USS Liberty and Gaza Flotilla

Gaza flotilla incident reminded many people with the famous SS Exodus incident and it also reminded many others with the famous USS Liberty incident whose anniversary  is after 3 days

Despite the differences between USS liberty and Gaza flotilla yet both ships were attacked in international waters , Americans were killed by IDF on both of them and one of the flotilla passengers was from the original passengers of USS Liberty.

Joe Meadors was on the board of  Sfendoi Ship that was captured in the flotilla and he shared with the world his experience in his second encounter with the IDF.

Why is USS liberty interesting to our POWs Case ??

Well some crew members of the USS liberty believes that the IDF may have thought that the ship had intercepted communications between the Israelis speaking about a massacre for our POWs in Al Arish citadel to be specific.

NO News Bad News

It has been more than a week since that shocking report from Yediot Ahronot with its shocking findings reached to our press. It has been more than a week and since than there has not been a media follow up in Egypt at all expect the day after Ahronot published its report and after that it has been as if these stuff belong to other people than the Egyptian people !!

There was no official reaction at all ; not even a small announcement that our “embassy in Tel Aviv will follow the matter from there and restore back those items in order to return them to the families of those men !!”

I do not ask the regime to open an investigation on how exactly late Mr.Y got his trophies from the six days war , all I am asking is just simple announcement on the updates of this case.

FYI this case did not make it to our official media for some unknown reason I can’t guess !!

Breaking News : 60 Seconds

First of all Arabic channels have just aired the video of Shalit , those expensive 60 seconds that prove he is a live and fine not to mention healthy

I will work to post it here. Shalit looks fine in fact great unlike the Palestinian and Arab prisoners. Shalit’s message was recorded last September 14, 2009 as the newspaper he was holding showed the date.

Today earlier Israel has released 19 female prisoners for those important 60 seconds, very important 60 seconds which are recorded for sure.

I want to say something , this small deal is very important , yes most of those 19 female prisoners were going to be released sooner next year but the fact that for just 60 seconds , 19 prisoners were released after years of negotiations.

Israel did not win in this deal as much as both Hamas and Omar Soliman did and I say Omar Soliman because this is a bounce for his foreign policies political record.

Here are the complete of the Palestinian female prisoners freed today by the Israeli forces :

  1. Ayat Kisi Original release date: November 18, 2009.
  2. Rojena Riyad Mohammed JinajiraOriginal release date: June 9, 2011.”
  3. Rimat abu Ayisha Original release date: November 13, 2009.”
  4. Haba Assad Halil Alantasha Original release date: March 03, 2011.”
  5. Samud Abdullah Halil Original release date: December 15, 2009.”
  6. Mimouna Javrin Held without bail pending trial”
  7. Jihad Abu-Turki Original release date: May 24, 2011″
  8. Barah Malki Original release date: November 11, 2009″
  9. Lila Mohammed Tzalah al-Buhari Original release date: October 31, 2010″
  10. Fatima Yunus al-Zak Held without bail pending trial”
  11. Nifin Halil Abdallah Dak Original release date: January 01, 2010″
  12. Kafah Bahash Original release date: September 08, 2010″
  13. Linan Yusuf Abu Ghulma Original release date: September 08, 2010″
  14. Shirin Mohammed Hasan Original release date: March 04, 2010″
  15. Sana’a Tzalah Hagargah Original release date: August 05, 2010″
  16. Sabeena Ziad Mohammed Manal Original release date: November 19, 2010″
  17. Zahoor Abed HamdanOriginal release date: May 15, 2011″
  18. Hiam Ahmed Yusuf Ba’id Original release date: May 07, 2010″
  19. Nahad Farhat Daghra Held without bail pending trial”
  20. Najuah Abed Alghani Held without bail pending trial”

Important Petition

I know that you probably think that online petitions are useless but they are not because I believe they are another form of expression available to the people around the world.

This petition is special , it is an international petition to the UN General Assembly to set up a special international penal court to try Israeli war crimes, notably in the Gaza Strip.

It is published by the French Palestine Solidarity Association, I hope that more people sign this petition to show that we have not forgotten what happened in Gaza and we want justice.

What happened in Gaza was a war crime by all means.

