Shin Bet: Wiretaps can be used to guard state's Jewish nature

Shin Bet: Wiretaps can be used to guard state's Jewish nature
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent

The Shin Bet considers itself authorized to use surveillance techniques that violate privacy, such as wiretaps, when activity that "sabotages the state's Jewish character" is carried out, even if this activity is not illegal.

The security service made this assertion in a letter sent yesterday by its head, Yuval Diskin, to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah  the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

The letter, sent in response to a query from those organizations, was approved by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz.

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The Shin Bet, said the letter, plays "an essential role" in Israeli life, "and for this purpose, it has been given broad powers and authorities." Specifically, it said, the organization is responsible both for national security and for preserving Israel's fundamental values as a "Jewish and democratic" state, and therefore, its job is to protect "the democratic system of government and its institutions from subversive threats."

"Subversive," Diskin acknowledged, "is a vague term. The service's view is that 'subversion' could include seeking to change the state's basic values by abolishing its democratic character or its Jewish character."

He stressed that freedom of expression, including advocating against the state's Jewish or democratic character, is a fundamental right as long as it is done without breaking the law, while privacy is also a fundamental right in a democratic society. These two rights can be infringed only for "an appropriate purpose, and only proportionately," he said.

The service has the right to use all tools at its disposal against illegal subversive activity, Diskin said. When the subversive activity in question is not illegal, the Shin Bet has no right to use coercive tools such as detentions, he said, but it does have an obligation to gather information "in order to ensure that this activity does not slide into illegal activity and does not conceal illegal activity."

Thus if the subversive activity in question is being carried out secretly, the service is authorized to use more invasive information-gathering techniques, such as wiretaps, "to uncover what is hiding behind this activity."

This principle applies to subversive activity by Jews and Arabs alike, he said.

Mazuz's office noted that in "sensitive cases" the Shin Bet consults with "the relevant authorities in the justice system" to determine what investigative methods are permissible, but stressed that "the position detailed in Diskin's letter is acceptable to the attorney general."

Adalah said it may petition the High Court of Justice against this decision, which it said essentially permits the Shin Bet to interfere in the country's political life.

Red Cross on Israel

Just remember, what israel is doing is a "War Crime".

JERUSALEM: The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a confidential report about Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem and surrounding areas, accuses Israel of a "general disregard" for "its obligations under international humanitarian law - and the law of occupation in particular."

The committee says that Israel is using its rights as an occupying power under international law "in order to further its own interests or those of its own population to the detriment of the population of the occupied territory," which it says is "foreign to the letter and spirit of occupation law."

Israeli policies in East Jerusalem, the committee says, are "reshaping the development of the Jerusalem metropolitan area" with "far-reaching humanitarian consequences," including the isolation of Palestinians living in Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, problems of access to basic services and a "condition of artificial illegality" in which thousands of Palestinians live in Jerusalem without the ability to get permanent residency.

With the construction of the separation barrier, the establishment of an outer ring of Jewish settlements beyond the expanded municipal boundaries and the creation of a dense road network linking the different Israeli neighborhoods and settlements in and outside Jerusalem, the report concludes, Israel is consolidating "a Greater Jerusalem Envelope" that fragments Palestinian communities and severs East Jerusalem from the West Bank.

The committee recognizes that the separation barrier "was undertaken with an undeniable security aim," but adds, "The route of the West Bank barrier is also following a demographic logic, enclosing the settlement blocs around the city while excluding built-up Palestinian areas (thus creating isolated Palestinian enclaves)."
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Israeli officials say they reject the very premise of the report - that East Jerusalem is occupied - noting that they annexed it after the 1967 war and offered full rights to its residents.

The committee does not publish its reports but provides them in confidence to the parties involved and to a small number of countries. The committee is recognized in the Geneva Convention of 1949 as a guardian of international humanitarian law, and says it tries to ensure that all parties to a conflict respect those rules and principles. It plays an important, quiet role in visiting prisoners all over the world.

The report considers all land that Israel conquered in the 1967 war to be occupied territory under international law and does not recognize Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem. The report was the result of nine months of work by the committee and was delivered in late February "to Israel and to a small number of foreign governments we believe would be in the best position to help support our efforts for the implementation of humanitarian law," said Bernard Barrett, a spokesman in Jerusalem for the committee.

