Personal Accounts
GSS - Shabac, interrogate many more patients at Erez
New data about GSS (Shabac) unorthodox methods at Erez Crossing
4 May 2009
New data and 30 new testimonies show: Rise in the number of patients interrogated; interrogation of minors; Policy conducted in full “cooperation of High Court, Legal Advisor to Government;” says PHR director Hadas Ziv
Data and new testimonies collected by Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-I) and presented today (Monday May 4) at the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva, indicates a rise in the number of Palestinian patients interrogated and forced to provide information as a precondition to exit Gaza for medical care. The information also exposes a series of new practical measures employed by the GSS. PHR-Israel has learned that:
- GSS has interrogated minors,
- photographed patients against their will,
- detained patients for undisclosed periods of time for interrogation,
- implemented interrogations without prior notice;
- Harassed, accused, cursed and intimidated patients during interrogations;
- Patients that did not cooperate were returned to Gaza without receiving a permit to exit for medical treatment.
Between January 2008 and March 2009, at least 438 patients have been summoned for GSS interrogations at Erez Crossing, as a precondition for the review of their applications for an exit permit for the purpose of accessing medical treatment outside the Strip. The data points to an increase in the ratio of the number of interrogations to the total number of applications submitted to the authorities at Erez Crossing: from 1.45% in January 2008 to 17% in January 2009.
About a year ago, PHR published a report which exposed the ways in which the GSS operates systematically in order to recruit patients as collaborators. Since the release of this report, the GSS has continued its policies despite international criticism that these policies negate the International Treaty Against Torture and general codes of Medical Ethics.
Collaboration as a condition for exiting for treatment:
…they asked me: “What’s your full name, where did you study, what did you study, where do you work, why do you want to go out, which area do you live in, who lives around you and who are the neighbors?” They asked me to provide information on some of the people who live in my neighborhood. I said to them: “I don’t know them and I know nothing about the people around me. I’m only concerned with myself.” Then the interrogator asked me about someone called Amer. I said: “The whole town is full of Amers, which Amer are you talking about?” Then he asked me about someone called Hisar, someone called Aladia and finally he asked me if I know Hamas people and who I know among the activists. I said:” I don’t like politics and all those things.” The interrogator said: “I understand that you don’t want to answer me and that you don’t want to work with us, so go back to Gaza.”
Taken from testimony of “R”, a patient referred for orthopedic treatment at Saint George Hospital in East Jerusalem. The testimony was taken on September 22, 2008.
Detaining patients for undisclosed periods of time:
…When he didn’t get an answer which satisfied him, he ordered the other man to take me to another room. They took me there and closed the door and I was left alone there. After 45 minutes the interrogator opened the door and said: “Do you want to answer my questions now or not? If you tell me which members of your family belong to the Hamas and which to the Islamic Jihad, I’ll let you leave Gaza for the hospital”. I said: “There aren’t any people like that in my family”. At 16.30 the interrogator said: “Enough. Take him and send him back to Gaza”. I said: “If it’s to Gaza – then to Gaza it will be."
From the testimony of W., who was interrogated on 8.12.08. The testimony was submitted to PHR-Israel on 17.12.08. The patient suffered from kidney stones and was referred for treatment to St. Joseph hospital in East Jerusalem.
Interrogating Minors
R., a 17.5 years old cancer patient who is being treated at Sheba Medical Center in Israel, arrived at the Erez Crossing after having been informed by PHR-Israel that her departure, accompanied by her mother, had been approved. When they reached the crossing point at 9 a.m they were told to sit and wait in the departure hall. At around 11.30 three GSS men in civilian dress came over and asked R. to follow them for interrogation. Despite the girl’s tears and pleading, one of the GSS men threatened that if she did not accompany him, he would send her back to Gaza. R. was separated from her mother and taken for interrogation. All this time, her mother was locked in the adjacent room and told to wait for her daughter. The interrogation lasted an hour, and in its course, the girl’s cell phone was taken, she was questioned about her uncle and her father, their place of employment etc. On conclusion of the interrogation, the girl was taken back to her mother, and at the end of the day, around 17.00 she was permitted to leave for Israel
From the testimony of R., who was interrogated on 29.1.09. Testimony submitted to PHR-Israel on the same day. The patient suffers from a malignant tumor on the leg and is being treated at Shiba Medical Center in Israel.
