TV News LIES

Palestinian detainees are systematically denied the right to meet a lawyer during interrogations by Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, according to a report published today by an Israeli and a Palestinian rights group.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club say detainees from the occupied West Bank are cut off from the rest of the world in Israeli detention facilities. The report also cited cases of "systematic violence" and torture.

It is not every day that a leading Palestinian activist issues an emphatic statement of support for a Jewish Israeli – "this friend, whose friendship I am proud to share" – facing prison.

But then Jonathan Pollak, who could be jailed for between three and six months when the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court decides on his prosecution for illegal assembly today, is an unusual figure even in the long history of Israeli dissent.

The White House admitted Sunday it would be unable to shut Guantanamo Bay in the near future, even as it acknowledged the US naval prison camp is a rallying cry for Islamic extremists.

Nearly a year has passed since President Barack Obama's self-imposed deadline to shutter the camp, but his spokesman said legal and legislative hurdles would prevent that goal being realized any time soon.

It was three months into Barack Obama's presidency, and the administration -- under pressure to do something about alleged abuses in Bush-era interrogation policies -- turned to a Florida senator to deliver a sensitive message to Spain:

Don't indict former President George W. Bush's legal brain trust for alleged torture in the treatment of war on terror detainees, warned Mel Martinez on one of his frequent trips to Madrid. Doing so would chill U.S.-Spanish relations.

The right to liberty is one of the foundation rights of a free people. The idea that any US President can bypass Congress and bypass the courts by issuing an executive order setting up a new legal system for indefinite detention of people should rightfully scare the hell out of the American people.

Advisors in the Obama administration have floated the idea of creating a special new legal system to indefinitely detain people by executive order. Why? To do something with the people wrongfully imprisoned in Guantanamo. Why not follow the law and try them? The government knows it will not be able to win prosecutions against them because they were tortured by the US.

Just weeks after several dozen state-employed rabbis ignited a major controversy by issuing a letter calling on Israeli Jews not to rent or sell their homes to non-Jews, and one day after an anti-Arab demonstration in Bat Yam, Tuesday saw two more incidents in the rising tide of hatred and racism that appears to be sweeping the country.

In Jerusalem, police said on Tuesday they had arrested nine members of a suspected youth gang that has been targeting Arab passersby in the center of the city in recent months. Police officials also released information on the arrests, which were carried out over a two-week period.