E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Julian Smith / Australian Associated Press via EPA
Is this the last resting place of "Prisoner X"? The tombstone of Ben Zygier at the Chevra Kadisha Jewish Cemetery in Melbourne, Australia. EDITOR'S NOTE: This image was manipulated by the Australian Associated Press to obscure the names of children on the tombstone for privacy reasons.
A storm of controversy erupted on two continents Wednesday after a television station claimed to have identified the inmate of a high-security Israeli jail previously known only as "Prisoner X."
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported Tuesday that the inmate was Ben Zygier, 34, also known as Ben Alon and Ben Allen. It described him as a married father of two who was originally from Australia but who later moved to Israel.
It said he was found hanged in his cell -- originally built for Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin -- in 2010, and that he had been buried in Melbourne, Australia, a few weeks later.
The report said Zygier had been recruited by Israeli spy agency Mossad, but it did not cite a source for this information. NBC News was unable to independently verify the report.
In 2010, the prisoner’s case was highlighted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which wrote to the country’s attorney-general saying it was “alarming” that someone was being detained “incommunicado and we know nothing about him,” the broadcaster reported.
But the attorney-general’s assistant replied that a “gag order” imposed by the Israeli government preventing media reports about the case was “vital for preventing a serious breach of the state’s security, so we cannot elaborate about this affair,” it added.
The case of the prisoner, also known as "Mr. X," first came to public attention when a story appeared briefly on the Ynet news website in 2010, according to the U.K.'s Telegraph newspaper. "He is simply a person without a name and without an identity who has been placed in total and utter isolation from the outside world," a prison official reportedly said.
The Ynet report was taken down after a few hours, the Telegraph said.
'Very embarrassing'
Within hours of Tuesday's report surfacing, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office summoned editors to ask them not to publish a story "that is very embarrassing to a certain government agency," Israel's Haaretz newspaper said.
"The emergency meeting was called following a broadcast outside Israel regarding the incident in question," Haaretz added, giving no further information.
Shortly afterwards, all reference to the Australian report vanished from Israeli news websites, Reuters reported.
However, Israeli politicians then began asking about the case in the Knesset, the country's parliament, prompting media reports about the case.
“Are there people in prisons whose incarceration is kept secret? What are the supervision mechanisms on this kind of imprisonment?” lawmaker Dov Henin asked Tuesday, according to The Jerusalem Post. “What are the possibilities for parliamentary supervision on such incarcerations?”
Another lawmaker, Zehava Gal-On, expressed concern about the involvement of the media in keeping quiet about Prisoner X, the Post reported. “Today, we hear that in a country that claims to be a civilized democracy, journalists cooperate with the government, and that anonymous prisoners, who no one knew existed, commit suicide,” she said.
Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman told the Knesset that more details about the case would eventually be made known, the Post reported.
Trained as lawyer
The case is also raising questions in Australia.
In an emailed statement Wednesday, a spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that “an internal review of the department’s handling of this consular case” had begun.
In a follow-up to its original story, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted a spokeswoman for Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr as saying that “some officers of the department were made aware of Mr. Allen's detention at the time in 2010 by another Australian agency.”
Writing in The Australian Financial Review, Patrick Durkin said he had trained as a lawyer with Zygier in 2001.
“I remember drinking with Ben one night in 2001 when he recounted his famous story of taking a bullet in the posterior during his military service in Israel, which he served shortly before joining our group,” Durkin wrote. “He described in vivid detail patrolling the front line and backtracking across war-torn countryside while gunfire peppered the ground.”
“He was proud of his time in the military, despite our endless teasing about the wound we never asked to see,” he added.
Durkin also said he remembered “passionately debating the finer points of the Israel-Palestine conflict with Ben, who was obviously deeply engaged with the issue.”
On Wednesday, the Australian broadcaster quoted his uncle Willy Zygier as saying he had “no idea what is true, what isn't true.”
“All I know is there’s a family tragedy. Every suicide is a tragedy. That’s all I’ve got to say,” he said. “Ben’s parents are in mourning. I don’t know if they’ll talk. And I’m a humble musician. I don’t know anything.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
Related:
Fatah, Hamas hold reconciliation talks ahead of possible peace talks with Israel
UN panel's report: Israel must withdraw all settlers from West Bank
Rights group: Israel using deadly force against unarmed protesters
Leave a Comment:
Sounds like the Israelis learned something from Bush. Not a good thing.
Or vice versa - even worse. This could have been going on for years.
At least we don't have to worry about them learning anything from Obama...
No, not Bush, this is how Hitler started, secret imprisonments.