Patients from Gaza – between the devil and the deep blue sea: patients have reported to PHR-Israel that since February 2009, Hamas police – stationed at a checkpoint a kilometer and a half south of Erez Crossing - have been preventing individuals from reaching Erez Crossing for GSS interrogations. According to the testimonies, patients claim that Hamas policy is to permit patients to reach the crossing only if they are going there in order to exit for medical treatment. In some cases patients report threats leveled at them that if they attend the interrogations they will be harmed.
PHR-Israel demands an immediate halt to the GSS policy of extortion targeted at patients requiring exit permits and demands that official bodies responsible for supervising GSS policy and practices exert their authority to revoke the policy which renders departure from Gaza for medical treatment conditional on collaboration with the GSS at Erez Crossing.
Hadas Ziv, Director of PHR: “It is incredibly dangerous for any democratic nation when a secret agency known to use unorthodox methods is allowed to operate without proper supervision or criticism. The silence of the High Court of Justice, the Legal Advisor to the Government and other official bodies implicates them as partners to the Shabac’s cynical use of patients.”
For more information:
Libby Friedlander 054-245-7682
Blachar Now Heads Global Ethics
5 November 2008 Derek Summerfield writes to say the long standing President of the IMA, Yoram Blachar, becomes President of the World Med Assoc. It had escaped The Medical Committee for Boycott of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) that he had been President-elect of the WMA.
For those familiar with the role Blachar has played over many years, for him to become President of the official international watchdog on medical ethics is an event beyond satire, as when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Next thing Donald Rumsfeld is going to pop up as the head of Amnesty International...
Just for openers, the1975 Declaration of Tokyo, which forbids doctors to participate or collude with torture, is a WMA document. Yet Blachar is on record in no less than the Lancet as supporting the use of “moderate physical pressure” (the Israeli euphemism for torture, and condemned as torture by the UN Committee on Torture). This is not something you see everyday in an international medical journal from the head of a national medical association (Blachar Y. The truth about Israeli medical ethics. Lancet 1997;350:1247) . He has played a consistent and trusty role over many years in batting away approaches from both Israeli organisations (PHR-I, Public Committee Against Torture) and international ones (Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, various UN agencies, aid agencies like Medecins Sans Frontieres etc) regarding the extent of documentation in the public realm about the everyday collusion by Israeli doctors with torture as state policy.
He has refused to condemn the systematic violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention being applied in the siege of Gaza- those sections that guarantee a civilian population unimpeded access to materials and services vital to life, including health services, and which guarantee immunity to health professionals as they work. A morally abhorrent track record of quite unusual clarity.
The WMA is there to address the violations of medical ethics to which I and others have been pointing for years, but it has of course long since been sewn up. That was what Blachar was there for, I am afraid. As I have written before, when the official and ‘normal’ channels do not function or will not function, we can either give up or move on to other approaches. This is where our calls for a boycott of the IMA, and indeed the whole academic boycott campaign, come in.
On the other hand he and the IMA arguably now present a bigger target.
David Halpin suggests this article is read for a picture of the torment of a whole population.
ChestDoc in Palestine
In summer 2007, a UK doctor spent two weeks in the West Bank. This is his story.
(Full version at http://chestdocinpalestine.blogspot.com)
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2007A Village in Northern England
My life has changed forever. What I witnessed in those two weeks in the West Bank will haunt me till I die. I am almost resentful of my idyllic life here, and sometimes I wish I was back in Palestine- my second home.
Some people have told me I was 'brave' to go to such a dangerous place. There is nothing brave about what I did- breathing in a bit of teargas and dodging a few rubber bullets does not make me a hero. I am back in England living my comfortable life, driving my fast car to my secure job. Yet my friends in Palestine are still queuing at checkpoints in the sun, facing tanks and live bullets in the camps, coming home to find their houses demolished, and watching helplessly as the evil Wall and the greedy settlements devour their land.
I have been speaking to friends and family since my return, and they have been horrified by what they have heard. Most of them had no idea how bad things were. A few have criticized me for being 'too one-sided'. In the weeks and months to come, when I do my talks and write my articles, some people will be baying for my blood. I know that. But I couldn't care less. I've been there and I know the truth.
I shall attempt to counter these arguments here.