Thanks to dear friend Ségolène Liger

Spread the website please

The road to the ICC

ICC announced new rules to encourage somehow the war criminals to show up with their dignity  in the court !! They can return back to their countries during the trial ..etc. Of course this can happen in a perfect world.No war criminal will give up that easily
Already Amr Moussa , the general secretary of the Arab league is having talks with the ICC in order to sue the IDF for war crimes against the Palestinian People in Gaza as the evidence of war crimes was crystal clear. I respect Moussa’s quick and smart move but I wonder why he did not the same the thing with the Egyptian POWs case when he was a FM of Egypt or even in his current position with my all respect and support to the Palestinian cause ((according to sources like MP Hamden Sabahi he told him once that Egypt can’t sue Israel officially for war crimes against her POWs because the Jews will sue us for nationalization !! I do not think that it is powerful reason !!))
This is from the official side , unofficially some Arabic civil society and human rights organization will have a meeting today at San’a’ governorate in Yemen in order to form an alliance to sue the IDF war criminals abroad, again I wonder why our civil society organization did not think in this option before but it is a good step. But of course I do not want to be pessimistic already the civil society and human rights organizations in the Arab world are too weak .
On the other hand the Israeli government knows that its soldiers and officers can be sued from wars crimes and as their habit to break international laws and so it announced that it would protect any Israeli fighter accused of war crimes will be granted a state protection from prosecution over seas. Strangely Ehud Olmert who once said that he cried for the murder of the Palestinian children was the one who announced this statement.
Still the human rights organizations in Israel are giving hard time to the military establishment and also the radical Zionists. Yesh Din,an Israeli Human rights organization is calling the IDF to sack a military Rabbi who distributed religious books on the soldiers calling them to show no mercy to a cruel enemy .

The POW Swap record between the Arabs and Israel “The Jewish Virtual library”

BBC Arabic published a very interesting report about the POWs Swap between the Arab and Israel since 1948. It comes as part of their coverage to the POWs Swap between Lebanon represented by Hezbollah and Israel from three week ago. Of course it is worth to say that the entire report is a complete translation to the Jewish Virtual library based on the IDF numbers and records and so it should not be trusted !!

The report which was translated by Shady El-Kashaf from Gaza traces back the most POWs Swap since the 1948 war,I will summarize it below till year 1967 because already I am having my doubts regarding some numbers concerning the Egyptian POWs , the report claims that the number of the Egyptian POWs were more than the Israeli POWs ,which is untrue according to my humble knowledge in 1973,also it did not mention the number of the Egyptian POWs that actually returned in 1967.

First of all you must know that several Arabic research centers say that Israel captured nearly 800,000 Palestinians and thousands of Arab civilians and soldiers POWs according to the official numbers since the beginning of the conflict where as the Arabic armies captured more than one thousand Israeli POWs not to mention the the Palestinian and Lebanese militias captured many Israelis whether dead or alive. As you can see with my all due respect ,on the contrary to the Israeli propaganda we lost more than they did according to the IDF numbers.

Second This is based on the official records , which means with Israel infamous record in human rights of Arab POWs you expect that there are thousands of Arab POWs who were killed and never found their ways to the records as numbers not even names.

Now the POW Swap started in 1948 between Egypt and Israel , then in 1968 for the first time Israel swapped its POWs with POWs from the PLO in the first recognition to this group and  the last one after 60 years in 2008 ironically was between Hezbollah representing Lebanon and Israel. 1948 then 1968 then 2008 , 8 is very special number far as I see.

Here is a history line to the POWs Swap:

  • Year 1948 :

After the war between the Arab armies and Israel , the Arabs captured a total of “885” Israeli POWs as follows : The Egyptian army “156” Israeli POWs , The Jordanian army “673” Israeli POWs , The Syrian army “48 Israeli POWs” and the Lebanese army “8 Israeli POWs where as the Israelis captured a total of “7116” Arab POWs !! They do not call it Nakba in the Arab world from nothing !! The Arab POWs were as follows: “5021” Palestinian POWs , “1098” Egyptian POWs, “57”Syrian POWs,”36″ Lebanese POWs,”28″ Saudi POWs, “25”Sudanese POWs,”24″ Yemeni POWs and “17” Jordanian POWs .

Israel swapped its POWs with each country alone. The first swap was with Egypt on 27/2/1949 in the famous Fallujah agreement then with Lebanon from 3/3/1949 till 4/4/1949 then the rest of the Arab countries involved. Syria was the last Arab country to swap POWs on the 21/9/1949

  • Year 1954 :

on 30/9/1954 Egypt captured 10 sailors from the ship “Bat Galim” in the Suez Canal,they were released according to the orders of the security council on 1/1/1955.

In December 1954 the Syrians captured 5 Israeli soldiers that were on a secret mission in the Golan heights, one of them “Uri Ilan ” committed suicide in his prison and his remains were sent back to Israel on the 14/1/1955. The other four were swapped for “41” Syrian POWs on 30/3/1956.

  • Year 1957 :

After the Suez War Egypt and Israel had POWs to be swapped.It started on the 21/1/1956 and ended on the 5/2/1956. Israel released “5000” Egyptian POWs for 4 Israeli POWs in the Egyptian Capture , of course there is no mention about the infamous massacre of Sharm El-Sheikh.

