10,000 bodies: Inside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown

The Wall Street Journal reports: At Hospital 601, not far from the presidential palace in Damascus, Syrian guards ran out of space to store the dead and had to use an adjoining warehouse where military vehicles were repaired.

A forensic photographer working for Syria’s military police walked the rows and took pictures of the emaciated and disfigured corpses, most believed to be anti-Assad activists. Numbers written on the bodies and on white cards, the photographer said, told regime bureaucrats the identities of the deceased, when they died and which branch of the Syrian security services had held them.

U.S. investigators who have reviewed many of the photos say they believe at least 10,000 corpses were cataloged this way between 2011 and mid-2013. Investigators believe they weren’t victims of regular warfare but of torture, and that the bodies were brought to the hospital from the Assad regime’s sprawling network of prisons. They were told some appeared to have died on site.

Last year, the Syrian military-police photographer defected to the West. Investigators later gave him the code name Caesar to disguise his identity. He turned over to U.S. law-enforcement agencies earlier this year a vast trove of postmortem photographs from Hospital 601 that he and other military photographers took over the two-year period, which he helped smuggle out of the country on digital thumb drives.

Over the ensuing months, U.S. investigators pored over the photos, which depicted the deaths and the elaborate counting system, and started to debrief Caesar and other activists involved in his defection. U.S. and European investigators have since concluded not only that the images were genuine, but that they offered the best evidence to date of an industrial-scale campaign by the government of Bashar al-Assad against its political opponents. U.S. Ambassador-at-large Stephen Rapp, head of the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice, has compared the pattern to some of the most notorious acts of mass murder of the past century.

This account, based on interviews with war-crimes investigators in the U.S. and Europe, more than a dozen defectors, and opposition leaders working with Caesar, provides fresh details about Syria’s crackdown on its political opponents and the central role of Hospital 601 in processing bodies and documenting the deaths for the government.

Investigators haven’t finished analyzing the entire cache of photographs and are still trying to gather evidence to fully understand the regime’s role in the deaths. Prosecutors must be careful about jumping to conclusions before all the evidence is in, cautioned a senior U.S. official, who noted that investigators are far from finished debriefing Caesar.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation unit that investigates genocide and war crimes, and other agencies, hope to soon get a more detailed account of what happened at Hospital 601 from Caesar, officials said. Some U.S. officials want to use Caesar’s photographs, which show bodies that appear to have been strangled, beaten or disfigured, to build a case for a potential war-crimes prosecution of the Assad regime. It is unclear when, if ever, such a case might be brought. [Continue reading…]

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Putin is responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Fred Kaplan writes: Apart from its tragic horror, the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 has two strategic consequences. First, it reveals that the Russian military—and, therefore, President Vladimir Putin—is deeply involved in the separatists’ fight against the Ukrainian government. Second, it transforms that fight from a confined civil war to a clash affecting the whole continent; Europeans can no longer so easily ignore it or avoid holding Russia accountable.

The proof of Russian involvement lies in the weapon used to down the plane. The SA-11 radar-guided surface-to-air missile is not like the shoulder-mounted rockets that many rebels use to fire against low-flying aircraft worldwide. Rather, it’s a complex system that requires three vehicles and about a dozen personnel, most of them specially trained as a team. The system’s warning-radar detects an incoming plane; calculates its speed, range, and altitude; and passes that information to the missile battery’s “acquisition radar,” which tracks the plane. When the plane is within ideal range, the missile is fired. Then, the “target-tracking radar” guides the missile to the target.

A U.S. Air Force officer familiar with the SA-11 says, “There is no way that some guy, who was a miner or truck driver before the war, can all of a sudden operate this system.” It takes several weeks to learn how to use it, six months or so to get proficient. John Pike, a weapons specialist with GlobalSecurity.org, puts it this way: “If some separatists had started learning how to use the SA-11 late last year, by now they might be up to speed.”

Since the conflict with separatists in eastern Ukraine started just this past spring, this raises the question: Are the people who shot down the Malaysian airliner pro-Russian separatists—or are they Russian air-defense officers who trekked across the border to assist their ethnic brethren? Either way, it’s not the case that Putin simply encouraged the rebels to fight and supplied them with missiles, making him indirectly responsible for the shoot-down; it’s that his officers are directly responsible, either by training the separatist shooters or by being the shooters themselves. [Continue reading…]

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After CIA gets secret whistleblower email, Congress worries about more spying

McClatchy reports: The CIA obtained a confidential email to Congress about alleged whistleblower retaliation related to the Senate’s classified report on the agency’s harsh interrogation program, triggering fears that the CIA has been intercepting the communications of officials who handle whistleblower cases.

