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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">The Tel Aviv torture trail: Israel's role in the Abu Ghraib scandal</h1><p class="gmail-">Israel’s
documented torture and abuse of Palestinians may evoke comparisons to
US tactics employed during the Iraqi occupation, but a closer look
reveals their distinct origins rooted in the Zionist entity.</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/authors/william-van-wagenen" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">William Van Wagenen</a></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span>MAR 5, 2024 - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/the-tel-aviv-torture-trail-israels-role-in-the-abu-ghraib-scandal">https://thecradle.co/articles/the-tel-aviv-torture-trail-israels-role-in-the-abu-ghraib-scandal</a></font></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="http://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/745d0ffc-dbd8-11ee-91b8-00163e02c055.webp" alt="" width="408" height="193" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span>Photo Credit: The Cradle</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Just
five days after the start of the war on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and
settlers detained three Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank
village of Wadi al-Seeq. Stripped down to their underwear, they were
then blindfolded, savagely beaten with an iron pipe, photographed in
their humiliation, and subjected to the ultimate indignity of being
urinated upon.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">One victim, Mohammad Matar, recounting the ordeal to the Israeli newspaper </span><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-21/ty-article-magazine/.premium/beatings-burns-attempted-sexual-assault-settlers-and-soldiers-abused-palestinians/0000018b-530f-d1d7-ab8b-7f5fca1d0000?lts=1700498268582"><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><i>Haaretz</i></span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">,
likened the barbarity to the infamous Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. "It’s
exactly like what happened there," he stated. “Abu Ghraib with the
[Israeli] army.”</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">The
sexual humiliation and torture of Palestinians continued – and expanded –
following Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza two weeks later. Soon,
Israeli soldiers were detaining and </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/8/video-photos-appear-to-show-detainees-stripped-to-underwear-in-gaza"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">humiliating</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> large groups of Palestinian men and </span><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-physically-sexually-abusing-gaza-detainees-unrwa"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">women</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">, subjecting them to sexual abuse across various detention facilities. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">On 21 February, Khaled al-Shawish </span><a href="https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/141884"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">became</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> the ninth Palestinian to die while in Israeli prisons since 7 October, likely due to torture.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">However,
similarities between the torture perpetrated against Palestinians now
and against Iraqis 20 years before in Iraq come as no surprise. Israel
and the torture techniques its intelligence services pioneered over
decades of occupation played an important and largely overlooked role in
the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal, most notably through the use of
sexual humiliation and rape.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><strong>Civilian contractors</strong></span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">In
the chaotic aftermath of the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003,
Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who had no prior experience in prison
management, found herself overseeing Abu Ghraib and other detention
facilities – 15 in total, in southern and central Iraq. Though military
police (MPs) under her command were ill-equipped for interrogation,
Major General Geoffrey Miller, infamous for his tenure at </span><a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2005/04/24/getting-away-torture/command-responsibility-us-abuse-detainees"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">Guantanamo Bay’s</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> Camp X-Ray, advocated for their involvement in the process.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Karpinski </span><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?190523-1/after-words-janis-karpinski"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">stated</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> that
after Miller’s visit, large numbers of civilian contractors began
arriving at Abu Ghraib to conduct interrogations. These civilian
contractors then gave orders to the low-level reservist MPs who carried
out the torture depicted in the notorious torture photos that were later
leaked to the media. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">She
notes further that the MPs seen torturing and humiliating Iraqis in the
leaked images were deployed to Abu Ghraib just before the first
photographs were taken. This means they began torturing Iraqi prisoners
in sophisticated ways immediately upon arrival at the prison:</span></p><blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">They
replaced the national guard unit serving there because they had been
deployed for a year. Soldiers don’t just decide one morning, ‘hey, let’s
go to abuse some prisoners' … The date-stamp on some of the photographs
is late October, November. So what happened?</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Among
the contractors interrogating prisoners were employees of the private
security firm CACI. One of the interrogators, Eric Fair, was stationed
at the Abu Ghraib prison and in the restive city of Fallujah in 2004. He
said interrogators in Iraq were </span><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/7/ex_abu_ghraib_interrogator_israelis_trained"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">taught</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> to use a torture device known as the “Palestinian chair” by the Israeli military during a joint training exercise.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">In January of that year, CACI president Jack London </span><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-link-possible-us-torture-techniques/5071"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">traveled</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> to Israel as part of a high-level delegation of US Congressmen, defense contractors, and pro-Israel lobbyists.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">During
the visit, then-Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz presented London
with an award at a gala dinner for “achievements in the field of defense
and national security.”</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">The
trip included a visit to Beit Horon, “the central training camp for the
anti-terrorist forces of the Israeli police and the border police,” in
the Israeli-occupied West Bank.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Brigadier General Karpinski also noted the presence of Israeli interrogators in Iraq. She </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5298603"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">explained</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> that
