July 1991, Page 76

Jews and Israel

By Andrea Barron

AIPAC vs. Middle East Watch

The Near East Report, newsletter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has charged the human rights group Middle East Watch with "bashing" Israel in a new report entitled Prison Conditions in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Middle East Watch, created in 1989 to monitor human rights in the Middle East and North Africa, is chaired by Gary Sick, a former national security adviser to President Carter. It is one of the five area "Watch Committees" that make up Human Rights Watch, headed by the internationally known human rights activist Aryeh Neier.

Middle East Watch (MEW) originally chose American University professor Rita Simon, who has written about prison conditions in China and Tibet, to write the report. But the human rights group was dissatisfied with Simon's work and held off publication. According to Aryeh Neier, the "entire tenor was inappropriate for a human rights report. Far from being a critical examination of prison conditions in Israel and the occupied territories, the document was a superficial account of casual impressions."

Near East Report says the real reason Simon's report was suppressed was because of MEW's political agenda. Simon concluded that "the horror stories" often told about Israeli prisons simply aren't true" and that Israeli prison conditions are as good or better than in most US and European prisons.

Simon ended up releasing her report independently, while MEW Research Director Eric Goldstein completely rewrote her original paper. Goldstein describes two systems of incarceration in Israel. The Israel Prison Service, a semi-autonomous civilian branch of the Ministry of Police, "maintains facilities that are professionally run and conform to certain standards and regulations."

"Virtually all 10,000 inmates—Jewish and Palestinian, criminal and security—live in cells and enjoy rights to receive publications and mail without unreasonable delay, to own televisions and radios, to have at least one hour outdoors each day, and to receive regular visits by family and lawyers."

But conditions in prisons run by the Israeli Defense Forces for about 9,500 male Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip are said to be entirely different. In Ketziot, the "largest and worst" of these prisons, inmates live in outdoor tents instead of cells, radios and televisions are banned, and reading material is heavily censored. Army prisons, established after the intifada for short-term incarceration, are severely overcrowded. MEW says this is because the incarceration rate for Palestinians from the territories, excluding Jerusalem, is higher than anywhere else in the world; nearly 1,000 people per 100,000 residents are imprisoned, compared to 110 per 100,000 in Israel itself and 426 in the United States.

A final note on the controversy which Near East Report "forgot" to mention Human Rights Watch accidentally discovered that Simon had shown a draft of her report to Israeli security officials for review without informing MEW. Neier said that Human Rights Watch has published hundreds of reports over the years but "knows of no previous occasion in which a participant in any of (its) investigations has acted in such a fashion." Calling her behavior "irresponsible, if not unethical, " Neier ended Simon's association with Human Rights Watch.

Jewish Leaders Fight Linkage

American Jewish leaders have begun developing "complete mobilization kits" for a campaign they hope will prevent Congress and the Bush administration from linking a $10 billion housing loan guarantee to Israel with a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. According to a May 23 article published in the Washington Jewish Week, these leaders believe Israel has the best chance to obtain any part of the loan guarantee "if the issue is portrayed as a humanitarian and Jewish cause, not as a request for increased aid to the state of Israel. " Israel says it needs about $20 billion to absorb the 250,000 Soviet immigrants expected to arrive this year.

According to two Knesset members Haim Oron from the leftist Zionist Mapam party and Dedi Zucker from the liberal Citizens Rights Movement-Israel plans to invest one billion dollars in the territories from 1990-93. They say that 15,000 Israelis moved to the territories in 1990 and that the Housing Ministry expects 50,000 more to settle there over the next three years.

Besides its concern over settlements, Congress will also be paying attention to a new law which will add a percentage of all loan guarantees to the federal budget. The Credit Reform Act, which will take effect when Fiscal Year 1992 begins in October, could make Congress less enthusiastic about providing any loan guarantees that would increase the federal deficit.

Andrea Barron is a member of the Jewish Committee for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.