The CIA got hold of the legally protected email and other unspecified communications between whistleblower officials and lawmakers this spring, people familiar with the matter told McClatchy. It’s unclear how the agency obtained the material.

At the time, the CIA was embroiled in a furious behind-the-scenes battle with the Senate Intelligence Committee over the panel’s investigation of the agency’s interrogation program, including accusations that the CIA illegally monitored computers used in the five-year probe. The CIA has denied the charges.

The email controversy points to holes in the intelligence community’s whistleblower protection systems and raises fresh questions about the extent to which intelligence agencies can elude congressional oversight. [Continue reading…]

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Mustafa Barghouti: ‘The Intifada has started’

At Mondoweiss, Martin Gajsek reports: Fireworks burst at the separation wall, lighting the heads of Israeli soldiers who are poised ready with loaded guns. Overhead, flare guns also brighten the scene at Qalandia checkpoint, quickly followed by shots from Israeli snipers that race into the burgeoning crowd. In the middle of the haze and chaos Palestinian politician Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is clear in his definition of the events unfolding around him, “The Intifada has started. This is the Intifada! Peaceful and nonviolent but as you have seen, they encountered us with gunshots,” Barghouti told Mondoweiss. Amidst his words, molotov cocktails hit the military watchtowers, while young men scrambled by in a desperate attempt to get the wounded out of the line of fire.

At around 9 p.m. last night, the streets of Ramallah started to flood with Palestinian protesters, all of them heading in the same direction — Qalandia Checkpoint. One of the biggest protests the West Bank has seen since the end of the second Intifada took place, with a march of several thousand Palestinians towards the checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. The march was to demonstrate solidarity with the people in Gaza who have been under heavy bombardment for the past two weeks. That bombardment has been part of Israel’s latest military incursion, Operation Protective Edge, and has resulted in the death of over 800 people. Conservative figures state that at least 70% of the casualties are civilian, among them nearly 200 children. [Continue reading…]

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A morality lesson on Israel and Hamas from an American four-star general

In spite of this nation’s numerous military misadventures and its corrupt military establishment, many Americans still have an uncritical admiration for this country’s generals — men whose stainless uniforms and steely faces seem to be an outward representation of their trustworthiness and moral stature.

Gen. James T. Conway USMC (Ret)

Gen. James T. Conway USMC (Ret)

Who better to speak in defense of Israel, than a good Christian soldier like retired General James T Conway, former commander of the United States Marine Corps?

Propaganda, which is nothing more than a form of political advertising, works by engaging its target audience emotionally while circumventing any kind of analytical process. It trades in ideas whose truth should seem so obvious that we will accept them without thought. And the easiest way of making an idea seem true is through endless repetition.

The Israeli government and those inside and outside Israel who operate in its service, have settled on two messages — on human shields and tunnels — through which they want to demonize Hamas and cover up war crimes committed by the Israeli Defense Forces.

In “The Moral Chasm Between Israel and Hamas,” an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, this is how Conway regurgitates Israel’s message about human shields:

Israel’s military exists to protect its civilian population and seeks to avoid harming noncombatants, while its adversary cynically uses Palestinian civilians as human shields while deliberately targeting Israeli civilians.

Conway describes the Hamas tunnels, of which Israel is reported to have discovered about 30, as having been “designed for launching murder and kidnapping raids.”

Let’s first consider the claim that Hamas uses human shields, since this has become Israel’s favorite explanation for why the IDF has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians.

The human shield, as a concept, is a mainstay of American movie and TV drama. We all know how it works.

The bad guys hold women and children at gunpoint and the good guys hold fire because they don’t want to kill the innocents.

It’s an expression of the moral depravity and cowardice of evil men who know how to exploit the good intentions of righteous men. (It’s also a narrative in which the heroes and villains are all men and the powerless women can do no more than hope they fall into the right arms.)

So how does this work in Gaza. The evil Hamas fighters hide behind the women and children and then the Israelis kill the women and children.

Wait a minute! That’s not how it’s supposed to work. What’s the point of holding a human shield if your adversary has little interest in protecting the life of that supposed “shield”?

This gets to the nub of the issue: the only kind of human shield worth holding is one whose life is valued by your adversary.

The Israelis understand this. That’s why, as has been well documented, they have been seen using Palestinians as human shields.

The closest Hamas can come to making forcible use of human shields is by taking prisoners. Which brings us to the tunnels.

The tunnel is the perfect abode of the bogeyman. It has iconic power in the representation of an invisible evil force — a force which emerges out of darkness and might spring up from anywhere. No wonder Israel’s propagandists believe they can use the “terrorist-tunnel threat” to their advantage.

There’s no question that militants in Gaza have constructed tunnels under the fortified perimeter which surrounds the open-air prison of the Gaza Strip. We can also surmise that these have not been constructed to provide “escape” routes to Israel.

