European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 6, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse Page to columns the stars and stripes Anthony Lewis Israel s detention practice should alarm everyone a Middle class Man a Law yer a dentist a businessman is akan from his Home by soldiers. They Tell him he is a great to the country s Security. Without a trial without evidence he is sent to a Remote prison Camp. There he and thousands of others exist in harsh and humiliating conditions. When that kind of injustice occurs in the soviet Union or Chile we who live in Freedom and Middle class safely have no trouble recognizing and condemning it. But what if it happens in a country we Admire our sense of Justice May be silenced. At teas that is the Case judging by current events when it comes to is Rael. The israeli government has taken thousands of palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza into what it Calls administrative that Means they Are held As prisoners for up to six months at a stretch without trial. At least 2,500 of the detainees Are imprisoned in Setziol a Lent Camp in the burning heat of the Negev desert. On aug. 16 Israel soldiers shot and killed two of the detainees there. Two Days after the deaths a highly respected american expert Michael Posner director of the new York based Law yers committee for human rights visited Kel Ziol. Afterwards he wrote an israeli official we Are deeply troubled by the use of deadly Force against a confined Popula Tion when there is no evidence of any escape or physical confrontation by Pris Posner said the soldiers shot in apparent panic in a situation that was not lire threatening to them. There were a number of screaming plate throwing detainees he said. The noise was by All accounts deafening. But the inmates were enclosed behind barbed wire the isolation and severe conditions at act riot encourage frustration and hopelessness Posner said. The William f. Buckley the wan Vucho tents barely accommodate the number of people that Are there. There s no place to move. It s brutally hot a Jerusalem Post reporter Joe j Green Berg looked into the shooting incident and wrote a report based on accounts by both prisoners and soldiers. On the morning of aug. 16, he said detainees were taken from one Section of the prison to clean soldiers quarters. They refused saying that the Geneva convention prohibited making detainees work. As punishment Grcen Borg wrote All inmates in the Section were ordered out of their tents and compelled to sit on the ground for at least an hour with their hands behind their backs in intense heat later that Day the report said an offi cer took a prisoner out of the Section and beat him with a club. Other inmates began shouting and throwing things Over the High Fence around inc Section. Troops fired tear Gas and rubber bul lets. Then they shot live ammunition into the air and toward the ground in the tent sections. Two inmates were fatally hit the Story had further grim details that i shall omit because they cannot be confirmed. The israeli army has started an investigation. Last week the Jerusalem Post published a report on life in a etzion under Ordinary circumstances. Greunberg inter viewed several former act riot prisoners who spoke of Petty humiliation Bare dam and isolation building up resent ment. A dentist or. Nabil Jabbari chairman of the Board of trustees of Hebron University described arriving at a etzion his group was blindfolded he said and told to get up Sil Down move again and again for no apparent reason. One of us begged permission to relieve himself and was refused permission logo to a a Ramallal businessman Hani Nas Sar said it was Loo hot to go outside during the Day and lying in the tent we fell weak without even the strength to talk. Most of the Day there was nothing to do. We were made to sit out in the Sun As the prisoners at Keu Iol it must be emphasized have not been convicted of doing anything. They have had not a semblance of due process. They Are there because someone in the israeli army suspects them or wants to punish them. Posner went to act riot to see two palestinian lawyers being held there and four Field investigators for a West Bank human rights group Al Haq. He concluded thai they had been detained be cause of their work on human rights and As such detention wherever it occurs should outrage americans and other free people. Most of All it should outrage the jewish people who defined for the world a sense of Justice. Huff Yortis Tom Flat it its Briw Krasnoyarsk is a Symbol of our global problem the is. Negotiating team ups said to the soviet negotiating team unless you get rid of Krasnoyarsk we won t play Start with you. Krasnoyarsk is that huge radar station in Siberia whose existence at Chi. Location violates the abm treaty. The abm treaty is that misbegotten satellite of Salt i signed Back in 1972. Salt 1 was the first of our treaties designed to reduce the deadline is of our joint inventory of nuclear weapons. A measure of How successful Salt i turned out to be in limiting strategic nuclear arms is this Fig ure eighty percent of existing soviet nuclear missiles were developed and constructed since Salt i. It might As Well have been designated not As a treaty to limit strategic arms but As a treaty to increase strategic arms. But now watch what is Likely to happen. The Krasnoyarsk station is forbidden because its function is to manage a defense against nuclear missiles that with one or two exceptions is not permitted by the abm treaty. You Are allowed under abm All the radar outposts you want to Alert you to a Surprise strike but these must be within a specified number of Miles of your coastline. If we wished to Alert ourselves against a Surprise soviet nuclear attack by posting radar stations in Alaska their function there would be very different from posting radar stations of the kind called phased array in the Midwest. Those stationed there would have a Clear function of relating defensive Battle management instructions to batteries of protective missiles around american cities flashing instructions to ground based and in due course to space based missiles. Now we have known about Krasnoyarsk for about three or four years. Senior diplomats and military men publicly Iveigh against it. The soviet Union has been Able to count on Only one thing namely that the for Ward momentum of the arms control movement was not going to be deterred by Krasnoyarsk any More than it was going to suffer from the Helsinki accords any More than it would suffer from violations of Salt 1 and abm and the anti chemical and anti bacteriological accords. So. In due course while still protesting their violation of antecedent treaties we made another treaty the inf treaty which everyone is supposed to applaud and most politicians feel they need to applaud. But now that we Are sounding serious about Krasnoyarsk what if the soviet Union agrees to dismantle it if not actually destroy it ? Here is the analysis As Given recently by or. Frank Gay they former assistant Secretary of defense for International Security policy the dismantling of the Krasnoyarsk radar alone would hardly eliminate the strategic significance of accumulated soviet investments in defences. Stilt in place will be numerous deeply buried facilities for the Protection of the leadership tens of thousands of air defense radars and missiles extensive civil and passive defense measures to say nothing of the entirety of the residual soviet abm program. In Short the Krasnoyarsk radar s destruction would no More restore the integrity of the abm treaty than a rapist s castration would restore the virginity of his the Stark facts of the astonishing disintegration of our space program under the Reagan administration Are suggested by another simple figure. The soviets have developed a launch capability 10 times larger than the West s for placing Many satellites in space. We Are entitled to wonder How this can be of the coun try that Only 20 years ago landed a Man on the Moon. It is easiest to blame the politicians and Correct to do so inasmuch As they have been tight filed and Cranky about the space program coming close to immobilizing it after the challenger tragedy of 1986. But we have also to blame Ana to say this makes one feel like a Soldier shooting his lieutenant in the Back during combat the joint chiefs of staff. There is an in creasing consensus among experts in aerospace that we arc in the coils of the same kind of asphyxiation we have seen Over and Over again generation alter Genera Tion when a service resents the passage of Money to another service but especially to an innovative Branch. Generally Billy Mitchell is this Century s most conspicuous Martyr of that kind of military atavism. Nobody is belter qualified to Tell us than the joint chiefs of staff How deteriorated our strategic position is. And yet they might As Well be the three Blind mice in respect of the utter suicidal Folly of the abm treaty being kept alive in 1 9s8. The opinions expressed in the columns and cartoons of ibis pie represent those of the authors and in in do Way la be considered is representing the views of the Surg and stripes or the United stain got emment
