Israel admitted: Iranian Jews were spies

The Jerusalem Post, August 9, 2000

Israel admitted: Iranian Jews were spies

By Douglas Davis

LONDON (August 9) - Israel has privately admitted to Iran that the 10 Jews convicted of espionage by a court in Shiraz last month were spying for Israel, diplomatic sources told the London-based monthly newsletter Ad-Diplomasi.

The admission was reportedly made during secret meetings between Israeli and Iranian officials at a Cairo hotel on July 31 and August 1, in the presence of US Ambassador to Egypt Daniel Kurtzer and Israeli Ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said last night that the report was "nonsense."

The Iranian Revolutionary Court in Shiraz last month sentenced 10 of the 13 Jews initially charged to between four and 13 years in jail. The remaining three were acquitted.

The Iranians reportedly accepted Israel's apology for the affair and promised to commute the sentences after Israel admitted other failed operations by the Mossad, such as the bungled wire-tap attempt in the Swiss capital of Berne in February 1998.

According to the diplomatic sources, contacts between Israel and Iran were initiated through third parties, but assumed a more direct nature after the 13 Iranian Jews were accused of spying for Israel.

The sources said contacts between Israel and Iran were also held in the weeks preceding Israel's May 24 withdrawal from South Lebanon.

As a result of the contacts, the two sides reached an undeclared understanding designed to "facilitate" the IDF pullback and to refrain from taking any steps that might jeopardize security on Israel's northern border.

The sources say the Iranians promised that neither they nor Hizbullah would do anything to obstruct the IDF withdrawal, nor would they jeopardize the peace after Israel's withdrawal.

(Herb Keinon contributed to this report.)

(http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/08/09/News/News.10697.html)

July 6, 2000

Jewish "American" Media Hypocrisy on defense of "Iranian" Jews

I consider myself to be a fairly reasonable person. I also try hard to be consistent, applying the same standards I hold dear in defense of Palestinian rights for those of others, too.

And I was among those who had to wonder if the Government of Iran was being fair in its handling of the 10 Iranian Jews who have been charged with spying for the State of Israel.

So, I wasn't surprised when I read in my local newspaper, the [Jewish] Chicago Sun-Times, this editorial which was published on July 4, 2000, the date of the American Independence Day:

"On the day when we celebrate our cherished freedoms, it is only fitting that we pause for a moment to consider the plight of 10 Iranian Jews convicted of spying for Israel over the weekend. They were held in jail nearly 16 months

without the opportunity to consult with lawyers. The only evidence used in the trial were confessions extracted from them during this period of isolation.

Backdoor diplomacy is credited with saving them from execution. But the 10, declared guilty in a trial that would not pass muster in any Western Democracy, face long prison sentences. This cannot stand. The United States

has relaxed some sanctions against Iran in hopes of encouraging moderation in a state notorious for its radicalism and fanatical hatred of the West in

general and America and Israel in particular. But this trial puts a lie to the claims of moderation, and the sanctions must be tightened unless Tehran [sic Teheran] releases the 10 Jews."

Give me a break, please!

Imagine, the Chicago Sun-Times editors or any editor of a major American [jewish] newspapers taking such a hypocritical stand for justice.

What is hypocritical, you ask?

Simply that the Chicago Sun-Times, like most American newspapers, fail to apply their indignation fairly and across-the-board.

Take the case of hundreds of Palestinians who have been arrested and held in Israeli jails for years without a peep from the so-called indignant [jewish] American newspaper editorial writers. These so-called prisoners have been held in concentration camp like conditions, and the have been routinely denied legal representation.

More importantly, setting them apart from the Jews being held by Iran, is that at least the Jewish prisoners in Iran have been publicly charged with something. Most of the Palestinians held in Israeli prisons remain their uncharged.

I'll say that again. No charges have been filed. Under Israeli laws applied separately based on your religion, Christian and Muslims can be arrested and detained for months and years without ever having any charges filed at all.

And, they are kept in isolation without legal consul, or the ability to speak with their family members.

These harsh conditions, when they finally do culminate in an appearance before an Israeli Judge, are justified using forced confessions in Hebrew (not Arabic or English), and are extracted not only while they are in detention but are signed usually after the prisoners have been tortured.

And the Israelis admit that "some torture" is necessary.

And then there is the [jewish] United States, the biggest hypocrite of all. If you are a drug dealer in the United States, you have the right to legal representation and an immediate hearing before a judge to review the charges against you.