The report was provided to The New York Times by an individual with access to all parties who wanted the conclusions of the report publicized even as Israel celebrates Jerusalem Day this Wednesday, marking the 40th anniversary of the unification of the city. Barrett said that the committee did not approve the leaking of the report, which he said was part of "an ongoing process of private discussion" with Israel.

Israeli officials said that they respected the committee and cooperate with it gladly on issues ranging from the release of captured Israeli soldiers to asking its officials to give briefings on international law to Israeli diplomats and to Israeli commanders serving in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has received the report, but disagreed with its premises and conclusions.

"We reject the premise of the report, that East Jerusalem is occupied territory," said Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "It is not. Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1967 and offered full citizenship at the time to all of Jerusalem's residents. These are facts that cannot be ignored."

Until the Israeli annexation, after the 1967 war, the last legal sovereign in East Jerusalem had been the British under a mandate committed to establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, he said.

Israel, he said, "is committed to a diverse and pluralistic Jerusalem, to improving the conditions of all the city's inhabitants and to protecting their interests as part of our sovereign responsibility." He added, "If any population in Jerusalem is thriving and growing, it is the Arab population."

He also noted that Israel makes great efforts to ensure health care for Palestinians, pointing to 81,000 entry permits in 2006 for Palestinians needing care inside Israel.

Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said that Israel respects the work of international organizations like the committee. "Our problem is that the premise they consistently present has no Israeli perspective in it, as if it's all just some legal issue. That is not balanced."

Mustafa Barghouti, spokesman for the Palestinian unity government, welcomed the report, calling it consistent with the rulings of the International Court of Justice, which said in a nonbinding opinion in 2004 that Israel's security barrier is illegal where it crosses the 1967 lines into occupied territory. "Israel violates international law with impunity, and couldn't continue this blunt violation for 40 years if it did not feel impunity toward the international community," Barghouti said.

He pointed to the refusal of the U.S. and European Union ambassadors to attend Jerusalem Day celebrations as proof that the world does not recognize the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem.

The thrust of the committee's report is similar to those written by Israeli peace advocates and to an unpublished report that was written by EU diplomats in Ramallah and East Jerusalem November 2005, which was described by The Times but not authorized for release by European foreign ministers.

The essence of these reports is a concern, as the Europeans said, that Israel is creating facts on the ground in and around Jerusalem that mean "prospects for a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine are receding."

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Zionism - glatt traif?

Is there such a thing as glatt traif? You see in Jewish dietry, and maybe even general, law there is kosher, which is clean or acceptable and there is traif which is unclean or unacceptable. I remember at Hebrew classes a boy being told that his tefillin weren't kosher. They're small cubes with scriptures inside and leather straps to bind them to the arm and the head. His were said not to be kosher because they weren't perfectly cubic. Something like that. My point here is that the term kosher was applied to a non-food item. It's like halal and haram for Muslims. I remember a journalist reporting that when a Palestinian woman heard of a suicide bombing that day she said "haram!" I should say that as with Islamic law some things can be neither halal nor haram or neither kosher nor traif, though some scholars say that everything must be one or the other. Anyway, glatt kosher is like super kosher. It's kosher for frummers or ultra-orthodox types.

Now when it comes to food there are supervising authorities known as kashrus or kashrut (kosherness) commissions to issue licences and guarantee the kosherness of the food. Well the main supervising authority for the frummers in the UK is called Kedassia.

According to the Jewish Chronicle,

A new kosher restaurant was told by kashrut authority Kedassia to stop supporting Israel by displaying a poster for a Yom Yerushalayim concert - or it would lose its licence.

The order was allegedly given to the Mattancherry restaurant in Golders Green, North-West London, because of the long established anti-zionism of Kedassia, the supervising authority of the charedi Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. The restaurant serving Indian kosher food, opened last month.

What I find interesting about this appearing on the front page of the JC is that the zionists are forever making out that zionist Jews are normal mainstream Jews whether very frum, frum, slightly frum, atheist, reform or whatever. Now it appears the main arbiters of what is kosher and what is not are anti-zionist. Now it's not enough to make me go out and be religious but it does go to show that in the Jewish communities (it seems trite to speak of one community) zionism is not quite a done deal. And with some establishment voices now speaking out against Israel and growing demands for boycott, divestment and sanctions, still more Jews may start to consider whether zionism is kosher or traif and opt for the latter.

JSF