at a Baghdad intelligence facility, “I saw an individual there that I
hadn’t had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he
do there.” He answered, “Well, I do some of the interrogation here. I
speak Arabic, but I’m not an Arab; I’m from Israel.”</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><strong>Who is Stephen Cambone?</strong></span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">In
November, roughly the time the first photos depicting torture at Abu
Ghraib were taken, US Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top
commander in Iraq, </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/world/struggle-for-iraq-commander-officers-say-us-colonel-abu-ghraib-prison-felt.html"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">signed</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> an
order to transfer command of Abu Ghraib from Karpinski to Colonel
Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">US
military intelligence at that time was under the control of Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. The post was
created for him in March 2003, just as the Iraq invasion was underway. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Journalist Jason Vest </span><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/implausible-denial/"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">reported</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> for <i>The</i> <i>Nation</i> that
Cambone’s post was originally conceived by US Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld as a “centralizing measure,” a way to give him “one dog
to kick” rather than a “whole kennel” of individual civilian and
uniformed defense intelligence agencies. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Although
Cambone had no intelligence experience, Rumsfeld viewed him as a
protégé and loyal partisan. Under Rumsfeld’s patronage, Cambone rose
from his position as principal deputy to Under Secretary Doug Feith,
another architect of the Iraq war.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Vest
added that a memo from Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz,
Cambone’s immediate superior, indicated that Cambone had the authority
to provide oversight and policy guidance for intelligence activities in
all organizations within the US Department of Defense. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">In
other words, Cambone controlled US military intelligence, which
controlled Abu Ghraib by November 2003 when the first torture photos
were shot.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Like Feith,
Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, Cambone was a pro-Israel neoconservative who
had worked for the Project for the New American Century (</span><a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2020/02/01/new-american-century-1997-2006-and-the-post-cold-war-neoconservative-moment/"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">PNAC</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">), a US think tank that hosted Republican neocons out of government during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">In 1998, PNAC famously </span><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=128491&page=1"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">advocated</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> a
shift toward a more assertive US foreign policy, including toppling
Saddam Hussein, which would only come following “some catastrophic and
catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><strong>Striking similarities</strong></span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">A November 2003 report in the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> </span><a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-nov-22-fg-usisrael22-story.html"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">described</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> the close relationship between Israeli and US military intelligence under Cambone. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">“Those who have to deal with like problems tend to share information as best they can,” he was<i> </i>quoted as saying. A senior US Army official also told the newspaper:</span></p><blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">[The
Israelis] certainly have a wealth of experience from a military
standpoint in dealing with domestic terror, urban terror, military
operations in urban terrain, and there is a great deal of intelligence
and knowledge sharing going on right now, all of which makes sense … We
are certainly tapping into their knowledge base to find out what you do
in these kinds of situations.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">The
torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib came to light two months later, in
January 2004, after an MP at the prison, Joseph Darby, passed a CD with
photos depicting the torture to the military’s Criminal Investigations
Division (CID).</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">The tactics used to torture the detainees were</span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/25/the-generals-report"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)"> summarized</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> in an email that circulated in the Defense Department. The email said 10 soldiers were shown, involved in acts including:</span></p><blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Having
male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals;
having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having
detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically
assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">These
tactics were further described by Army Major General Antonio Taguba,
who was tasked with investigating events at Abu Ghraib.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">In
May 2004, Taguba was summoned to a meeting with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
Cambone, and other Defense Department officials, who all professed
ignorance of what happened at Abu Ghraib. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Taguba </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/25/the-generals-report"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">said</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">,
“I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with
an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not
abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Taguba
said elsewhere that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in
uniform sodomizing a female detainee” as well as “photographs of Arab
men wearing women’s panties.” As he explains it: </span></p><blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">From
what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what
they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">But
Taguba was only allowed to investigate the military police, not the
military intelligence brigade in control of the prison after November,
nor any higher officials overseeing military intelligence, such as
Cambone, or other top Defense Department officials with strong links to
Israel, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. </span></p><blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">These
MP troops were not that creative … Somebody was giving them guidance,
but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher
