Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2008, pages 10-11, 73

Gaza on the Ground

Honored in London, Tortured in Israel for Exposing the Truth About Gaza

By Mohammed Omer

SEVEN YEARS ago I began my career as a journalist. Living behind walls and checkpoints, and under daily Israeli military attack, we Gazans never know if we’ll see tomorrow. By 2006 I began to win awards for journalism and notoriety in the United States and Europe.

In May, just before my 24th birthday, I received a call from journalist John Pilger informing me that I and Dahr Jamal, an “unembedded” American reporter who covers Iraq, had been named co-recipients of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. The prestigious award is given to journalists who expose the truth behind heavily propagandized subjects, often at great personal risk in war zones. I am the youngest journalist to date to have received this recognition.

With substantial lobbying of Israel by Dutch parliamentarian Hans Van Baalen, I was able to leave the Gaza Strip to tour Europe and speak about Gaza to parliaments, students and journalists, and to receive my prize at the June 16 ceremony in London.

I left Gaza already exhausted but in great anticipation of my multi-country speaking tour of the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, France and the UK, and of the Martha Gellhorn Prize ceremony. In Europe I spoke about Gaza, sharing photos and videos, disclosing facts and giving updates on life under siege. I described the latest hazard to which Gazans resorted out of desperation: using cooking oil, which becomes highly carcinogenic when burned, as fuel for cars. And I highlighted the shortages of other basic needs due to the Israeli closure.

People were outraged—not only members of the press, but human rights activists, university students, and legislators in the British House of Commons and the Greek and Swedish parliaments.

As with my writing, my aim was to educate, to get the truth out of Gaza, and to express what the voiceless in Gaza could not. London was my last stop before my departure from Paris for home. My schedule had been hectic. I’d gone long stretches without sleep as a result of constant meetings and contact with the press in Gaza and around the world, including radio stations in the U.S.

Finally I arrived in Amman, where the ordeal of getting Israeli approval to transit began. I simply wanted to get back to Gaza, my home. That, however, proved to be a major challenge.

Interrogation and Torture

Despite the fact that I was traveling under the escort of Dutch Embassy diplomats, Israel refused to allow me to return home, forcing me to remain in limbo in Jordan for five days. On June 26, Israel finally granted me passage through the Allenby Bridge. There, however, I was taken aside, interrogated, strip searched and tortured. In Israel, despite a Supreme Court ruling outlawing it, torture is legal, and used regularly on Palestinian civilians. I am a journalist and civilian who has never acted violently or supported a political movement. My only crime is that I have reported accurately on Gaza, and that my words have been read abroad.

At Israeli immigration, a female soldier told me that I did not in fact have an entry permit, and ordered me to sit and wait.

People with American and European passports easily traversed passport control before my name was finally called, an hour and a half later.

An agent of Shin Bet (Israel’s internal intelligence agency, known by the Hebrew acronym Shabak) with blond hair and green eyes then took me to another room and ordered me to turn off my cell phone and remove the battery. He forcefully rejected my request to call my Dutch Embassy escort waiting outside the terminal.

After another hour and a half, a uniformed Shabak officer named Avi took me to a corner of the terminal where he emptied my luggage, checking every item. A blond, well-built muscular man in his forties joined Avi, as “green eyes” from my earlier Shin Bet encounter entered the terminal and began interrogating me.

“What is this?” “What is this?” he asked about every item in my luggage. The Shabak men dumped all of my documents, business cards (even of European parliament members!) and notes into a blue box, adding my cell phone and camera memory cards.

“Green eyes” then ordered me to place all the currency I was carrying on the table. This amounted to the equivalent of about $800.

Dissatisfied, Avi pressed further: “Where are the English pounds, and how much do you have?”

I realized he was after the award stipend I had received for the Martha Gellhorn Prize. I told him I did not have it with me, that I’d arranged for a bank transfer rather than carry it with me.

More intelligence officers entered the room, bringing the total Israeli personnel—most well-armed—to eight: three directly checking my suitcases and the other five around and behind me. Eight Israelis and me.

Avi, wearing a police uniform, then led me to an empty room at the Shin Bet office.

“OK, take off your clothes,” he ordered. Removing everything but my underwear, I stood before Avi, repeatedly refusing his orders to remove my underwear and reminding him that my Dutch escort was waiting for me outside the terminal. He knew that, he said.

Avi smirked at my protests when I asked why he was treating me this way. “I am a human being,” I said. He responded, “This is nothing compared to what you will see now.”

Unholstering his weapon, Avi pinned me on my side and forcibly removed my underwear. Completely naked, I stood before him as he proceeded to feel me up one side and down the other, even though I had already gone through an X-ray machine before entering the passport holding area.

Back in the terminal with the other Israeli officers, the blond intelligence officer continued going through my belongings. “You are a crazy man,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.

