Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2004, pages 75-78

Human Rights

Corin reminded reporters that, until proven guilty, all detainees should have the right to due process, fair trial, and the assumption of innocence. These are rights under both American and international laws.

“I have a question for the American people,” Corin said, “appealing to your profound sense of equality and justice for all... Do you feel any more secure today? Do you think national and international security is improved or worsened by the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay?”

Americans are profoundly less safe today, he argued, because the world has watched President George W. Bush try to become judge, jury and executioner of detainees. Other countries will mimic this example, Corin warned, instead of modeling democracy.

Recent history in Britain can provide a terrible lesson to the U.S. today, he continued. In 1974, after a terrorist bombing campaign, dozens of Irishmen were rounded up. Even in a highly charged panicky situation, Redgrave noted, those prisoners were given full access to lawyers and an open court process. But evidence was witheld or fabricated, and the young Irishmen were imprisoned for 15 to 16 years for crimes they’d never committed. The government finally had to apologize to the men whose lives had been shattered.

Terry Waite, who was held hostage in Lebanon for almost five years, saw striking similarities between the detainees’ situation today and his own in 1987. He was blindfolded, shackled and faced mock executions, he recalled, all without benefit of due process or contact with his family or the outside world. While Waite did not suggest detainees are undergoing the same torture he experienced, he did maintain that they are enduring psychological torture. He described not knowing about your family as “acute agony.”

The U.S. is losing fundamental respect for legal procedures, Waite charged, and the treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees undermines fundamental, hard-won principles of justice enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and international law. According to the former hostage, U.S. actions are causing more terrorism, not less. “It’s unwise to adopt methods used by terrorists,” he warned.

In the long term, Waite concluded, ignoring the rights of detainees and holding them indefinitely has placed U.S. and British people in increased danger throughout the world.

Vanessa Redgrave said she remembered nations joining together to fight world wars to bring about a “world without fear.” Nations have created laws to safeguard human rights, she reminded the audience, and ensure that no one should be seized and held without judgment by a court of one’s peers. These laws were made for peaceful days and times of strife alike, she pointed out.

Denying legal rights to detainees in Guantanamo would destroy the fabric of the American Constitution and British laws, the actress warned. How can you lead and safeguard people, she asked, without regard for the rule of law?

Rev. Robert W. Edgar, secretary-general of the National Council of Churches, urged the U.S. government not to flunk this moral test. Paraphrasing former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, he noted that a nation is judged on how it treats people in the twilight and shadows of life. It was totally unreasonable to deny detainees access to their families, like that given to normal prisoners, Edgar emphasized. “It is appalling that the government has put prisoners outside U.S. jurisdiction in a giant interrogation camp,” he added, and that it’s not even front-page news. Reverend Edgar called for permission for an interdenominational delegation to visit detainees.

“We are getting deeper and deeper in this mess,” Waite added. The evidence obtained in the last two years from these detainees was given under duress, he noted, and is not admissible in a court of law. “Now that they’ve started down this path,” he asked, “how can they get out?”

While the speakers said they were pleased that five Britons were soon to be released, they noted that other detainees still are languishing in Guantanamo. All detainees should be treated equally, they maintained, regardless of their countries of origin.

After the briefing, the group marched to the Supreme Court to join families of some of the Guantanamo detainees. An interfaith prayer service at the Presbyterian Church on New York Ave. concluded with music by Peter, Paul and Mary’s Peter Yarrow.

Unless she brings another human rights campaign to Washington, Vanessa Redgrave’s next Washington, DC appearance will be at the Kennedy Center when she stars in the play “Hecuba”in May and June 2005.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Wiener, a psychiatrist and member of PHR-Israel, has worked in mobile medical clinics to bring health care to Palestinians who cannot access care, including prisoners in Israeli jails. Speaking about the effects of the al-Aqsa intifada on Israelis, Wiener reminded the audience that pain was felt on both sides of the strife, noting that more than 900 Israelis had been killed, and about 6,000 injured, most of them between 11 and 30 years old. He stated that suicide bombings were the leading cause of death among Israelis, and that more than 300 of those killed were civilians.

Defining trauma as involving actual or threatened death responded to with fear, helplessness and horror, Wiener described ongoing symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger, confusion, lack of concentration, impulsiveness, apathy, and dependence as typical in trauma victims. While most recover over time, he explained, some develop PTSD—post traumatic stress disorder—when the sensations of fear are re-experienced in the mind.

According to a study Wiener cited of more than 500 Israelis in Tel Aviv, over 76 percent had at least one symptom of chronic trauma, while 9.4 percent had PTSD, and 58.6 percent showed signs of depression. PTSD was more prevalent in Israeli children than in adults, Wiener said. Moreover, he added, the community itself also suffered trauma, manifested in the collapse of formal leadership, group conflict, delinquent behavior, rage, confusion, and the emergence of mythic ideologies.

Not just suicide bombings, but the violence of being the occupier had a traumatic effect on Israelis, Wiener said. The best way to counteract such widespread trauma was through active information and community support, he contended, advocating a non-medical approach—a need to get out of the hospitals and doctor’s offices and build societal networks. Echoing Bolling’s remarks, Wiener concluded by telling the audience that Odeh and he were both there because they shared the Hippocratic Oath and a commitment to human rights principles, and that such ties can help build healthy societies and bridge gaps.

