting, prepare a visual presentation of their remarks and voice them in the time allotted; usually between five minutes and a quarter of an hour; for a discussion of the target. Targets were discussed more frequently during the fighting in Gaza, notably in the operations division and in the High Command. The ILD staff at Southern Command was beefed up, and legal advisers were also sent to the Gaza Division. They were involved in authorizing 'chance' targets (such as squads that fired Qassam rockets?), in which the decision to attack was made at the field level in the course of combat; they also authorized orders and tried to help commanding officers who were trying to decide about operational alternatives.

"This format of operative advice would seem to run contrary to the recommendations contained in Chapter 14 of the Winograd Report on the management of the Second Lebanon War: At the same time, we are concerned that the growing reliance on legal advice in the course of a military operation is liable to shift the responsibility from elected officials and commanding officers to advisers, and is liable to adversely effect both the essence of the decisions and the operational activity," the report states. Despite the explicit reference to 'elected officials and commanding officers,' the senior staff of ILD maintain that as they understand it, the recommendation refers to legal advice at field level. Prof. Ruth Gavison, who is believed to be the author of this section of the report, declined to comment.

The legal annex to the operational order stated that "as far as possible in the circumstances, the civilian population in the area of a legitimate target is to be warned." But this is immediately followed by a validating disclaimer: This can be avoided if it is liable to endanger the action or the forces. ILD personnel also authorized an easing of the rules of engagement in Gaza. The results of that policy can be seen in the large number of civilian casualties and may also account for the use of a mortar, which is considered a 'statistical weapon' (meaning that it is inaccurate), against a target next to a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school, in which Palestinians were sheltering. According to the IDF investigation, the mortar shell was 30 meters wide of the target and hit the building itself, killing some 40 people, according to Palestinian reports. Subsequently the IDF hit two more UNRWA structures.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who visited the area shortly after the cease-fire, termed the attack on UN institutions an 'outrage' and called for an investigation. According to senior ILD personnel, the large number of Palestinian deaths, including hundreds of children, the vast destruction wreaked on populated areas and the testimonies about indiscriminate attacks do not necessarily call into question the operation's legality.

"If there is intensive combat," says a senior figure in the unit, ?and you call in air support, it is possible that many civilians will be hurt, and therefore [sic] the numbers will not annul the legality of the action if you did what you are obliged to do ... If we warn and they shoot from a house, it is not unjustified, from a legal point of view at least, to return fire only because more civilians are liable to be hurt [sic].?

When you hear officers say that 'cautiousness is aggressiveness' or hear the GOC Southern Command call for setting Gaza back 10 years, don't you see a disparity between international law and events on the ground?


"The troops are in an area in which combat is extremely complicated. Not only is it a crowded, densely built-up area, but the terrorists are located in the most populated areas, and on top of that there are explosive devices, tunnels and booby traps everywhere. In this situation, and with the form of combat against them different from combat against a military enemy who meets you in the field, the way to move forward is to use force that produces results: if the building is boobytrapped and you shoot at it, the effect is greater."

If you had known that 11 people would be killed together with Hamas senior figure Nizar Rian in the air force attack on his home, would you have authorized the action?



"From what I know, prior warning was given and people left the house. They apparently returned despite the warning at a stage when it was impossible to change the attack. If I had been asked beforehand and that outcome had been known, I would have said not to attack, because the target was actually his house, which served as a command post and an arms depot, and not the person himself."

Standing the law on its head

"Beyond the general summation by ILD; that Southern Command respected international law; Pnina Sharvit-Baruch and her staff are not eager to volunteer even the most basic information about the details of the legal advice they provided or how they provided it. Repeated requests to interview the legal adviser of Southern Command, Lieutenant Colonel Avi Kalo, and the divisional advisers were turned down. In response to a request for clarification from Haaretz about the advice given by ILD in matters such as allowing the evacuation of wounded people, the use of phosphorus in areas populated by civilians and attacks on hospitals and mosques, an ILD officer stated: "We examined the list of questions you submitted, and regrettably, at this stage, we cannot add any details on these subjects beyond what you have been told."