One would have thought the Jews would have learned a lesson from at least one event (of many) in history where they were persecuted
LOL Obviously none of the posters have read "The Man In The Iron Mask" by Dumas. It's a classic. But it was based on a real prisoner. And like this case, there were scores of conspiracy theories as to the identity of the prisoner and the reason for his untimely death.
But seriously, an an old intelligence wonk, I can tell you that absolute isolation will drive well over 90% of prisoners into some form of serious madness. This can start in as little as three days for people who realize how bad it is going to be. Most intelligence people consider complete isolation beyond about two weeks as torture. But after five or six days of complete isolation, especially when combined with sleep deprivation (which accelerates the process), most people will tell you everything they know in exchange for books, phone calls, communication with other prisoners, etc. And the information obtained is much more reliable than that obtained through beatings, waterboarding, etc.
Surprise! Surprise! ... Sounds like a rendition of the 17th century The Man In The Iron Mask ( a true account of a prisoner held for 34 years in France).... the subject of many novels .. the most famous by Dumas ... "The man in Iron Mask."
The Idea that in the 21st century in what is supposed to be a nation of laws, that any human being could be held in such a way, because they might be embarrassing to a high political figure or government, should not be condoned by any civilized society in our world.
This deserves the attention of the world press ... and is a harbinger of what is coming within the United States ... The basic principles that have been our backbone of our democratic society are collapsing ...
No, the Israelis learned such tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) from their not too distant past, not least from their own treatment under the notorious "Third Reich." Sadly, they did not also learn to eschew and prohibit such TTP -- in the name of greater humanity. And they wonder why they are cursed?
The Russian Jews perfected their secret police methods under Lenin. They were responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians and the establishment of the gulags. Their decendants are now running Israel and were holding positions of power in the US, under Bush.
The Bush administration took the many of it's policies from the Zionists working within our own Pentagon, starting with the insanity of a pre emptive war in Iraq. Iraq, a third world country was about as much of a threat to the US as the Island of Granada.
Hopefully, this man's story will be revealed to the world. I am guessing he had a huge secret to tell.
ralph - Your Iranian theocratic dictators murder people on the roof tops, relatives disappear from face of the earth, people are taken away in the middle of the night and never heard from again, murdered in the street for protesting a corrupt election...... and you show up to talk about 'zionists"??
kashanian
Two wrongs do not make a right.
This confirms zionists are the modern day nazis and learned their dirty trade from the ghetto of Warsaw.
I'm confused. Does anyone know why this guy was a prisoner?
Bush's policy wasn't created by him or his staff. It was put together by so-called "think tanks" like AEI or RAND Corporation. And those who were involved in it were either Jewish themselves with a very Zionist attitude (like the majority of the Neocons) or were influenced by their Zionist "colleagues".
Check out the facts in terms of who has created the policy and who prepared the "response to 9/11" way prior those events happened. Check their names, follow the track of their articles and how there were involved with the US Government and you will learn more.
The influence of the Israeli Government in the US (through American Jews working in the different industries, government agencies, NGO's, etc) is very counterproductive for the Americans and it fulfills only the purpose to help the Israeli Government achieve its goals, which are NOT at all always aligned with the US ones, nor with democratic values.
tst, I think that's the point... the most offensive aspect of incommunicado, extra-judicial detention is precisely that you don't have to disclose the charge.
Impressive.
All one needs in an article is "something happened in Israel, we don't know what" and the antisemites of the world jump at it, grabbing with both hands, compare Jews to Nazis and claim that Jews were somehow Running USSR (where government actually supported antisemitism) and now somehow run the world.
It's like watching starving people fight over breadcrumbs.
There's not a country in the world that doesn't have a few prisoners like this--it's scarcely equivalent to what the Nazis did.
LM: did you ever hear of J. Edgar Hoover and his witch hunts?
@rachel,
Only countries that do not have habeus corpus and do not allow access by the International Red Cross (such as Israel.)
Rachel, actually no.. This is pretty rare outside of totalitarian states. There have been American prisoners denied habeas and subjected to some pretty extreme treatment - such as Jose Padilla, who was held incommunicado for 3 years - but in each case there was some semblance of a judicial process, the general charges were known, and the identity of the detainee was known. Even in authoritarian bureaucratic states few people actually just vanish into a black hole without a hint of a charge or even an acknowledged identity. The Chinese, who are really quite nasty, for example, will arrest and hold dissidents virtually incommunicado for months at a time, but there this is almost always reported in some way, possibly after some delay, and charges are eventually proffered, even if those charges are undefined and trumped up, like "Undermining the state" or "Disrupting public order."
