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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Israel's latest "human rights" violation

Palestine Today reports on the latest flagrant Israeli human rights violation: making phone calls offering money.

Israeli intelligence is calling Gazan phone numbers, offering 10 million shekels for any information about the whereabouts of Gilad Shalit.

This is, of course, terrible.
Dr. Salah Abdul-Ati, director of the Independent Commission of Human Rights in Gaza said that these practices of the occupation of voice messages sent to [Gaza] citizens is a flagrant violation of human rights and an infringement of their rights, using pressure or temptation, and this work demonstrates the the viciousness of the occupation and its practices and the exploitation of the people's needs.

Abdul Ati told Al Ayyam that this is a breach of the Geneva Convention and rules of international law imposed on the occupied civilians of respect for their rights, and the exposure to these actions to be forced to do that work is classified as acts of military coercion, saying that it comes within the framework of the media war and psychological warfare against citizens in order to undermine the domestic front, adding that the war is not waged with arms alone.

He called on human rights institutions to document and expose the practices of the Israeli occupation and intelligence of these human rights violations to bring the crimes of the occupation to the international courts.
I can't wait to read HRW's scholarly paper about this crime, and its insistence to have the IDF create a "do not call" list under international law.