Dr. Odeh’s presentation was less statistical and more personal. She is the director of the Palestinian Happy Child Center in Jerusalem, and on the faculty of the Al Quds University medical school, where she teaches child development and medical ethics. Odeh is a member of PHR-Palestine. She told the audience that her experience came from her dealing with her two daughters (now 20 and 14), as well as the children she encountered in her profession.

Odeh said that the symptoms and effects of trauma that Wiener had described were pertinent to Palestinians as well, and that—like Israelis—it was the youth who were suffering the brunt of the occupation, both in terms of death and trauma. Odeh cited a study of 1,000 children in Gaza, ages 6 to 16, of whom 83.2 percent had symptoms of trauma. Interestingly, she also told the audience that when the children were asked what they would want most if they were free, most of them said they would like to go to school.

In addition to the emotional trauma Palestinian children face, Odeh pointed out that both chronic and acute malnutrition are growing at an alarming rate: in Gaza 17.5 percent of children suffer chronic malnutrition, and almost 20 percent nationally were anemic. Moreover, Odeh said that acute malnutrition resulting in “wasting” and “stunting” was increasing significantly.

Discussing coping techniques in Palestine, Odeh outlined her work at the Happy Child Center. “It might take kids two or three hours to get here, but they come. They might have to go past a tank, but they come.” She displayed drawings made by the children in a form of art therapy, demonstrating how the pictures went from black and white to colorful as hope returned among recovering children. Odeh listed music, drama, puppets, and dance among the other coping strategies used at the center, as well as networking among parents and teachers to make children feel safer.

Dr. Odeh told a story about her own daughter as their home in Ramallah was being shelled during the Israeli invasions of 2002; of how they went to a neighbor’s house where her daughter had a friend and the shelling was not so close, and how Odeh told the girls over and over that the shelling would stop soon—until, feeling solidarity with each other, and with maternal reassurances of safety, the girls were able to get to sleep. Her daughter’s teacher remarked on the girl’s ability to cope, Odeh told the audience.

Odeh concluded her presentation showing a photograph of small red flowers stubbornly blooming in the midst of stones. Likening the flowers to Palestinian children blooming under the hardest of circumstances, she said her dream was for Israeli children to go to school without fear of bombs, and for Palestinian children to be able to attend school without fear of checkpoints, closures, or soldiers.

—Sara Powell

Dichter’s lecture focused on the growing educational gap between Jewish and Arab citizens. The dropout rate among Arab students ages 14 to 17 is double that among Jewish students, he said, adding that, according to the Sikkuy Report, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs supervises some 1,700 day care centers throughout the country—but only 26 of them are in Arab communities.

The report also highlights similar imbalances in the workplace. Unemployment among Jewish men is just 9.3 percent, compared to 14.1 percent among Arab men. This is because only 3.2 percent of the Industry and Trade Ministry’s industrial zones are within the jurisdiction of Arab local authorities.

The Sikkuy report found that discrimination exists in every field it examined, and that this has created poverty and crisis in the Arab community in Israel. The government has taken control of Arab-owned land through various legal techniques and massive land expropriation for the development of the Jewish communities.

Due to deeply rooted prejudices and security considerations, Dichter continued, Arabs are suffering from high unemployment. Nearly 28 percent of poor families in Israel are Arab, while the Arab share of the general population is approximately 19 percent.

Deep feelings of discrimination engender socioeconomic, cultural and political instability, the Sikkuy director said. These inequalities exist, he noted, despite the fact that the principle of equality has been the cornerstone in the constitutional structure of the state of Israel since the 1948 Declaration of Independence. According to Sikkuy’s vision, equality between Arab and Jewish citizens is the basis for Israel’s future stability.

Dichter advises Jews and Arabs to demand equality between their communities. This will result in a strong democratic government that bases its actions on principles of equality instead of discrimination.

—Safaa Nhairy

The candlelight vigil attracted passersby, some of whom approached the organizers with questions about the Arab-Israeli conflict. They also were given flyers with a photo of the mosque and more details about the attack.

The flyer related how Goldstein, a physician from New York, was “driven by his radical Zionist ideology to first immigrate to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and settle in a Jewish-only settlement in Hebron, and then to massacre some of the city’s native Palestinian inhabitants.” It noted that the Israeli soldiers standing outside the mosque took no action to stop Goldstein or to protect the unarmed worshippers.

According to a March 11, 1994 Washington Post article, Meir Tayar, chief superintendent of the Israeli Border Police force in Hebron, told a panel investigating the massacre: “The order was that if a Jewish settler shoots his gun, even in the street toward locals, to the extent it is directed fire, not warning shots in the air, it was forbidden to shoot him.”

In the same article, Shaul Mofaz, then a senior commander of army forces in the West Bank and now the Israeli defense minister, was quoted as confirming the existence of such orders, telling the panel, “The Jews are not an enemy in the context of riots.” The procedure was to disarm a Jewish settler who opened fire, he said, but not to shoot him.

Yaser Abu Shaban, a coordinator with Al-Awda, said that holding this vigil in Washington, DC was important in order to honor the victims. Americans should know about this attack, he added, “since the focus when it comes to terrorism is always on the Palestinian side, not on the Israeli side, whether [terrorist acts are] committed by settlers or the Israeli army.”

Goldstein’s 1994 attack took place “long before Israel made suicide bombings the center of debate surrounding this conflict,” Abu Shaban pointed out.

—Laila Al-Arian