“Is there any Gazan who would see Paris and then come back to Gaza, where there is no food, no fuel, no clean water? Aren't you ashamed to have your name and reputation associated with such a dirty place as Gaza?” he asked.

Finally I responded. “Returning home is my choice. I want to be a voice for those who have no voice and get the truth out about Gaza to the world.”

“Why the perfumes?” the blond interrogator asked, rifling recklessly through my belongings.

“They are gifts for the people I love,” I explained. “And the chocolate is for a pregnant woman in Gaza who has always dreamed of eating European chocolates.”

Snidely, he asked, “Oh, do you have love in your culture?”

As the stress of the interrogation, coupled with the anxiety, uncertainty and assaults on me, mounted, I began to feel faint and suddenly began vomiting. My legs buckled, and I passed out.

As I lay there semi-conscious, the Israeli intelligence officers took turns kicking and pinching me. One screamed my name into my ear as his fingernails punctured my skin, clawing at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He dug his fingernails in near the auditory nerves between my head and ear drum and into my neck, grazing my carotid artery, while crushing my chest with his full weight.

Through my haziness as I lay on the floor, I vaguely heard a woman with a Palestinian accent pleading, “Let this young man alone! Leave him!”

One of the men placed his combat boot on the right side of my neck, pressing down to the hard floor, choking me. The beating, scratching and kicking continued. I awoke to find myself being dragged by my feet through my vomit, my head bouncing on the pavement.

Only when the Israelis thought I might die did they call for an ambulance to transfer me to a hospital in Jericho. I later discovered several stickers in Hebrew marking the spots on my chest where the defibrillator pads had been placed as the doctor in a military clinic attempted to revive me. Between lots of shouting in Hebrew, I could hear the English word “ambulance” several times.

To my amazement, I heard a man speaking reassuringly to me in Arabic. “We are the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance,” he told me.

My tormentors wanted to ensure that nobody—especially no one with diplomatic credentials—knew what they’d done to me. As I was later informed by Mahmoud Tarirah, the emergency medical technician (EMT) who transferred me, they insisted that the Dutch Embassy not be contacted at that point.

Avi insisted that the EMTs would not be permitted to move until I signed a waiver—directly in contravention with international humanitarian law—indemnifying Israel. If I died or was permanently disabled as a result of Israel’s actions, Israel would then not be held accountable.

Tarirah refused. “He’s unconscious,” he told the Israelis. “You can’t make him sign something he cannot read, and we don’t know yet what you did to him during the interrogation.” The Red Crescent EMT said he told the Shabak officer not to get into the ambulance with his gun.

I was then transferred to a hospital in Jericho, where the physician who stabilized me explained to me that the combination of intense pressure, stress and exhaustion had resulted in a nervous breakdown and the vomiting. I was given no X-ray or medical tests, and after two hours in the hospital I was released.

An official from The Netherlands Representative Office accompanied me to a checkpoint in Jericho, where we obtained a permit for me to travel through the Erez crossing from Israel into Gaza, and we then drove to the crossing.

My interrogation by the Shin Bet has left me with pain in the ribs, difficulty breathing, barely functioning legs, and scars and scratches on my neck and body. My hands don’t function well, and typing is difficult.

Karin Laub of the Associated Press’ Jerusalem office wrote that my detention, interrogation and torture at the hands of the Shin Bet was only an allegation. As with Rachel Corrie and the USS Liberty, the Israeli government denies culpability—a denial for which my unborn children shall pay. My doctor has informed me that one “alleged” kick I received while unconscious has blocked key nerves and might prevent me from fathering children of my own.

Solution and Resolution

I’ve been asked what I’d like the outcome of my detention and abuse to be. First, journalists should never be subjected to torture by any government. If we are, humanity loses and the truth remains buried. Secondly, I and all Palestinians wish to be treated as human beings—to live and move freely, and raise families without the threat of torture or occupation. America, which gives Israel more than 30 percent of its international aid budget each year, has the power to grant my wish. 

Israel allegedly wants to be a democracy—and therein lies a solution. In November 1947, Zionists promised the United Nations that if they were given a state, it would be free and democratic with a constitution. Six decades later, Israel still doesn’t have a constitution. Rather, it has a two-tiered legal system which denies or bestows rights based on race and religion. A constitution would preclude this.

Washington must persuade Israel to fulfill its promises and prove its commitment to democratic principles by drafting and ratifying a constitution—and make this a condition for receiving further American aid. Articulating the limits of governmental conduct and defining rights and equality should not be a problem for a nation claiming it does not discriminate. With a constitution, Israel’s Jewish, Muslim and Christian citizens can begin living on an equal footing supported by national law, working toward the common good—in a state where torture and hatred, fomented in injustice, are relegated to the past.

Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at <gazanews@yahoo.com>.