Frameup continues against Warschawsky THE SHUTTING down of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Jerusalem on February 16 and the jailing of its director, Michel Warschawsky, have become a cause celebre in the Israeli press and among foreign correspondents in the country. It appears that there is a real danger of a major frameup. GERRY FOLEY
ISRAEL
The raid on the AIC was carried out in an extremely brutal and intimidating way. The police came in, cut off the telephone and electricity, and took away all those in the office at the time. They also seized the publications in the premises, including the Center library, and confiscated all the printing and reproducing equipment. The arrests were televised.
After interrogation, all those arrested were released except Warschawsky. According to Ya'ir Fidel, writing in the February 19 issue of Hadashot, a right-wing popular paper, he was taken before the judge unshaven and handcuffed.
The reports of the hearing in the Zionist daily papers themselves indicated an unconcealed prejudice on the part of the judge, Aharon Simha. For example, Maariu of February 19 noted that when Lea Tsemel asked the military interrogator, * Yossi Mizrahi, why the authorities had waited so long before staging the raid, the judge replied for him, "They were waiting for the big fish."
One of the state's accusations, according to Maariu, was that Warschawsky had drawn up a guide to help persons arrested by the security services face interrogation. The prosecutor claimed that this constituted a danger to "future interrogations whose aim is to defend state security."
The drawing up of leaflets about "What to do if arrested" is one of the basic functions throughout the world of centers involved in civil-rights work. This may be the first time, however, that the police of a parliamentary democracy have tried to make this a crime. It speaks volumes about how much the Zionists rely on intimidation in their dealings with Palestinians.
The police also claimed to have found "illegal agitational materials" in the Center. Staff members said that there were publications of banned Palestinian groups in the office, but they were part of the library and necessary to any journalists who tried to follow Palestinian politics. Even right-wing journalists would have them, they said.
The police officer responsible for the raid, Commander David Krauss, invoked the 1948 "Decree Against Terror" to justify the action. It states: "The police commander is authorized to order in writing the closing of any premises serving a terrorist organization or its members, either continuously or occasionally, whether it is a place of activity, meetings, propaganda or storage.
In its February 18 issue, Ha-Aretz, Israel's prestige newspaper, noted that this is the first time in the history of the (not terribly squeamish) Zionist
3
The prosecutor claimed when Warschawsky was brought before Judge Aharon Simha that the police had evidence that one of the sources of finance for the Center was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is led by George Habash.
Refused bail on March 10, Warschawsky has now been held in jail for a month. The state has also reportedly assigned a top interrogator to the case.
In its February 18 issue, the magazine Ha'olam Haze reported that the closing of the AIC was "arousing outrage" among Israeli journalists and foreign correspondents who used its service.
In the February 18 issue of Al Hamishmar, the paper of the Mapam party, staff writer Pinhas Imbari wrote that the closing of the center deprived the Israeli press of a means of checking the official accounts of police operatons against Palestinians. "What is sure in this case," he wrote, "is that democracy is the loser."
The Jerusalem paper Kol Ha'ir wrote February 20 that the publications of the Center - a daily bulletin, a weekly one, and a fortnightly publication, News from Within - had a high reputation among journalists. One of the users, for example, was Danny Rubenstein, the correspondent for the occupied territories for Davar, the paper of the Labor Party.
The Center collected information on repression of Palestinians, especially on the West Bank, relying extensively on the accounts of released political prisoners and their families. It was the only service, for example, to give an advance report of the exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli military men held by Ahmed Jibril's faction of the PLO.
In various reports, the Israeli the Israeli daily press credited the Center's fortnightly bulletin, News from Within, with 250 to 500 subscribers around the world, including masscirculation publications, such as the Miami Herald.
Not only written information was provided by the Center, but it also organized tours for press representatives and tourists who wanted to see the sides of the Zionist system not presented in official propaganda.
In the February 20 issue of Kol Yerushalayim, a Jerusalem local paper, the journalist Haim Bar-Am described Warschawsky as a sensible and careful person. He thought that it was unthinkable that, as director of the Center, he would have done anything that would give the police a pretext for a prosecution. Bar-Am pointed out that Warschawsky's Trotskyist politics were opposed to adventurism and support for terrorism. Center under constant surveillance
Since Warschawsky and other workers for the Center are members of the Revolutionary Communist League, the section of the Fourth International in the Israeli state, the Israeli papers gave potted histories of the LCR, none of them very accurate. Bar-Am's statement helped to make it clear that Warschawsky's politics in fact ran counter to the police accusations.