This guy's treatment harkens back to older models, like Franz-Joseph's Austria or the Lettres de Cachet issued Ancien Regime France.. where you can simply vanish off the street and get dropped into an oubliette, never to be heard from again.
I don't know about Israelis but Netyanyahu is clearly a terrorist and a war monger. If he were from an oil rich african country he would be tried in International court for crimes against humanity.
The worst kept secret in the world? Israel is a police state. The best kept secret in the world? Israel isn't a free country.
More Israeli terrorism...
The dude knew too much so the bastards hanged him. Lesson #1 - don't work for any spy agency, because they will murder their own in a heartbeat.
Or may be the dude did something that really deserved hanging, or may be the dude really did hang himself, may be it was because he did something that he himself wouldn't want revealed one day, because shame would be unbearable, may be you just don't care as long as you can scrap up something to pin on Israel, anything at all.
This story leaves more questions than it answers. I think everyone knows in their hearts if not their heads,that things like this can and do happen. Israel isn't alone here in this type of imprisonment. But in this case and all others,its immoral and wrong,a violation,without question,of human rights laws. But as a reader,I'm more confused by the story,than informed. The question isn't,did it happen or not,but WHY. And that is what isn't in the story. Not even a couple of possibilities as to why.
Hey now, Israel is our 3.5 BN a year friend! LOL....
They are not a friend... they are just a parasite, sucking out a lot more than $3.5 BN per year from US taxpayers.
I was been funny perhaps, LOL...
If you guys hate Israel so much make sure none of the tech you use has any Intel chips in it, you might have a heart attack if you find out where those were invented.
The Intel chip was invented by an Indian engineer Vinod Dham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Dham) and has nothing to do with israel or jews.
Any suggestion of the invention by israeli jews is sinister, merely an attempt to take credit of other's hard work.
This very suggestion was posted not long ago and was repudiated. It's small wonder why the poster is foolish enough to make the same mistake.
Wrong as usual Von Dorf. Dham was the co-inventor of the first flash memory. Stanley Mazor (a Jew) and two other colleagues invented the first Intel Chip - the Intel 4004. The Intel 4004 is generally regarded as the first commercially available microprocessor. Van Dorf: Stupidity and bigotry/racism are intertwined.
http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventors/p/Stanley-Mazor.htm
The intel 4004 was a 4-bit CPU and used primarily in the calculator. Only the later stage 8088 powered the personal computer.
The chief designers of the intel 4004 chip was Federico Faggin and Ted Hoff of Intel, and Masatoshi Shima. Stanley Mazor played an insignificant role.
The Pentium chip by Dham is the real thing for the computer.
"The report said Zygier had been recruited by Israeli spy agency Mossad, but it did not cite a source for this information."
Everything in Israel or what Israel does becomes a big news!
In Saudi Arabia, each street has worse cases in all big words used!
Ah, a non-English speaker named Jonathan. Guy, you need much more practice with your English before trolling the boards in favor of Israel.
chris -
1) If you ever read Jonathan's past remarks you would have known that he is not in favor of Israel, mostly he is in the real world, I give him that.
2) If this incident happened in a dictatorship muslim country (which happens everyday by hundreds, but not publicized) you would not have been on this board.
Chris: Many non-Muslim nations and non-Muslims are in the same fate as Israel and Jews.
So what is wrong in supporting Israel and moderate Jews?
If you have objections, please take a hike to Mecca/Medina!
About being non-English speaker, don't worry. I have US English speaking editors to edit my popular books in IT area.
@Chris: I didn't know that impeccable English was a requirement for speaking in favor of Israel. I assume you would have had no problem with his syntax had he spoken against Israel. Moreover, what most anti-Israel posters here fail to note is that the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Israeli politicians in the Knesset brought this to light, prompting an investigation - though with an unfortunate ending certainly a far cry from the "Iron Mask" incident. May I suggest that you and others here wait for the full story to come out before passing final judgment.
Nope, just trying to sort out the Israeli trolls. LOL Kinda like trolling for fools, ya know.
