WikiLeaks: Israelis demanded bribes before allowing goods into Gaza

Reuters reports:

U.S. distributors accused Israel in 2006 of charging exorbitant fees to allow their goods into Gaza and an Israeli general admitted corruption existed at a major border crossing, a U.S. diplomatic cable shows.

The cable, obtained by WikiLeaks and published Thursday by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, said frequent closures of the Karni crossing had “exacerbated the problem of access and appears to have forced up the cost of bribes” paid to Israelis.

The disclosures predate the 2007 armed takeover of the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, by Hamas Islamists hostile to the Jewish state. Israel has cited the Hamas threat in justifying a controversial blockade it has kept on Gaza, with Egyptian help.

“As of late May 34 shipments of American goods, amounting to nearly USD 1.9 million dollars, have been waiting three to four months to cross into Gaza,” said the cable, classified “secret” by the U.S. ambassador to Israel at the time, Richard Jones.

“U.S. distributors assert they are being asked to pay ‘special fees’ which amount to as much as 75 times the standard processing fee as quoted by GOI (Israeli government) officials.”

The cable quoted distributors for several U.S. companies complaining that payoffs were required to move their trucks to “a spot near the head of the so-called ‘Israeli line’,” which progressed more quicker to help Israelis supplying Palestinians.

“According to business contacts, allegations of corruption at Karni have a long history,” the cable said.

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2 thoughts on “WikiLeaks: Israelis demanded bribes before allowing goods into Gaza

  1. DE Teodoru

    Oh God please forgive us; we so failed to appreciate the Jewish gift you gave us to advance our civilization that we have allowed them all to be tethered to the psychotic Zionaizs. Help us please from our transgression against civilization’s linchpin morality.

    Were I an American Jew– having been taken deep within the community for decades upon my arrival in the US– I would have no option other than to put my money on every number of the roulette wheel , knowing full well that it is wasted cash as only one number stands any chance of success. But, driven mad by the Holocaust Industry’s well paid professionals, directing a finger of guilt at every Diaspora Jew, I would pay anything so that I could shave before my bathroom mirror in the morning without wrenching in self-doubt, self-blame and utter disgust for my inability to stand with courage and a clear sense of what must be done per the principles of the Jewish Ethic. This is what Zionist hasbara has wroth. No Jew I know feels anything but shame at the sight of Zionazi application of force against helpless innocents. Yet none feels that Israel can do anything else which is not insane. Indeed, every Diaspora Jew I know and grew up with privately thinks that the current Zionazi leaders are either totally insane or totally corrupt, or both….but it matters not which for there is no way to reason with them as they are convinced that by acting crazy, screaming hyperboles and exhibiting paroxysmal acts of violence anywhere/anytime, Israel has come to be feared, avoided or just given what it wants lest it be a mad bull in his/her china shop. No Israeli I know believes that this persona is anything but a runaway train on a track to a deadly precipice. All of King David’s horses and men have yet to come up with a sane position that will not result in a bomb going off in all their faces. The era of fearing HAMAS shahids is long over and Israelis now fear themselves, believing that only through perpetual motion do they survive per Newton’s law of momentum: a body in motion tends to remain perpetually in motion. Stopping to think, to try a new path, they fear, will place Zionism on the other side of that law: a body at rest tends to remain perpetually at rest—like an exhausted whale in a sea of sharks. This is what happens when any one group thinks that it is the sole physical object of value in the vacuum of the universe. Having no better suggestion, the Diasporics remain silent, even compliant, as anything that slows down the Zionazis, most fear, will make them responsible for the inertial consequences thereof. Some brave Jews, like history’s heroes of science, stood up and yelled: “STOOOOOOOOOOP!” Unfortunately, their courage is not matched by the courage of the rest of World Jewry, courage dissolved and washed away by the Zionazi’s invocation of guilt for the Holocaust. Obama is not acting like a responsible psychiatrist, diagnosing the disease and treating it with appropriate tranquilizers, but rather, like a Chicago slums drug dealer, is seeking to offer “pops” that rev them ever more into senseless motion in return for 2012 campaign support.

    This can in no way end well for Israel, World Jewry, the Mideast, or America. Alas, we’re stuck with a junkie instead of the brave “change” president we thought we elected. With endless US cash/arms aid, Mossad killers all over the globe and the ability to exterminate Palestinians as if fish in a barrel, World Jewry can only expect that this 1930s moment will horribly move on to 1940s moments as the world realizes that by NOT stopping Israel’s madness we are creating a Palestinian/Israeli Holocaust that our Eurasian enemies will exploit as we exsanguinate trying to deal with the Muslim backlash against us as the drug dealers perpetuating this madness. I cry for Israel and World Jewry, both a potential gift for the Mideast and the world respectively. Lenin/Stalin/Trotsky madness is alive, well and active in the form of the Chickenlittles (neocons) and IDF/Mossad killers killing innocents, pretending to do it in our name as it is with our weapons.

    Human civilization’s only salvation is MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE and responsible debate. It kept us sane through the Vietnam War and its absence is making us insane now!

  2. Norman

    So, the corruption of the World is rampart. No wonder it’s coming apart at the seams. Here I thought that it was because of the Mafia, but it’s really the breakdown of the law. I wonder, if everyone stopped paying taxes, fines, payments of all kinds just here in the U.S., they couldn’t build jails or courts fast enough to incarcerate everyone. Perhaps that’s the way to go, to find a solution to the ills.

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