Lea Tsemel, a well-known defence attorney, and Warschawsky's wife, told reporters that they were well aware that the Center was under constant surveillance, and that it would have been crazy to indulge in any illegal activity there. anv illegal activity there.
International Viewpoint 23 March 1987
state that this decree has been utilized.
The police accusation reported in the Israeli press are generally quite vague: that the Center served as a place of "hostile" propaganda and was frequented by "hostile" people.
Lili Galili of Ha-Aretz asked Eli Aminov, a spokesperson for the LCR, in particular about one of the Center's employees, Ali Jedda, a Palestinian political prisoner released in Jibril's
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16, thin the exchange. He was involved in a terrorist action 20 years ago.
Obviously in order to present the other side of the official accounts of police and army actions against Palestinians, the Center had to have considerable dealings with Palestinians who at one time or another have been in trouble with the Zionist authorities. To move against the Center on this basis is like shutting down a defense lawyer's office because it is frequented by "suspicious people."
The Association for Citizens' Rights in Israel issued a protest against the closing of the Center that was published in Ha-Aretz of February 18, in which it pointed out:
"The Center's activity took place under the rules of the censorship, and this was sufficient to assure that there was no violation of state security. If, in the view of the police, activity contrary to the law went on in that place, they have the means to bring to trial those suspected of such activity. There is no justification for closing the offices - with the violation of the freedom of the press and information that this entails -before criminal proceedings are undertaken."
Speaking in the wake of the raid, Lea Tsemel also stressed that the Center has been operating "under licence for three years and its news reports were submitted to the censorship." She made this argument to fist came down withi February a, Israel the Alternative Info On By order of ir on Jews. closec Kraus Jerusalem the modus oper was West similar police state. collective to were confiscated Israeli and were arr AIC material Our "crime" lay in pr was seized. journalists foreign - human right Simha, the quick-on-the-draw judge who heard the initial appeal. His rejoinder was that "90 per cent" were submitted to the censorship, but "10 per cent were not." It remains to be seen what this 10 per cent were. International protests needed
The police also charged that the Center printed material for the PFLP and other "terrorist groups." That is also a very vague charge in view of the fact that the groups supported by most of the Palestinian population are considered "terrorist" by the Zionist authorities.
Eli Aminov told Lili Galili: «The office simply provided printing services, and in that we solved a technical problem. The left did not have a place where it could do its printing. Most printshops opposed the content and refused to do the printing, or else charged double.
rmation Centre's office in Police Inspector | down in a move all the South African too andi of Palestinian members of stacks of printed the and the centre's equipment ested. oviding Israeli, Palestinian with accurate and up-to-date s violations in the occupied and political issues related only.
We provided printing services to anyone, except Kahane [an ultraright
Zionist organizer of attacks on
Palestinians] of course."
Such a violent attack on normal news gathering and civil-rights activity has not only created a sensation in
Israel. It is sending shock waves internationally among journalists, democrats and defenders of human rights. A growing list of internationally known personalities have signed a protest against the closing of the
Center and the jailing of Warschawsky.
Signers now include Yves Jouffa, president of the French Ligue des droits de l'homme; Didier Motchane,
French SP Euro MP; Erwin Lanc, former Austrian minister of foreign affairs; Michael Ferris and Michael
Lanegan, members of the Irish Senate;
former Danish minister for justice,
Ole Espersen; foreign affairs spokesperson for the Social Democratic opposition in the Danish parliament,
Lasse Budtz; British Labour MP
Jeremy Corbyn; and several members of the Mexican, Italian and Danish parliaments. parliaments.
The Danish Journalists Union also sent a protest to the Israeli minister for justice on March 5, declaring, among other things, "We protest this attack on the right of expression and the democratic right to gather and disseminate information."
It is important that as many protests as possible be sent to Israeli embassies now to stop the prosecution of Warschawsky from going any further and to allow the Center to resume its work.
Despite the fact that all their equipment was confiscated, the staff of News from Within have managed to get out another issue of their bulletin. But they need all the material help they can get. A fund has been established to help with Warshawsky's defence. Contributions can be sent to
"Campaign for the Release of Michel
Warschawsky," 2 rue Richard Lenoir.
93108, Montreuil, France. International Viewpoint 23 March 1987
...and here is the proof of his crime!
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