What we can deduce is that far more time and effort has been invested in the construction of these tunnels than in their use. Moreover, if or when any of these tunnels gets put into service there is a high probability that the IDF will quickly thereafter discover the tunnel’s location and just as quickly destroy it.

The implication, therefore, is that these tunnels have been constructed as part of a defensive infrastructure to only be used at a time of necessity. That inference is further reinforced by the fact that extended periods of calm during which ceasefires have been in effect, have not been interrupted by the Palestinians going on the offensive and trying to capture Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the fence.

* * *

I don’t actually know whether General Conway is a Christian soldier. He could believe in the non-dual philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. He could be a Sufi, or he might be an initiate of the Kabbalah.

What I do know is that when Conway left the Pentagon, like so many of his other colleagues, he passed through the revolving door that leads straight into the defense industry. There he became a director of Textron, a corporation one of whose subsidiaries, AAI, manufactures drones used by Israel.

I have little doubt that when sales reps for AAI tout the effectiveness of their products, they proudly point out how they have been “battlefield tested” by the IDF.

In other words, to be absolutely blunt, when General Conway takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to offer lessons on the morality of Israel’s current war on Gaza, I have little doubt that this is a war from which Conway is personally profiting — and therein, I would suggest, lies the real morality tale.

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The right of armed resistance

Giles Fraser, who is a priest in the Church of England, founder of the Inclusive Church, and has lectured on moral leadership to the British Army, writes: For decades now the United Nations has been unable to agree a definition of terrorism. Even our own supreme court recently concluded that there is no internationally agreed definition. The stumbling block has been that western governments want states and state agents to be exempt from any definition. And a number of Islamic counties want some national liberation movements exempt.

Or, to put it in terms of today’s news: the Israelis won’t have any definition that would make them terrorists for bombing old people’s homes in Gaza, and West Bank Palestinians won’t have any definition that will make them terrorists for fighting back against occupation with petrol bombs. Writing in his annual report this week, David Anderson QC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, sounds exasperated: “The intractability of some of these questions has induced a degree of defeatism among those seeking to define terrorism.”

I am eating aubergines and flatbread with Dr Samah Jabr in a cool Palestinian cafe in Stoke Newington. A psychiatrist and psychotherapist who works out of East Jerusalem, Dr Jabr is quietly spoken, modest, and perhaps just a little bit shocked by my lapses into overly colourful language. She is an educated, middle-class Palestinian (in no way a rabble-rouser) but she insists that the word terrorist has become a powerful – though often un-thought-through – political pejorative employed to discredit legitimate resistance to the violence of occupation.

What some would call terrorism, she would call a moral duty. She gives me her paper on the subject. “Why is the word ‘terrorist’ so readily applied to individuals or groups who use homemade bombs, but not to states using nuclear and other internationally proscribed weapons to ensure submission to the oppressor?” she asks. She insists that violent resistance must be used in defence and as a last resort. And that it is important to distinguish between civilian and military targets. “The American media call our search for freedom ‘terrorism’,” she complains, “despite the fact that the right to self-determination by armed struggle is permissible under the UN charter’s article 51, concerning self-defence.” [Continue reading…]

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Israel rejects Kerry’s Gaza ceasefire plan

Reuters reports: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet has rejected proposals for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and is seeking changes to the plans, a government source said on Friday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been pushing for a halt to 18 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip.

Full details of the proposed truce have not been released, but the government official, who declined to be named, said Israel wanted modifications before agreeing to any end to hostilities. Hamas has yet to respond to the proposed ceasefire.

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Why Israel is losing the media war

David Zurawik writes: Israel is losing the public relations war over its action in Gaza in a way I cannot remember seeing in any of its recent military actions. And part of that is due to the suffering of Palestinian civilians being depicted with an unprecedented sensitivity and prominence — at least, in American media.

More journalists in Gaza and more social media are among the reasons given for the change.

“There were only a couple Western journalists in Gaza when Israel invaded in 2008,” says Michael Calderone, Huffington Post senior media reporter. “Now, there are dozens covering every air strike in real-time through social media, complete with graphic images of Palestinian civilians, and even children, being killed and injured. So there’s a disconnect between Israeli officials’ repeated claims on TV about fighting terrorism and extensive footage we’re seeing of Israel bombing schools, shelters and hospitals in Gaza.”

As Calderone sees it, such images have upended traditional packaging of stories out of Gaza.

“The American public may have seen a few stray images or video clips from Gaza in the past as part of a TV package, but such scenes would be interspersed with the views from experts and government officials,” he said in an email to The Sun. “A network correspondent now can take a heartbreaking video of a Palestinian mother grieving for her lost son, post it on Facebook, and the video will go viral several hours before the evening newscast.”

