ISRAEL/LEBANON: CONTEXT YOU'VE NEVER HEARD
Much Worse Than Abu Ghraib, Israel's Facility 1391

I was reading a new post on Noam Chomsky's rarely updated blog earlier this evening and I was startled by a reference he made to revelations a while back about a secret prison used for years by Israel to incarcerate and torture countless Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. I'm pretty used to being in the dark about the vast majority of the Jewish state's misdeeds; after all, the American corporate media and US political class are notorious for heavily distorting reality on the subject. But this strikes me as a pretty big deal, the kind of thing that would merit at least a mention somewhere in, say, the New York Times. But no. I had to go to a 2003 story from the British press to get the goods.

From the Guardian:

Those who have been through its gates know it is no illusion. One former inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was raped twice - once by a man and once with a stick - during questioning. But most of those who emerge say the real torture is the psychological impact of solitary confinement in filthy, blackened cells so poorly lit that inmates can barely see their own hands, and with no idea where they are or, in many cases, why they are there.

"Our main conclusion is that it exists to make torture possible - a particular kind of torture that creates progressive states of dread, dependency, debility," says Manal Hazzan, a human rights lawyer who helped expose the prison's existence. "The law gives the army enough authority already to hide prisoners, so why do they need a secret facility?"

Unlike any other Israeli prison, the International Red Cross, lawyers and members of the Israeli parliament have been refused access. One leftwing MP, Zahava Gal-On, describes Facility 1391 as "one of the signs of totalitarian regimes and of the third world". The Israeli government declines to discuss the secret prison other than to issue a standard response: "Facility 1391 is situated on a secret military base. The base is used by the security services for various classified activities and thus its location is kept confidential."

And

Probably the first prisoners at Facility 1391 were Lebanese. The prison is part of a military camp that is home to an army intelligence group, Unit 504, which specialises in interrogation. The unit has a hard reputation, and some of its members have badly blemished records. One has been accused of murder, another of spying. Unit 504's glory days were during Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, interrogating captured Hezbollah fighters and running an extensive network of collaborators, some of whom are still being put on trial for their lives by the Lebanese authorities.

In the late 80s, Unit 504 went in search of another kind of prisoner; men who could be held hostage and exchanged for captured Israeli soldiers and airmen. In 1989, the Israelis seized Sheikh Abd al-Karim Obeid, a spiritual leader to Hezbollah. Five years later, they snatched Mustafa Dirani, a leading Shi'ite fighter. Both were taken directly to Facility 1391.

The soldiers who grabbed Obeid also abducted his bodyguards, members of his family and Hashem Fahaf, a young man who happened to be visiting the sheikh to seek his blessing and who found himself locked up for the next 11 years, initially at 1391.

Click here for the rest.

To the best of my knowledge, Facility 1391 is still in operation today.

A couple of observations. First, this revelation, when it happened, was easily as big of a story as the Abu Ghraib revelations in 2004. The US press should have been all over it--I mean, Israel is an enormous American ally, and we fund some twenty percent of their huge military budget. That I'm only just now hearing about it is evidence enough that the US establishment is in deep with Israel's many crimes, acting as tireless propagandists in order to keep the billions of dollars flowing their way without domestic political opposition. Second, thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, many of whom have absolutely nothing to do with Hezbollah or Hamas, a fact which is well known by their Israeli captors, have been cycling in and out of Facility 1391 for at least two decades--some of them never return, "disappeared" like so many Latin Americans did under the brutal dictators supported by the US in the 70s and 80s. How could the terrorized people of Palestine and Lebanon ever forget this? Many, I'm sure, have friends and loved ones there right now. It all makes the kidnapping of three soldiers, not civilians, seem tame in comparison.

And, yet, the standard American line is that Israel is simply "defending herself." Obviously, it's far more complicated than that.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$