The dean of the Faculty of Law in the College of Management, Prof. Orna Ben-Naftali, is convinced that international law; her field; is bankrupt, and the results of the IDF operation in Gaza only reinforce this opinion. "Today, this discipline is utilized only to justify the use of force," she says. "It has ceased to exist, because there is a clear inconsistency between the rules and the reality to which they are applied. Distinctions between types of conflicts or between civilians and combatants no longer exist in the field, and one can put forward weighty and serious reasons that will justify almost any action. The implication is to validate the use of almost unlimited force in a manner that is totally at odds with the basic goal of humanitarian law. Instead of legal advice and international humanitarian law minimizing suffering, they legitimize the use of force."

According to Ben-Naftali, the application of international law in the territories, and in the Gaza Strip in particular, lays the groundwork for war crimes, in which, in her opinion, the legal advisers themselves are culpable. "It is a reasonable assumption that the legal advice validates offenses while ignoring the context in which they are perpetrated," she says. "A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law has actually been stood on its head. It has ceased to fulfill its purpose, and so we have to admit that it has gone into dissolution procedures ahead of bankruptcy."

A different approach is taken by Prof. Gabriella Blum, a former ILD officer who now teaches at Harvard Law School and specializes in the laws of armed conflict. "As long as you accept the paradigm of the rules of law," she says by telephone from the United States, "the division into those who are involved and those who are not involved is right in a war against terrorism and also in a war against another state. The question is how to translate this in a specific case. Is a power station a legitimate target when you are fighting Syria? Apparently it is. In certain circumstances a calculation will have to be made of how much it contributes to the military effort and how much it contributes to the civilian population, and the same calculation has to be made in connection with Hamas ... Just because one can make cynical use of all kinds of distinctions in their application does not mean the distinctions should be scrapped. They need to be adapted. The question is how to do that."

Where have all the bachelors gone?


In 2002, a team headed by Major General Amos Yadlin considered the laws of war as they apply to targeted assassinations. The team, which included the commander of ILD at the time, Daniel Reisner, and the IDF house philosopher, Prof. Asa Kasher, was asked to address the following situation: "Assume that there is a terrorist in Gaza and you know that the terrorist is a Palestinian male bachelor between the ages of 18 and 45 and that tomorrow he is for certain going to kill an Israeli male aged between 18 and 45, and there is only one opportunity to kill him: by means of a missile, which will definitely succeed. How many Palestinian bachelors aged 18-45 do you agree to have die, with certainty, from the missile?"

The bizarre phrasing of the question was intended to neutralize the uncertainty that attaches to decisions in such cases and to examine the participants' unadulterated moral attitude. The team members jotted down their response on a piece of paper; they ranged from zero to 'as many as needed' (no end). The average number of permitted collateral deaths was 3.14 (pi). Maybe it is not surprising that the outcome generated by the question was an irrational number.


Reisner relates that his response was two people. If you formulate the question differently and ask whether I agree to sacrifice an Israeli man for three Palestinians, the answer might be different, but eight, for example, doesn't seem right to me. I learned a few things from that exercise: that young people tend toward higher numbers than older people, that people with families tend to give higher numbers than bachelors, that a correlation exists between political outlook and the number given. In the Shin Bet security service, by the way, there are those who say zero. I don't know what the right answer is, but I know that the question has to be asked before an attack. If the commander asked the question and answered it based on a test of reasonableness; the task of the legal expert has been fully carried out.