An online headline from New York Magazine last week put it this way: “‘Telegenically dead Palestinians:’ Why Israel is losing the American media war.”

No one is doing a more thorough job of covering the death and destruction in Gaza than Al Jazeera. Social media are absolutely a driving force in the shift in coverage, but I also believe the heavy presence of Al Jazeera and the excellent work its correspondents and producers are doing have raised the games of all the news organizations on the ground. [Continue reading…]

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Live free or die: Palestinian unity resurrected

Muftah: As the death count in Gaza crept even closer to 1000 today, it seemed the imprisoned, ghettoized residents of the Strip were more alone than ever. But their Palestinian brothers and sisters in Occupied East Jerusalem and West Bank sent them a strong and clear message tonight:


According to reports, between 10,000-30,000 Palestinians are marching from Ramallah to Jerusalem, in what some have described as the biggest protests in the city since the Second Intifada. The protest began from a refugee camp outside Ramallah, and featured various political factions united under the Palestinian flag.


The protests represent the legacy of current brutalities combined with a history of on-going dispossession, the Israeli government’s on-going relentless and merciless siege against 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza together with decades of Israeli occupation, which have featured oppression of every imaginable kind. [Continue reading…]

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#48KMarch to Jerusalem — start of the Third Intifada?

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I saw no evidence of Hamas using Palestinians as human shields

The BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, writes: I saw Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, giving an interview to the BBC after Israel had killed more than 60 people in the Gaza district of Shejaiya. He said he regretted the civilian casualties in Gaza but they were the fault of Hamas. Netanyahu said Israel had warned people to get out. Some had taken the advice; others had been prevented from leaving by Hamas.

I was back in London for my son’s 11th birthday party by the time all those people were killed in Shejaiya. But my impression of Hamas is different from Netanyahu’s. I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields. I saw men from Hamas on street corners, keeping an eye on what was happening. They were local people and everyone knew them, even the young boys. Raji Sourani, the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, told me that Hamas, whatever you think of it, is part of the Palestinian DNA.

I met Sourani first when he was condemning abuses by Yasser Arafat’s men. He has taken an equally tough stance on Hamas. Now he says Israel is violating the laws of war by ignoring its legal duty to treat Palestinian civilians as protected non-combatants. [Continue reading…]

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Why are so few Israeli journalists questioning their military’s assault on Gaza?

Janine Zacharia writes: When Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in 2008 to stop Hamas rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, Israeli journalists were hungry to cover the military operational details. They wanted to know how many Hamas militants had been killed or captured, what of the terrorist group’s infrastructure had been hit, what remained on the Israel Defense Forces’ target list, and so on. What didn’t interest most newspapers or newscasts was the wider impact on the other side, especially the civilian death toll. If there was any questioning, it wasn’t why so many Palestinians were being killed, but why the campaign hadn’t started sooner. By the time Israel launched Pillar of Defense, its next Gaza military offensive in 2012, the Israeli media watchdog group Keshev concluded that the war had “blurred the distinction between the IDF spokesperson and Israeli media outlets more than ever.”

The same can be said today.

Israeli journalists, many of whom I have known and admired during nearly two decades of reporting on this conflict, are skilled. They can be relentless questioners, brutal in their analysis, and still maintain their access to key figures. Give them a good old-fashioned financial or sex scandal and they’ll make that politician wish he’d never run for office. Just ask former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or former President Moshe Katsav how the coverage of their trials went.

But in times of war, many, if not most, Israeli journalists — with some admirable exceptions — hunker down with the rest of the country and are afraid to ask tough questions, especially in the early days of a military campaign. Instead, they tend to parrot the country’s political and military leaders. (The Hebrew phrase critics have for journalists in these times is — meguyasim — the drafted, or recruited.) Israelis are barred from entering Gaza. And with that access cut off, few Israeli journalists have cultivated Palestinian sources because there is amazingly little interest among the Israeli public in understanding Palestinian affairs. [Continue reading…]

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Brainwashed by Birthright Israel

Allison Benedikt writes: In 2012, Los Angeles native Max Steinberg traveled to Israel for the first time, on a 10-day trip sponsored by Birthright Israel. A few months later, he joined the Israel Defense Forces. On Sunday, he died fighting in Gaza, leaving behind his parents, who will now take their first trip to Israel to bury their 24-year-old son.

There are many people to blame for Steinberg’s death. There is the Hamas fighter behind the weapon that actually killed him. There are the leaders, on both sides, who put him in Gaza, and the leaders behind all of the wars between Israel and the Palestinians. I can trace it back to 1948, or 1917, or whatever date suits you and still never find all the parties who are responsible. But I have no doubt in my mind that along with all of them, Birthright shares some measure of the blame. [Continue reading…]

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