ABC foreign correspondent and ABC fact checkers- SHAME on your SMEARS- Australian For.Min. Bob Carr is eating crow- backpedaling from previous statement regarding Australian Ben Ziegler- born in Melbourne. Wen Ben Ziegler was detained- Australian g'ment/Embassy- Amb.+ diplomats were notified at once. Prisoner X in Ayalon prison is the latest attempt to find anything wrong with the State of Israel .Ben Zoiegler's father belong to B'nai B'rith ADL et al in Melbourne,Australia. Read http://www.theage.com/au/national/australian-diplomat-aware-zygier-being-held-20130213-2edge.html Why isn't ABC for.corr. investigating factual happenings in Syria- i.e. Syrian rebels carjacking an UN observer vehicle at gunpoint on Syrian side of Golan Heights?: Or the Rebels lootying World Heritage sites or looting the abandoned Syrian homes under their command? Where are these treasures taken- by which country- who is buying? That would be real investigating for foreign correspondents in ABC.
Atta boy Chris ! I'm glad someone else's eyes are open to these paid posters
I wounder what kind of self-delusion it takes to firmly believe that no one would ever disagree with you for free.
Chris: Did I ever mention others as fools?
I believe in: those who consider others as fools are the biggest fools themselves.
About Israeli and Jewish right wing I have posted worse comments than many.
Netanhahu and his gang (either too arrogant or stupid) are dangerous even for Israel and Jews. Sometimes, enemies are within in.
farideh: Thanks a lot for understanding. We had disagreements on some and similar views on some others.
I feel that those indulging in genocides should pay for the past sins.
Moral of story is to not piss off the government of Israel.
True; or the US government, look at how we're going after Standard & Poors (How dare they lower our credit rating!)
Jwright,
"Moral of story is to not piss off the government of Israel."
This story really didn't make sense to me. They said Zygier was born in Australia and moved to Israel where he served in the Israeli military and was recruited by Mossad. Then they said he ended up hanging himself in a prison cell. But what was he doing in a prison cell to begin with? What did he do wrong to have been imprisoned in the first place? The article either didn't say or I missed it.
@Mickey,
That was the whole point. The man was held without a charge, without an indentity, without a trial, without any communication with any other people in a cell specially built for another prisoner (who had killed himself) . This was done secretly for years. That was the point --- you didn't miss anything. And if there is one prisoner in this mode of confinement, are there more? Why is there no governmental (parliamentary) oversight of such imprisonments that violate Israel's Constitution?
chris - This happenes in Iran (I am a witness) all the time. Did you know that?
@ Chris: "This was done secretly for years." For years Chris? Really? How many years?
Yes it does happen in other countries but Israel is portrayed as something different and uses a unique past history to bolster their arguement that they are better than their neighbors. Guess not.
kashanian
Two wrongs do not make a right.
Diverting attention to things in Iran does not absolve the crimes committed by the zionist authority.
Let's have your opinion on this issue.
OK, so let me tell you how this works and why that guy ended up the way he did.
Israel started already in the 70's and 80's, via its agents, to get more and more Jewish Communities worldwide involved in the "common Zionist cause" and influence (lobbyism) the local communities and governments to adhere with their needs.
To the same time Israel made the Jewish Communities understand it can provide them support, security and cultural growth ... IF they on their side will go along with Israel's agenda. "Cultural growth" meant that kindegarden teachers and Rabbis will be sent by Israel over to the different Jewish Communities to "serve".
But what the Jewish Communities didn't know was that all those sent out to "serve" were prepared to influence those communities towards are more aggressive Zionism attitude and to fight for Israel's rights and needs.
So, if from a little child age you get brainwashed that Israel is great, that Israel needs your help, that Israel was always attacked from its creation on, and that every Jew's mitzvah (commandment) is to "serve" Israel and Zionism ... so if that happens at an early age, what do you expect it will happen?
I tell you: Israel will have willingful agents all over the world, covered as "normal" citizens of those countries. Nobody will every know WHICH members of those Jewish Communities were really just lobbying, and who were doing more than that.
Brainwashed with such ideologies from a little age on, this guy ended up really believing in "Israel's cause" and the "Zionists needs" without realizing that the system he believed in was corrupt and criminal.
He dived into that system to realize shortly after that we was a little wheel in a huge criminal network. Unfortunately for him, growing up in Australia and being familiar with real democratic values, he could still make a difference and probably didn't want to continue "serving" the criminal system he once believed in.
The next "logical" step was his death.
Mickey, the point of this type of detention is precisely to make it so that you don't have to tell anybody about WHY you're doing it. I'm sure it'll come out eventually, but the article was only about evidence suggesting the existence of such a prisoner. Why he was a prisoner will be a very closely guarded secret.. probably even more so than his identity.
In other words, it's simply not know what happened, but you guys don't need to know, you just stick to your belief that Israel is oh-so-evil and imagine the rest.