  • Year 1961

After the break of the Union ,on the 17/3/1961 the IDF Golani special forces made a military operation on the borders with Israel near Kibbutz “Ein Gev” where they captured two soldiers that were returned later.

  • Year 1963

Another swap operation between Syria and Israel on the 21/12/1963 , Syria released 13 Israeli POWs for 15 Syrian POWs

  • Year 1967

The mother of POWs problems and scandals not to mention defeats

The Arab armies and countries  involved in the war that time Egypt,Syria,Jordan,Lebanon and Iraq managed to capture only 15 Israeli POWs.

Egypt captured 11 Israeli POWs among them 6 Israeli marine commandos who were captured during a fiasco attack on the harbor of Alexandria , it is not our topic here but the one who caught them was actually a kid , it was a terrible operation by all means.

Then there were two pilots from the IAF and the rest were members in a spy ring.

Iraq captured two pilots who were targeting the airport H in west of Iraq ,those two were swapped for 428 Jordanian POWs !!

Syria Captured only one !!

Lebanon Captured only one !!

The IDF captured on other hand a total of 6708 Arab military and civilian , no order they killed our POWs when they thought that they were too much !!

The IDF captured civilians and military members ; here are the numbers for each country :

  • Egypt: 4338 soldiers and 899 civilians. “different from what is mentioned here
  • Jordan : 533 soldiers and 336 civilians.
  • Syria : 367 soldiers and 206 civilians.

The swap started on 15/6/1967 through the red cross and the UN and ended on the 23/1/1968.Jordan and Iraq were the first countries and Egypt was the last one.

Iraq swapped two Israeli IAF pilots Capt. Itzhak Glantz-Golan and Capt. Gideon Dror who attacked the H3 Air basese in West of Iraq for 428 Joranian POWs.

Syria swapped a pilot and 3 dead bodies for 572 Syrian POWs.

It is worth to mention that they only mentioned the number of the Israeli side captured from Egypt but they did not mention how many were exchanged for the Israeli POWs , the 11 POWs including the some member of Lavon terrorist espionage ring

  • Year 1968 :

Jordan on the 2/4/1968 Israel swapped 12 Jordanian POWs for a body of missing solider from the Karameh battle

Again I will stop here because the content of the blog here is concentrating on the 1956 and 1967 ,you can find the rest of the report in the link above

Another important testimony from important witness.

He is a native Egyptian from the tribes of Al Arish.His testimony is very important because not only he is witness to what happened in 1967 and the occupation years afterwards , but he also was a victim of the IDF war crimes for many year.Shiekh Mahmoud El-Sawukra

Sheikh Mahmoud El-Sawurka , the most famous Egyptian prisoner in the Israeli prison , who spent 22 years in the Israeli prisons witnessing all horrors and crimes that took place against the Arab political prisoners . Even his body became a map for the physical torture and abuse he saw on the hands of the Israeli forces.

Regarding the POWs massacres in Al Arish , the old Sheikh fragile sheikh still remembers the burial places of the Egyptian Soldiers remains , where the great locals of Al Arish buried our soldiers ; after all those years.

He also shared terrible memories about the massacres that took place in Al Arish

Read More

This is a war crime

Oh boy we are in the sad June with its terrible memories regarding our slayed POWs and Civilians in the desert Sinai and here we are with this new scandal , which I am not surprised at all to know about.

Thank Goodness that people now speak and confess

Please check this confession for an American Soldier regarding what the U.S army does with the Iraqi and Afghani civilians dead bodies .

There should be an international investigation about these crimes.These are war crimes by all measures

The foreign ministry is officially responsible of the POW Case in Egypt

On the 5th of March 2008, the Administrative court in Cairo issued a historical ruling oblighing the Egyptian foreign ministry to investigate the allegations that the Israeli Defense Forces “IDF” had killed Egyptian POWs in 1956 and 1967.

egyptianow-apThe court ordered the Egyptian foreign ministry to prepare a list with the names and numbers of the POWs killed by the IDF.The importance of that rule is that it is an official obligation on the Foreign

The importance of that rule is that it is an official obligation on the Foreign ministry.

The ministry should open an immediate investigation in this important case.This court order comes as the end of a very long lawsuit filed against the Egyptian government by the families of the POWs and ex-POWs

The lawyer who filed the Suit is Wahid El-Oksori , the head of Egyptian Arab socialist Party and a veteran officer.

This is very important court order, it does not recognize the crimes but it orders the Foreign ministry to investigate the allegations,it opens the door officially

Still, I doubt that the Foreign ministry will obey the court’s order and it will not be the first time nor the first ministry or governmental authority that will ignore a court’s order. By the way about the list with names and numbers of the POWs, they can be easily done with the records of the reported missing officers and Soldiers from 1956 and 1967 from the Egyptian army archives.