But, if you are a Palestinian American Citizen, like Muhammad Saleh of suburban Chicago's Bridgeview community, you can be arrested, detained and charged without ever seeing the evidence against you.

It's called "secret evidence," a new way that the American judicial system can discriminate against Arab Americans without ever having to be accountable.

So when I read stories about spies in Iran I have to shake my head knowing that the Jewish "American" double-standard will only end up hurting the innocent, be they Palestinian or Iranian Jews.

I want to explain, also, that - in Iran - the issue has never been that the spies were Jewish, but that they spied for Israel against Iran.

I should also note that it is unfair to use the Chicago Sun-Times as an example of bias, since they are such an easy target. I used to work at the Chicago Sun-Times, 8 years. It was a struggle but the quality of my work kept me there until a political fight erupted in 1991, when I left.

The Chicago Sun-Times is owned by the same Jewish company that owns the rightwing Israely "Jerusalem Post" newspaper. Every week, commentaries bashing Arabs are published in the Sun-Times, with no response permitted from Chicago's Arab American community.

I would just love to be among those standing up to defend the rights of the Iranian citizens who are charged with spying on their on country, a crime that can and has resulted in a life sentence in the United States and in Israel, too. (Don't let either make you believe that they would do something different.)

But I can't do that knowing that these poor victims of an unfair judicial system are only a small fraction of the victims of unjust judicial systems in Israel and in the United States.

I wish them the best, but until the United States and Israel clean up their own acts, they have no right to talk.

MUSTAFA DIRANI
Tortured in Israeli Prison

More details about
Israeli crimes
against DIRANI
Lebanon blasts Dirani´s terrorist rape by Israeli jailers

Mr. Mustafa Dirani is 48 years old Lebanese citizen, detained in the Israeli Prisons. He was abducted from his town Kasrnaba in Lebanese territory of the Biqaa' Valley. The area is out of the area so called the Security zone by an Israeli commando unit. He was abducted from his home and in between and in front of his young children and his wife. The operation was carried out on the orders of the Israeli Prime Minister Cabinet under the late Premier Rabin; who received the Noble prize for peace.

Since the abduction, Mr. Dirani was confined in single cell. He was refused any visit from his family and even meeting with representatives from the International Red Cross despite his health condition, as he suffers from paresis and in need for continuous medical supervision. Mr. Mustafa Dirani was part of the Resistance movement struggling to free South Lebanon and the Biqaa' Valley from the hands of the Israeli occupation, as approved by the international laws.

The abduction of Mr. Dirani took place in an attempt to get information on missing Israeli airman Ron Arad whose airplane was shot down in South Lebanon in 1986. He disappeared in 1988 in a mysterious circumstance unknown to Mr. Dirani, his family and or his fiends.

The Israeli high military court never felt embarrassed to announce in 1998 that the Lebanese detainees has been kept in the Israeli prisons to be used as a bargaining chips in the future negotiations. The International Human rights organizations consider the detention of Mr. Dirani and other detainees in the Israeli prisons as an illegal act; despite of that they never put enough pressure to help their release.

The detention of Mr. Dirani is an illegal act and against all the international laws and agreements. Because he was denied his simple individual rights guaranteed by the Geneva Convention, in addition to the illegal abduction.

The new development in the chain of torture of Mr. Dirani came out through his attorney. It considered being a shameful act in the face of the whole world, a world, which claims to be a civilized, and the guardians of human rights. Mr. Dirani's att

Mr. Dirani was subjected to immoral and brutal torture. He was beaten, violently shaken, deprived of sleep, and of sitting for long times. He was raped and the heads of the interrogator team used a barbaric method, which we feel ashamed to mention it here.

This type of terrorism, which we never heard of in the dark ages or under the Nazi, rules, which was considered to be a crime against human and humanities a whole. This racist act shows how the racist state of Israel is using the bodily harm and psychological torture to abstract some information from people who possibly never had any information to give.

Mr. Mustafa Dirani is not the only person who suffers from this barbaric torture in the Israeli prisons, but many other who are suffering the same type of torture. This shows the barbaric attitude of this barbaric Zionist State.

IN the name of humanity, we call all the human rights organizations, Govemments, Parties and the Public who believes in the human rights to get together in order to lift the injustice and oppression from the hostage W.. Mustafa Dirani. Please add your voice to ours for his release and his return to his wife and to return the smile to his five young children.

For more information :
Sobhi Dirani Tel : +0045 21269390 Fax : +0045 35859260
Email: Ali Hussein: <ali-mh-hussein@hotmail.com>

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