Heinrich von Dork, er, Dorf, are you not a neo-Nazi or a member of a white supremacist group by chance? Also, what about you, LM, Chris, DM, hrfdez, and Max? Are you not part of hate groups yourselves? While I am not in favor of all of the policies that the nation of Israel has done in the past, I DO know, not to mention that it is a smart idea, to not tick off the protector of the nation of Israel, who is Yahweh. Many nations have tried and many nations have died and ditto for many individuals who thought like you, too. Instead of saying that it is some sort of evil Zionist conspiracy like libertaritards, the aforementioned hate groups, atheists, humanist/secular humanists, secularists, naturalists, hedonists, Communists, Socialists, Fascists, anarchists, and Muslim terrorists in countries all over the world do all the time so often that they sound like broken records, why not simply punish the guilty INDIVIDUALS regardless of their national origin?
When bigots cannot stand the truth, and instead of rationally debate the issue they resort to personal abuse and name calling.
This has always been the case.
@ Chris 749391
There is no need for sarcasm here, Chris.
“Are there people in prisons whose incarceration is kept secret? What are the supervision mechanisms on this kind of imprisonment?” lawmaker Dov Henin asks.
***************************************************
Are there people in prisons whose incarceration is kept secret...... that kind of naivete I would expect from a seven-year-old CHILD, not a grown man doing Gov'mint work!
Maybe he intended to be rhetorical but ol' Dov comes off sounding ridiculously NAIVE.
EVERY country is secretly holding people in prisons, and if they're not doing so for their own country, they're doing so for some other country.
Like OUR country, for instance. We've got prisons all over the WORLD and people from all walks of life - American citizens too - are being held "incommunicado".
Yeah. 'Cause we're the greatest SHAM OF DEMOCRACY in the WORLD!!
We could never have a POTUS with the media in his pocket, right? The POTUS would never do anything unconstitutional either, right? The POTUS is open, honest, and transparent, right?
Thank you!!
But nobody cares that most of North Korea's population is starving or that China kills thousands of political prisoners yearly or Cuba and on and on and on. You people are such hypocrites.
These countries don't claim to be democracies.
Get your history and political facts straight!
So what you are basically saying is that because dictatorships behave this way, it is therefore ok for a democratic government to behave this way. Hmm, who sounds like the hypocrite here.
Two wrongs do not make a right!
The US has more incarcerated people than any other country in the world. Also more than China, even though we always say China has a cruel system and is mistreating human rights, bla bla bla.
Indeed, two wrong don't make it right, but if you are at peace with one wrong and not at peace with the other one that is similar, you are hypocrite.
Oh do you think they merely Asked ?
Every country in the world has dealt with this type of situation with secretive and sensitive spy cases at one time or another. Till today the CIA has secret locations around the world that keep prisoners for questioning or detains them without charge. That is the nature of spy agencies or other government agencies dealing with national security issues everywhere. They don't write articles or go on 6 O'clock news telling the world about what they do.
I agree, farideh, though it doesn't condone the act.
I agree with you Basil, but my point is that same posters keep their mouth shut when this happens (it does but never publicized) in the arab/muslim world, or any country for that matter - other than Israel.
Yes farideh, and curious that they never mention what King Hussein of Jordan did to the Palestinians, most of whom were actually denizens of Jordan pre Six Day War. See "Black September" and the Jordanian civil war. Best to you, Farideh.
farideh, thank you for being a voice of reason in the room. I might also add that were they to do that sort of thing like you mentioned, that is making the spies public, that they would inevitably become vetted out, fired, considered as terrorists, seditionists, and rebels that are against the country and that is not even considering conspiracy charges.
Birds of the same feather flock together.
Dorner?
This doesn't make any sense - he was clearly Jewish, not Palestinian, and allegedly recruited by Mossad??? Why on EARTH was he arrested? And then a clear cover-up that was ALMOST successful -- WHY??? I don't exactly approve of indefinite incarceration without charging the suspect or giving him a court date (see Gitmo), but if he were a member of HAMAS I could at least understand WHY they would do it. But an Israeli from Australia??? It makes no sense at all.
@T Bourlon: There are some hypothetical scenarios that would explain but certainly not condone this. For example, perhaps they discovered he was a double agent. I guess we'll need to wait for more details to emerge but we might ultimately never know.
OK, so let me tell you how this works and why that guy ended up the way he did.
Israel started already in the 70's and 80's, via its agents, to get more and more Jewish Communities worldwide involved in the "common Zionist cause" and influence (lobbyism) the local communities and governments to adhere with their needs.
