jew spies infiltrate johannesburg airport
Heinrich
week following allegations that Israel's secret police, the Shin Bet, had
infiltrated Johannesburg international airport in an effort to gather
information on South African citizens, particularly black and Muslim
travellers.
The move by the South African government followed an investigation by local
TV showing an undercover reporter being illegally interrogated by an
official with El Al, Israel's national carrier, in a public area of
Johannesburg's OR Tambo airport.
The programme also featured testimony from Jonathan Garb, a former El Al
guard, who claimed that the airline company had been a front for the Shin
Bet in South Africa for many years.
Of the footage of the undercover reporter's questioning, he commented: "Here
is a secret service operating above the law in South Africa. We pull the
wool over everyone's eyes. We do exactly what we want. The local authorities
do not know what we are doing."
The Israeli foreign ministry is reported to have sent a team to South Africa
to try to defuse the diplomatic crisis after the government in Johannesburg
threatened to deport all of El Al's security staff.
Mr Garb's accusations have been supported by an investigation by the
regulator for South Africa's private security industries.
They have also been confirmed by human rights groups in Israel, which report
that Israeli security staff are carrying out racial profiling at many
airports around the world, apparently out of sight of local authorities.
Concern in South Africa about the activities of El Al staff has been growing
since August, when South Africa's leading investigative news show, Carte
Blanche, went undercover to test Mr Garb's allegations.
A hidden camera captured an El Al official in the departure hall claiming to
be from "airport security" and demanding that the undercover reporter hand
over his passport or ID as part of "airport regulations". When the reporter
protested that he was not flying but waiting for a friend, El Al's security
manager, identified as Golan Rice, arrived to interrogate him further. Mr
Rice then warned him that he was in a restricted area and must leave.
Mr Garb commented on the show: "What we are trained is to look for the
immediate threat - the Muslim guy. You can think he is a suicide bomber, he
is collecting information. The crazy thing is that we are profiling people
racially, ethnically and even on religious grounds . This is what we do."
Mr Garb and two other fired workers have told the South African media that
Shin Bet agents routinely detain Muslim and black passengers, a claim that
has ignited controversy in a society still suffering with the legacy of
decades of apartheid rule.
Suspect individuals, the former workers say, are held in an annex room,
where they are interrogated, often on matters unrelated to airport security,
and can be subjected to strip searches while their luggage is taken apart.
Clandestine searches of their belongings and laptops are also carried out to
identify useful documents and information.
All of this is done in violation of South African law, which authorises only
the police, armed forces or personnel appointed by the transport minister to
carry out searches.
The former staff also accuse El Al of smuggling weapons - licensed to the
local Israeli embassy - into the airport for use by the secret agents.
Mr Garb went public after he was dismissed over a campaign he led for better
pay and medical benefits for El Al staff.
A South African Jew, he said he was recruited 19 years ago by the Shin Bet.
"We were trained at a secret camp [in Israel] where they train Israeli
special forces and they train you how to use handguns, submachine guns and
in unarmed combat."
Mr Garb claimed to have profiled 40,000 people for Israel over the past 20
years, including recently Virginia Tilley, a Middle East expert who is the
chief researcher at South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council. The
think tank recently published a report accusing Israel of apartheid and
colonialism in the Palestinian territories.
"The decision was she should be checked in the harshest way because of her
connections," Mr Garb said.
Ms Tilley confirmed that she had been detained at the airport by El Al staff
and separated from her luggage. Mr Garb said that during this period an
agent "photo-copied all [her] documentation and then he forwarded it on to
Israel" - Mr Garb believes for use by the Shin Bet.
Israeli officials have refused to comment on the allegations. A letter
produced by Mr Garb - signed by Roz Bukris, El Al's general manager in South
Africa - suggests that he was employed by the Shin Bet rather than the
airline. Ms Bukris, according to the programme, refused to confirm or deny
the letter's validity.
The Israeli Embassy in South Africa declined to discuss evidence that it,
rather than El Al, had licensed guns issued to the airline's security
managers. Questioned last week by Ynet, Israel's largest news website, about
the deportation of the airline official, Yossi Levy, an Israeli foreign
ministry spokesman said he could not "comment on security matters".
A report published in 2007 by two Israeli human rights organisations, the
Nazareth-based Arab Association for Human Rights and the Centre Against
Racism, found that Israeli airline staff used racial profiling at most major
airports around the world, subjecting Arab and Muslim passengers to
discriminatory and degrading treatment in violation both of international
law and the host country's laws.
"Our research showed that the checks conducted by El Al at foreign airports
had all the hallmarks of Shin Bet interrogations," said Mohammed Zeidan, the
director of the Human Rights Association. "Usually the questions were less
about the safety of the flight and more aimed at gathering information on
the political activities or sympathies of the passengers."
The human rights groups approached four international airports - in New
York, Paris, Vienna and Geneva - where passengers said they had been
subjected to discriminatory treatment, to ask under what authority the
Israeli security services were operating. The first two airports refused to
respond, while Vienna and Geneva said it was not possible to oversee El Al's
procedures.
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Al Nakba
if the mossad doesn't do this, it would behoove any other country
which wishes to curb the asslifters, to do so..