|
Have
Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Airports? South
Africa Deports Airline Official After Investigation
26 November 2009 By
Jonathan Cook
South Africa deported an Israeli airline official last
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.”
He added that he was assigned to “armed security” in
the early 1990s. “Armed security is being undercover,
carrying a weapon, a handgun and at that time as well,
sounds crazy but we carried Samsonite briefcases with
an Uzi submachine gun in it.”
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
“photocopied 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.
“It is remarkable that these countries make no effort
to supervise the actions of Israeli security personnel
present on their territory, particularly in light of
the discriminatory and humiliating procedures they
apply,” the report states.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the
Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to
Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and
“Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human
Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. A
version of this article originally appeared in The
National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
EsinIslam.Com Add Comments | |