Reisner joined ILD in 1985 and headed the unit for 10 years. He is currently a partner in the law firm of Herzog, Fox & Neeman, heading its Public International Law and Homeland Security division. This story, he says, attests to the considerable flexibility that the laws of war allow, particularly the tests of proportionality; the damage inflicted on military targets and collateral damage to civilians. Reisner cautions against cases in which the judgment of the legal expert might replace the moral judgment of the commander, who in the last analysis bears responsibility for his actions. He cites, in this connection, a case in which a decision was required within 15 minutes about whether to carry out an operation that was liable to harm civilians: "A senior army figure entered the room and the first thing he did was point at me and ask, ?Has he authorized it already?" That was a rare case in which I gave them a speech about how the decision was theirs, along with the responsibility. Even then, though, I told them what I tended to think."

At the end of the 1990s, and more particularly since the start of the second intifada in 2000, ILD officers began to take part regularly in meetings about targets and operational plans. According to Reisner, the desire to have the legal experts take part in the discussions stemmed from a change in the approach to IDF activity in the territories; it was recategorized from policing to military action; and also from the changes in international norms and the plans to establish the International Criminal Court, the first permanent war crimes tribunal, where the first trial opened this week.

"The commanders hear about this and say, "I might find myself in that court; where is my lawyer?" So it becomes natural for the military to put lawyers in places where they have never been before," Reisner says. He notes that the most dramatic shift in operative legal advice began when Israel started to assassinate Palestinians openly.

"Until then we could say, "We didn't do it, but that guy was a real shit." We could ask who fired the missile and whose helicopter it was,? Reisner says. "But after the assassination of Thabet Thabet [the secretary general of Fatah in the Tul Karm area, who was shot to death in December 2000] allegations began to be voiced; "You shot a civilian in cold blood; that is a crime?"; and we were called upon to come up with a legal formulation. Effectively, the question was whether we could treat terrorists like an army and use our force against them openly. We wrote a revolutionary opinion, stating that above a certain level fighting terrorism is analogous to war and that, subject to very specific rules, we will authorize such attacks. The opinion was assailed in the High Court of Justice, but was endorsed."

How did it work in practice?


In the first discussions about targeted assassination, a very strange feeling came to the fore. The officers didn?t understand why lawyers were present, what they were doing there. I used to go alone. I was senior enough so that no one would tell me to leave, but you had to make them feel that we were not there to replace them. In time there were interesting developments. They became familiar with all the [legal] tests and would repeat our mantras, so much so that we felt superfluous. We instructed them to the point where they could make decisions without us.?

How many times did you express sweeping opposition to an army proposal?


"There was one case when I told a senior officer: "Beyond this it is not legal, and if you do it, it is probable that I will have to launch legal proceedings against you. We cannot allow you to do this?; and he did not do it. Generally, the conception is that the lawyer outlines the limits. He makes it clear to the commander where the red lines are beyond which he must not go, and that everything he does within the red lines is his responsibility. Because we are the army's lawyers, we will try to defend cases in gray areas."

A month ago, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said that his office was preparing to cope with possible suits abroad against Israeli figures in the wake of the Gaza operation. In the case of a violation of the laws of war or the perpetration of war crimes, the possibility exists that responsibility will also be imputed to the military commander's legal advisers. Thus, for example, the British jurist Philippe Sands argues in his recent book "Torture Team" that the legal advisers to former U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld bear responsibility for the torture of prisoners they permitted at the Guantanamo detention center and in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. They will now have to consider carefully whether to visit any of the countries whose laws recognize universal judicial jurisdiction (which applies to crimes committed outside their borders).

"I have no doubt that to a certain extent, everyone who takes part in making a decision, the lawyer included, is a partner to the decision," Reisner says. "Three years ago I gave a talk at Cambridge University. While I was there I got a phone call from the legal department of the Foreign Ministry. They said they just wanted to let me know that there were no threats to put me on trial in England. I asked them why they were suddenly cautioning me; I am usually the one who tells that to others. They told me. "You have a high profile and we decided to check whether you were under threat.


By: Yotam Feldman and Uri Blau, published in an Israeli Newspaper

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