To the same time Israel made the Jewish Communities understand it can provide them support, security and cultural growth ... IF they on their side will go along with Israel's agenda. "Cultural growth" meant that kindegarden teachers and Rabbis will be sent by Israel over to the different Jewish Communities to "serve".
But what the Jewish Communities didn't know was that all those sent out to "serve" were prepared to influence those communities towards are more aggressive Zionism attitude and to fight for Israel's rights and needs.
So, if from a little child age you get brainwashed that Israel is great, that Israel needs your help, that Israel was always attacked from its creation on, and that every Jew's mitzvah (commandment) is to "serve" Israel and Zionism ... so if that happens at an early age, what do you expect it will happen?
I tell you: Israel will have willingful agents all over the world, covered as "normal" citizens of those countries. Nobody will every know WHICH members of those Jewish Communities were really just lobbying, and who were doing more than that.
Brainwashed with such ideologies from a little age on, this guy ended up really believing in "Israel's cause" and the "Zionists needs" without realizing that the system he believed in was corrupt and criminal.
He dived into that system to realize shortly after that we was a little wheel in a huge criminal network. Unfortunately for him, growing up in Australia and being familiar with real democratic values, he could still make a difference and probably didn't want to continue "serving" the criminal system he once believed in.
The next "logical" step was his death.
It must be nice to be so firmly convinced the you already know something you don't really know a first thing about.
LM's interpretation is logical and makes very sense!
@Eli: Its called "delusional."
It is called "substance".
Embarresment????
This is criminal; Israelis are getting away with so many wrongdoings, they probably forgot what is right what is wrong or what is legal and what is illegal..
And freaking nate yahoo calls Iran "lawless"....
Under our auspices, of all things, shameful if you ask me....
So, you found some vague reason to suspect Israel of something that happens in every country in the world, and you think that proves that Iran is not lawless.
Wonderful.
I haven't read the story and I won't comment on it. Not passing judgement.
But, I am having difficulty trying to identify the right wing anti semites from the left wing anti semites. Any suggestions? Oh, there might be one thing they have in common.
What that they hate Jews ??? I am neither anti semite nor anti Arab......I am anti ignorance. This entire fight over some sand and stones is one of the most idiotic wars and waste of life in human history. Both are guilty ....
Well I have news for you kosher,
people both in the left and the right can see what is wrong with Israeli policies. In case you missed it, UN vote on recognizing palestine approved by everybody except Israel, US & Canada.
That shows, many countries with many different perspectives, views agree on the fact that Israel stinks.
Quit that anti-semite crap; Its getting old.
If you want to be loved, behave like a human being.
What about Jews who are against the criminal government in Israel ?
I think majority of Israelis do not support the boneheads currently running the government. Those majority seek peace and do not approve massacre of palestinians.
The question is; Is the majority 51%? or 90%?
Nate yahoo and other nuts wrongly try to convince Israeli people that Israel will be better off acting like a-holes rather than reasonable. regrettably, it may appear it is succeeding. But, it will be soon Israel & isarelis will painfully realize that that is not the case..
All that vote at UN proves is that majority of UN is still subdued by Arab oil.
If you don't want Palestinians slaughtered, all they have to do is not attack Israel, than no one will be slaughtering them.
Yes, many Israelis as well as many Jews worldwide dislike the current government of Israel, but what all Jews and all Israelis, and basically everyone who is not an antisemite agree on is that when someone keep attacking you with intent to destroy you, it's OK to fight back.
For those of you want to actually learn something about the Arab/ Israeli conflict...... Read "Crossing Mandelbaum Gate" - By Kai Bird. Instead of spouting nonsense. The book will educate you on the history and what both sides are capable of.....Both parties are to blame for this seemingly never ending war .....
The story is not about arab/Israeli conflict or war, it is about a seemingly secret story nobody knows anything about, have no idea what the whole story is, but they post remarks anyway because the word "Israel" is in it.
"Crossing Mandelbaum Gate" is illuminating reading for anyone trying to understand why American diplomats in Israel are still searching for peace or why our soldiers are still in Iraq, but too little of it sheds light on what Bird learned while coming of age with Arabs and Israelis."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042302255.html
Nice of you to offer this movie and educate the rest of us. However, you should realize that Arabs are also considered Semites. Check Google if you don't believe me. Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages also.
Exactly, Think Wise. Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis have both been sh!tting behind the same sand dunes for thousands of years - they are ALL Arabs and ALL are steeped in a culture of secrecy, oppression and violence.
That's nice Dunno, would you please tell that to Arabs who made it clear that they will not accept Jews among themselves or a Jewish state among Arab states.
