For one Palestinian citizen of Israel, interrogations by the Shin Bet are a routine which include delays and harassment for no apparent reason. By Awad Abdel Fattah I was fortunate this week. I had a quick and easy crossing from Jordan back into Israel. No delays, no questions, no invasive body searches and no lengthy rummaging through my luggage. The border guard sitting next to the computer took my passport, opened it and looked at the screen, presumably to check for any special alert. Unlike previous occasions, she didn’t leave her seat and disappear into another room to take instructions on…

Photos by: Anne Paq, Yotam Ronen, Oren Ziv, and Ryan Rodrick Beiler from the Activestills photo collective. Thousands of Palestinians attended the funeral on Monday of Arafat Jaradat, 30, who died two days earlier in Israeli custody, while under interrogation by Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet. The funeral took place in his village of Sa'ir, near Hebron, in the West Bank. According to Palestinian officials, the autopsy showed bruising on his shoulder, chest and elbows, as well as fractures in two of his right ribs, all indications that he died from severe torture. A father of two children,…

Is there growing realization within Israeli society that the social, political, moral, and military basis of the occupation is unsustainable? If so, perhaps 'The Gatekeepers' need not change people’s minds, so much as express them. A college professor once taught me that a decaying empire clenches onto power with a chokehold. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people may not be an empire, but after nearly forty-six years, it has become a sort of reigning paradigm of Israeli life. The Israeli Left has challenged, but never truly shifted, that paradigm. In 2009 a particularly right-wing government was established after a particularly…

NEW YORK -- "If this film does not lead to change, there is no hope for Israel," said Israeli director Dror Moreh. He was referring to his new documentary The Gatekeepers, which has been nominated for an Academy Award. The title of the film refers to the six directors of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, who, in a series of extraordinary interviews with the director, speak about their work in detail for the first time. Perhaps partly in response to Moreh's personal charisma and partly out of what seems to be deep concern born of real patriotism, these…

In honor of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, Israel Social TV prepared a special edition in cooperation with the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. Watch to learn about methods of physical and psychological torture that are common in Israel and the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators. Related: High Court upholds flawed procedure on torture investigations Knesset extends legislation that facilitates torture

The High Court of Justice upheld the procedure regarding complaints of torture against Shin Bet agents, despite the fact that this procedure resulted in no investigations after nearly 600 complaints The High Court of Justice has upheld a controversial procedure governing investigations into allegations of abuse and torture against employees of Israel’s General Security Service, better known as the Shin Bet. According to this procedure, all complaints, usually filed by Palestinians who the Shin Bet detained and interrogated on suspicion of terrorism, are first examined by a Shin Bet official, working under the professional supervision of the Attorney General’s Office. This examination…

King Bibi, as TIME Magazine recently crowned him, the fiercest Zionist to ever lead Israel, will go down in history as the one who brought Zionism to its knees   TIME Magazine published a lengthy item on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, with a close-up photo of him on the cover so huge it left just enough room for the headline: “King Bibi.” It was a Hasbara official’s wet dream. No hard-hitting questions; but rather soft, caressing queries. As the cover said, the feature claimed to ask, yet not answer, the question of “Will Bibi make peace?” Well, for…

In recent days several activists in the J14 movement across the country have been summoned to interrogations in various police stations with the stated goal of learning what their plans are for the coming summer. I was one of them. Today I showed up at the central district station in Tel Aviv only to find out that media pressure led to the cancelation of interrogations. It all started with a small piece of paper I found in my mail box on Sunday at around noon. Signed by one "Shabi", this police notice ordered me to report to the Yiftakh command…

Recent searches into the email accounts of passengers arriving in Israel raises the question of how far the state can go in its airport security checks. It is one thing to search files located on a person's computer , but quite another to go through a person's cyberspace history.  By Jonathan Klinger News that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) searches the email accounts of those who travel to Israel (first reported on by Mondoweiss) is quite disturbing. According to the report, several activists who crossed the border in to Israel were requested to open up their computers, connect to the internet and log in to…

Whereas West Bank settlers can travel freely between Israel and the West Bank, Palestinian movement is governed by the Israeli security establishment. This illustration is the fourth in a series of infographics on the effect of the occupation on the Palestinian civilian population. By Michal Vexler Source: Machsom Watch: Invisible prisoners ————————— Michal Vexler is a designer and an activist. This work – a part of a series of infographics regarding the effect of the occupation on the Palestinian civilian population – is presented here with her permission. Previous posts in this series: Visualizing Occupation: Palestinian Prisoners’ Day – the numbers…

There were 4,937 political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers in November 2011 according to Adameer, a Palestinian non-governmental organization. Yazan Abdulhadi was one of them before he was released on November 28, 2011, between the two swaps of the deal between Israel and Hamas to free Gilad Schalit (not as part of the deal). On January 7, 2012, he agreed to give an interview that would be published in +972 Magazine. The conversation took place in Ramallah, at Café Pronto. By Alexis Thiry Yazan spent 15 months in Israeli prisons, accused of being a member of a student…

In the spring of 2010, it emerged that a young journalist had been under house arrest for several months for leaking documents that led to the publication of an investigative report on IDF misconduct. Thanks to an unprecedented media blackout, the case made headlines around the world. Anat Kamm is serving a  four and a half-year prison sentence. Uri Blau, the journalist behind the report, will stand trial. This is how the case unfolded. December 14, 2006 The High Court of Justice rejects a petition against the IDF practice of targeted killings of wanted militants. However, the ruling - former…

The Headlines: Bad for Israel > Israel’s outgoing chief of Military Intelligence (and future head of Mossad?), Maj Gen Amos Yadlin, warns Israelis not be fooled by the “unprecedented” security they have enjoyed recently. The IDF’s own Jeremiah predicts that the “next military conflict” will happen on multiple fronts and may incur more fatalities. As I have written here in the past, the importance of such assessments is not derived from the predictive power of Israeli intelligence, which has often proven quite poor. Rather, what worries me is the IDF’s tendency to produce self-fulfilling prophecies: by reacting to every event…