authority. I was limited to a box.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">The most infamous of the torture photos </span><a href="https://www.salon.com/2006/03/14/chapter_4/"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">showed</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> an
Iraqi man, Saad, standing on a box, wearing a black blanket and hood,
with electric wires attached to his hands, feet, and penis.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><strong>Facility 1391</strong></span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">But the “creative” torture techniques focusing on sexual humiliation and rape have a clear origin.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Israeli
interrogators were teaching US contractors and MPs torture techniques
that Israel has long used against Palestinians and other Arabs.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">In November 2003, as Cambone was lauding Israel for its assistance in Iraq, <i>The</i> </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/14/israel2"><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><i>Guardian</i></span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> published a report detailing the torture Israel subjected prisoners to at a secret prison known as 'Facility 1391.'</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">"I
was barefoot in my pajamas when they arrested me, and it was really
cold," says Sameer Jadala, a Palestinian school bus driver. "When I got
to that place, they told me to strip and gave me a blue uniform. Then
they gave me a black sack,” for his head.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Other
former prisoners at Facility 1391 have described how they were stripped
naked for interrogation, blindfolded, handcuffed, and threatened with
rape.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><i>The</i> <i>Guardian</i> report
details how torture took place at the facility for decades. The first
prisoners at the facility were Lebanese kidnapped by Israeli forces
during their </span><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/ghosts-lebanon"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">18-year occupation</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> of southern Lebanon starting in 1982.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Sheikh Abd al-Karim Obeid, a spiritual leader in the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, was </span><a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=tUxTAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PYQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6142,5036232&dq=kidnapping+by+hezbollah&hl=en"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">abducted</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> in
1989 and taken to Facility 1391. Obeid had been involved in guerilla
operations to expel Israeli forces occupying the country. He was
kidnapped from his home in the village of Jibchit in southern Lebanon by
Israeli commandos arriving by helicopter.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">During the raid to take Obeid, Israeli forces also </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/14/israel2"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">kidnapped</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> a
young man, Hashem Fahaf, who was visiting the sheikh to seek religious
guidance. Fahaf was never charged with a crime but was held in Israeli
prisons, including Facility 1391, for the next 11 years. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Israel
held Fahaf and 18 other Lebanese as hostages, or bargaining chips, to
win the return of Israeli airman Ron Arad, whose plane crash-landed in
Lebanon while bombing PLO targets.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><i>Haaretz</i> </span><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2011-12-18/ty-article/idf-officer-retracted-allegations-of-torture-upon-facing-criminal-charges-haaretz-learns/0000017f-f75c-d460-afff-ff7e23870000"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">reports</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> that
a reserve army colonel from Unit 504, known as “Het,” recounted how one
interrogator at the facility “stripped a suspect naked and forced him
to drink tea or coffee from an ashtray full of cigarette ashes and then
forced shaving cream or toothpaste into the suspect's mouth.”</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Het
recalled another instance in which the interrogator, known as “Major
George,” inserted “a baton into a suspect's rectum and asked him to sit
on the baton unless the suspect was willing to speak.”</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Rather
than prosecuting Major George, Israeli authorities opened a criminal
case against Het for revealing the torture taking place at Facility
1391. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><strong>Dividing Iraq for Israel’s interests </strong></span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">The
anger created by the Abu Ghraib revelations is widely viewed as having
stoked the Iraqi insurgency seeking to expel US forces. The insurgency
itself began after the same pro-Israel conservatives in the Bush
administration made the fateful </span><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/iraq-united-states-orders-disorder"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">decision</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> to disband the Iraqi army.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">This
blunder left hundreds of thousands of trained military personnel
without employment, many of whom subsequently joined the ranks of the
insurgency. With their intimate knowledge of Iraqi army weaponry and
tactics, these former soldiers became formidable adversaries in the
campaign against US occupation forces.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">The
violence soon spiraled out of control and evolved into a sectarian
civil war, dividing Iraq’s Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish populations.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed as the country was nearly
torn apart.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"><i>Wired </i></span><a href="https://www.wired.com/2012/07/cambone-iraq/"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">noted</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)"> years
later that although a consensus eventually emerged in the US defense
establishment that “the choice to invade Iraq was ill-considered and
that the initial plan to stabilize the country was even worse,” Stephen
Cambone had another view.</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">For
Donald Rumsfeld's one-time intelligence chief, the Iraq war and the
chaos it created was “one of the great strategic decisions of the first
half of the 21st century, if it proves not to be the greatest."</span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">In
the eyes of the Zionist neocons, the cost of human lives and suffering
was a necessary sacrifice to achieve their long-standing objectives in
West Asia. The architects of the Iraq war, including Cambone, Rumsfeld,
Feith, and Wolfowitz, viewed the devastation they wrought as a means to
an end – neutralizing potential threats to Israel. </span></p><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">Yet it's clear, in light of the actions taken by the </span><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/23702"><span style="color:rgb(74,110,224)">Islamic Resistance in Iraq</span></a><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">, that their grand designs have ultimately floundered.</span></p></span></div></div></div></div>
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