Historically, in democracies.. or even if bureaucratic authoritarian (but not totalitarian) states, it's pretty difficult to make a political opponent or security risk simply disappear, especially with broad access to the Internet. The Chinese, who are pretty nasty about this sort of thing, make people disappear for up to 3 months at a time with alarming regularity, but even it eventually has to give some accounting for 'em, try them and make them normal prisoners, or kill them and try to see if they can get away with the "suicide" in the court of public opinion. In their most extreme case, they managed to make a dissident named Gao Zhisheng disappear (for the second time) for over a year. They eventually were forced to produce him, and they eventually let his family visit him in some remote gulag where he's still being kept.
I'm pretty surprised that the Israelis were able to get away with this for so long. Only totalitarian states - with their total control on domestic information flow - like Iran and North Korea - can really get away with this stuff, with any amount of reliability.
The Israelis would have gotten away with it ... the story was pushed by Australia.
I'm very sure Israel tried to put pressure on the Australian journalists to keep their mouth shut. It's the same procedure they use in the US. Their acting is criminal.
It must be nice to be able to become so sure with no grounds needed for the certainty.
Wait, so Israel recruited a foreign national from Australia to spy for them, then jailed him, and he's turned up mysteriously dead? His family has no clue what's going on? And, now, the Israeli news media is intentionally blocking coverage?
Sounds like something we'd expect al Qaeda or Iran to do.
...the company we keep...
Actually, it's worse than that. The Israels recruited a foreign national from Australia to spy for them, then he vanished. Later, rumors emerged of the death of a secret prisoner without a name or identity, kept in total isolation, in a secret prison-inside-a-prison, on entirely unknown charges.. or possibly no charges at all. No due process - in fact, no judicial process at all - is in evidence. That secret prisoner may or may not be the Aussie.. that is speculation. Media is not only blocked from covering the matter, they are blocked from even acknowledging even the existence of the block.
This is Kafkaesque in the extreme... the sort of thing Franz Joseph used to do in the bad old end days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire..
It sounds like some something that happens in absolutely every country in the world.
However, no other country would be condemned for that in a similar manner.
Actually no Eli.
I'm almost always pro-Israel in my views, but this is pretty extreme by any standards.
The closest that we've come in the US was with Jose Padilla, from 2002 to 2006.. he was grabbed out of FBI custody by unremarked government agents and then held incommunicado at a military base for years and probably subjected to repeated torture, but there was never any question that the government was holding him (somewhere), the crime they alleged that he was plotting to commit (which he probably didn't actually do, at least to the extent they alleged), and his name was always out there. Eventually, they gave him a trial, albeit a somewhat irregular one, and sent him to normal prison.
Somewhat worse, the Chinese effectively disappeared, under threat of torture, Gao Zhisheng in 2009 and again from 2010 to 2012, but even there his name and crime were known (as phony and contrived as it likely was), even if the location and conditions of his imprisonment were kept secret for a time (their government simply announced that "he is where he needs to be"). That also was a case of a paroled convicted man, however trumped up and rigged his trial was, not a free man.
The US may have staged outright disappearances into the black sites, but that was foreign nationals, generally taken from the battlefield, and only for a limited period of time.
In this case, the name of the prisoner, the crime if any and even the fact of arrest and detention, were all kept secret, apparently for years. This type of thing use to happen a lot in the 19th century, in Europe, but is pretty unusually by modern standards. It is very disturbing.
Eli, please tell me that you don't also have a persecution complex...I don't think I could bear it.
And, no. Every other country in the world does not "get away" (interesting turn of phrase considering the subject matter) with "it".
Specifically, secret jailing/killing of citizens was one of the reasons we used to justify our invasion of Iraq. It was also a negative fact about the Taliban paraded around for the public in order to garner support for that war. Secret jailing/killing of citizens is something we view despots and enemies as partaking in...not the our friends, such as the "Chosen People".
Granted, there is come cognitive dissonance in America's worldview...we apparently don't have a mirror. I'll give you that...we torture and kill with impunity. But, it's headache after headache with Israel. I mean, given their rampant human rights violations, the trouble they've stirred up in the Middle East, their poor treatment of the Palestinians, their baiting of the Syrians, their baiting of the Iranians, etc. etc. etc., and given the fact that we gain so much less than we lose by maintaining the alliance, can we just cut Israel loose to fend for itself?
I mean, we already gave Israel billions and billions of dollars, the most modern weapons systems in the world, nuclear weapons, etc. etc. etc. Why don't we just go our separate ways as old pals and agree Israel owes us several (hundred) favors over the next 50 or so years?
