Thursday, May 13, 2010

Is Israel Sliding Towards a Police State?


A Very Good Piece

By Mel Frykberg

"RAMALLAH, May 12, 2010 (IPS) - Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu has been sentenced to another three months imprisonment for allegedly refusing to perform community service in West Jerusalem. Vanunu, a former employee at Israel’s secret Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, spent 18 years in jail after he revealed information about the facility to the international media.

He was kidnapped by Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad in Rome and brought back to Israel where he served his sentence, most of it in solitary confinement.....

Just how much power Israel’s domestic intelligence agency the Shin Bet has and whether Israel might be turning into a police state has also been the subject of media speculation recently.

This follows the secret midnight arrests of a Turkish national and several Israeli-Arabs on espionage allegations and the gag orders surrounding the arrests.

There are a number of other incidents involving the Shin Bet.....

A number of other Palestinian grassroots activists, involved in the Boycott, Disinvestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign and protests against Israel’s separation barrier, remain incarcerated in Israeli jails in administrative detention or without trial. Abdullah Abu Rahme, a member of Bili’in’s village committee against Israel’s separation barrier, which has expropriated large swathes of the village’s land, has been held for more than five months in administrative detention......"

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