Israel:
Hostages rot in prison
by Hans Lebrecht Recently Iran arrested 13 Jewish citizens of that country and charged them with espionage for the US and/or Israel and high treason. The media and other ruling circles in Israel have loudly protested over the arrests, calling the incident provocation by fundamentalist Islamic hotheads. Outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PM-elect Ehud Barak called on President Bill Clinton to demand the Iranian Government release the 13. Barak also called on German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to mobilise the European Union to do the same. A similar case in the 1980s involved Nathan Sharansky. Israeli and Zionist circles aroused a hue and cry when Sharansky, then a Soviet citizen, was tried and sentenced by the Moscow district court after having been caught red-handed with secret documents he had tried to smuggle into the US Embassy in Moscow. In 1986, Sharansky was exchanged for a Soviet spy in Potsdam (in then-East Germany). Now, in his capacity as Israeli Minister of Industry and Trade in the outgoing Netanyahu cabinet, he has appealed to the Pope to influence the Iranian Government, to release the 13 Jews. Whether the 13 are innocent or not, I have no way of knowing. Obviously no government admits outright that its intelligence services occupy themselves with espionage in another state. However, an important point to note is that Iran is certainly not the only state in the world whose security forces are detaining, even kidnapping, citizens under the allegation of spying for a foreign power. Many Palestinians, under this or that "security" pretext, have been kidnapped, detained and jailed by Israeli authorities. Many of them have never been indicted or brought before a court but are still held — some for 20 years or more already. But I want to report one case in particular: 21 Lebanese citizens, Palestinian refugees, after having been kidnapped in 1986 by Israeli commandos from Lebanon, are still held — all without trial — in an isolated cellblock in Israel's Central Prison, near Ramlah about 20 miles southeast of Tel Aviv. They are kept as hostages to be exchanged at some future date for Israeli POWs in Arab hands, or for the war-plane navigator Ron Arad, who catapulted from his plane some years ago when downed over Lebanese territory and is said to be jailed in Iran, in Syria, or by some Lebanese guerrilla group. Nobody knows for sure whether Arad is still alive, but the Israeli public is aroused by Zionist circles to "struggle" for Arad's release. Who are those 21 Lebanese hostages, held for 13 years in Ramleh Prison? In a June 11 report, correspondent Orit Shahat, writing for the Ha'aretz daily, said: "All the hostages, with the exception of two, were taken at random during the course of Israeli army operations in Lebanon. "Five of them were kidnapped because they were at Sheik Obeid's house when Israeli commandos arrived [to arrest and kidnap the sheik for alleged Hisbullah leadership]. One of them had merely come to seek the sheik's blessing on his wedding day. "Two were only 15 years old when spirited away." Shahat said, "The (Israeli) state is trying to claim that they are POWs, although they were not taken prisoner while engaged in military activity. "District court judges have already twice ordered their release long ago, but the state appealed and succeeded in blocking the order." So the years go by as the 21 hostages grow old in their prison cells. It is ironic but just when the Israeli authorities are staging a worldwide hullabaloo over the 13 jailed in Iran, the Ramleh Magistrate Court will once again hold a hearing on the Lebanese hostages' case at the request of their attorney, Zvi Rish. He asked the court to ease some of his clients' prison conditions, such as how many minutes per month they are allowed to talk on the phone with their families in Lebanon — they are not permitted family visits — or simply that they be allowed to watch TV in their own language, Arabic.* * * People's Weekly World, paper of Communist Party, USA