Have you ever had an ingrate friend who didn't ever buy his share of drinks at the bar but always somehow ended up getting you in a fight? Think about how that friend made you feel. That's how I feel about Israel.
The only democracy in the Middle East keeps proving that it just happened to be another one very big lie............Bringing other countries into the discussion about THIS story is kind of stupid and makes some posters above look like they ARE Mossad Agents themselves....
They are proving that they can behave the same way as any other country, even though some posters react to this news the way they would not react to similar news from any other country and that makes them look like hypocrites.
@eli1000
oh boo hoo "stop being mean to isreal" yada yada yada
Just because other countries do it doesn't mean this type of nation state behavior shouldn't be condemned.
If you're claiming to be a civilized nation operating under the Rule of Law, YOU ARE REQUIRED TO SPEAK UP and call Bull$hit when this crap happens. There has got to be accountability. Are you trying to hold yourself to a higher standard, or just be on par with the world's crappier countries?
Eli100-They are proving that they can behave the same way as any other country, even though some posters react to this news the way they would not react to similar news from any other country and that makes them look like hypocrites.
But isn't that what the Israeli's say they want. To be thought of as any other country? They complain that people judge them differently because of Antisemitism. So when they do things right,they should be praised as we would any country that does right. But the reverse is,when they do wrong,they should be condemned as we would any other country that does wrong.
The problem I see on these boards is that when they are condemned for doing wrong,the pro-Israeli posters,instead of also condemning the wrong. Make all kinds of excuses for the bad actions,and play the antisemitism card,against those condemning Israel.
We all know that through-out History,nations from A-Z sometimes do bad things. And when that happens,they should be condemned for those actions,and usually are. I don't see how it helps Israel to act like they are blameless,or somehow justified for wrong actions. But in reality,no nation is blameless,or justified in doing wrong.Not Israel,not us,not Iran,or any nation.And making excuses doesn't help them.
The only point here that makes the entire episode so laughable is that the article says nothing of substance, because they know nothing - this is a "secret" operation. Yet the extreme left, the extreme right and the radical muslims are out there speculating, theorizing and are "very sure" of what they post.... they know everything nobody else does, of course.
Just grab at any straw to make uninformed and drogatory remarks against a democratic nation or their jewish people. After all, they are only jews.
Cry baby. Why don't you grow a pair, farideh ... put on your big boy pants.
I see we are back to kindergarten, not that most Israel-bashers ever left it.
Actually Eli and Farideh, it looks like that, as of today, the fact of a nameless man's detention has now been admitted by the ministry to the Knesset, now that the press uncovered the story, so this is not just guesswork anymore.
Most accusations here are still guesswork, the new peace does not confirm the identity, does not specify the exact crime and certainly doesn't offer any proof or even grounds for suspicion that the man's death was not a suicide.
I didn't see anything in the article to indicate Zygier's death was a suicide. I question why NBC published a photograph they know has been obscured. If this cemetary shown is in Australia, why didn't NBC have a correspondant take an unobscured picture of the grave marker?
The only ignorant person making comments on this site is this Eli guy. He's an idiot!
This guy never fails to defend the deeds of his pay master, no matter how wrong the deeds may be.
He should be awarded the star of david for devotion and service to his pay master.
from what was said in newspapers and on television in Israel and around the world
His family knew what was going on and why, they visited him regularly& he had top lawyers representig him in the legal proceedings against him like Avigdor Feldman who just loves to annoy the Israeli government if he has a chance, so if there was somthing wrong with the way he was treated Feldman would have gone public with the story looooong ago, gag or no gag.
His family is silent, even now because they know that everything is okay legally and especially what their son had done,
his parents held high positions in the Jewish community where they lived in Australia and resigned them after what happend, which is another sign of what their son did was probably very serious.
I'm sorry and feel bad for his family but l don't think the human rights of this person were violated.
I do have one comment to make on the other side of this affair... The Aussie government is now saying that this guy was being investigated by Australian external intelligence (ASIS) for being a spy for Israel. It appears that an Aussie paper figured this out and was chasing after this guy and his family for a story back in 2010.
Now.. What kind of lame spy agency leaks a major counter-intelligence investigation to the press while their target was still at large?
Is this a sign of the beginning of needed development of normalization in Israel Palestine and Arab conflict.
I only hope so.
If only much needed transparency could be achieved in place of ultra modern dirty war.
I am afraid not.
all governments are bad
all forms of government are bad
government is just a front for corrupt interests and artificial hierarchies
theocratic governments are the worst of the lot