Glad to be Gay - Middle East

[wowpow]

Glad to be gay?

A leader of the Palestine based Al Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade has claimed that Israel failed to defeat
Hizbullah because its army is "full of gay
soldiers". The Israeli army has allowed gays to
take part in all aspects of military life since
1993. And Hamas' leader in Gaza, Dr Mahmoud
Zahar has gone further, condemning the rights
that all gays have in Israel saying "Are
these the laws for which the Palestinian street
is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals
and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and
the mentally and morally sick?”

But not all his religious brethren agree. In
Saudi Arabia, a gay wedding last weekend saw
over 400 guests celebrating, until police sadly
broke up the party and detained 20 guests
for "emulating women".


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Oh how nice for gay Israelis teepee, that they are given the mandate to go out and kill, like the rest of the sorry arse-holes, to bolster the numbers in the flagging israeli defence forces. You would think they had more brains and would instead demanded a law that forbids a gay taking up arms against his brother, in this particular war at least?

I have no idea whether the Isareli soldiers whom I saw harrassing Palestinian women and children at checkpoints in Palestine when I was last there in June were gay or straight. It didn't seem very important at the time.
However, I can advise anyone who wishes to sexually abuse children that a career awaits him in Shin Bet', the notorious Israeli internal security organization. Not content with the usual forms of torture (beatings, "shabbah", immersion in freezing water etc) with which children accused of being part of the Palestinian Resistance are punished, these dedicated, courageous officers routinely sexually abuse the boys they arrest. A pediatrician in Jerusalem explained to me that sexual humiliation is considered an effective means of neutralising resistance to the Occupation.

Nelson, do you have any concrete evidence of what you have just claimed? Either in the form of an article or recorded interview or whatever, these are obviously very serious allegations. Where was/is this paediatrician working, and how are they privy to such information and what is your connection to them? If it is of a confidential nature you may private mail me here.

Thank-you
Cedric

Your first point of reference should be " Stolen Youth" (Pluto Press, published 18 months ago and available from Amazon), a report from Defense for Children International, an organization which protects vulnerable children worldwide. It maintains an excellent website. The report (which is accompanied by a video) details the use of torture on Palestinian children over the past twenty years. There is a brief allusion to sexual abuse and I have discussed this with Stolen Youth's compiler (who is Israeli, incidentally.) However, there is a marked reluctance, even here, to enter into this murky world and she would not commit herself publicly to the specific issue of sexual torture. One of the boys interviewed in the video makes some allegations but, of course, they cannot be substantuated.
Your next point of refence should be the Palestinian Prisoners' Society, a group that has links with the well -respected Law Society here in the UK. It was in its offices in Beit Jala, Bethlehem, that I was shown the boys' files and first made aware of what is happening by their lawyer. He wanted to arrange a meeting for me with the six boys (the youngest of whom was 13) who had been sexually abused. I turned the offer down for obvious reasons.
I do not feel able to give details of the pediatrician because she works for a well-known charity that depends for its funding on US and European support.
By the way, the last words that the lawyer spoke to me as I left were, "Tell people in the UK what is happening."
This I have tried to do.
A few months later, I was at a meeting with international lawyers at London University when I discovered that the brave, compassionate man who had spoken these words was himself a victim of Israeli torture. He had been a political prisoner for eleven years.

Alright, thank-you very much.

I should have added that, if you were to request information on this issue from the British Foreign & Commonwealth office, you would receive something along the lines of; "We are aware of allegations concerning the sexual torture of children by the Israeli security forces but that these have yet to be substantiated."
However, I have in my possession a copy of a letter from the then Minister, Jack Straw, to a Labour MP whom I know which states that the FCO is aware of what is happening and that it continues to make representations to the Israeli Government to stop the practice.
One of the problems surrounding this (apart from cultural and religious sensitivities that make some Muslims reticent in publicizing it) is the use of nudity by Israeli forces to humiliate Palestinians, not only prisoners but people passing through checkpoints.
A particularly sad instance of this happened two months ago when a young Palestinian boy (about eleven years old) was being interrogated in an Israeli police station. His father was eventually taken to him and found him in "shabbah" (position torture) and with blood all over his face. This was to be expected- it's the way the Israelis work. However, the father couldn't understand why he had also been stripped naked before the beating.
Any lawyer or doctor working with Palestinians will confirm that this is not unusual.

Ah ha, so this is where the Americans learnt the 'fine art' of torturing Muslim prisoners?

To some extent, yes.
You may recall that, at Abu Ghraib, a video was taken of an Iraqi boy being raped. Two "interpreters" were identified as being the perpetrators. At least one of them had dual Israeli/Australian citizenship. It stands to reason that the US would use Israeli experts in Arabic and so the link seems possible. Israeli military methodology has been a feature of the Iraq catastrophe- with similarly disastrous consequences for both occupied and occupier. You may also recall that the general originally i/c Abu Ghraib (Kapanski, or something like that) was interviewed after her dismissal and said that one of the problems at the prison was the use of Israeli methods.
Sexual humiliation was also a feature of Egypt's fight against "Islamic terrorists" after the Luxor massacre lest we imagine that evil resides in one country only.
One of the major issues for Israeli human rights groups like Bet'selem (and very brave they are too) is that the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that torture (of Palestinians, of course) is acceptable in the War for the Settlements that Israel has been fighting for forty years.

it's well known that Israeli soldiers have been slipping off into sand dunes at night for assignations with Arabs.

On the subject of "Glad To Be Gay"..is anyone else on here guilty of standing in Trafalgar Square a few decades ago while gay star Tom Robinson stood beneath Nelson's Column and belted out his only hit song..." Sing If Your Glad To Be Gay...."..oh how foolish we were when we were young.