The Untold Story of the Shejaiya Massacre in Gaza: A Former Israel Soldier Speaks Out

September 12, 2014
Source: Democracy Now!

 

On July 20, at least 90 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya. Days later, former Israeli soldier Eran Efrati was arrested by Israel after he posted details about the massacre based on interviews he conducted with Israeli soldiers who were there. Today he speaks out about what he learned and talks about the killing of 23-year-old Salem Khaleel Shamaly. Activists with the International Solidarity Movement posted a video on YouTube showing the fatal shooting of an unarmed Palestinian civilian during the massacre. Family members later stumbled onto the video and identified the man as Shamaly. In the video, Shamaly is seen lying on the ground, apparently wounded by an unseen sniper. As Shamaly tries to get to his feet, two more shots ring out, and he stops moving. Efrati interviewed three of the Israeli soldiers who witnessed the killing of Salem Khaleel Shamaly. His sources within the Israeli Defense Forces reportedly informed him soldiers were deliberately targeting civilians as "punishment" and "retribution" for the deaths of fellow soldiers in their units. Efrati is a former Israeli combat soldier turned anti-occupation activist and investigative researcher.
Click here to watch part 2 of the interview.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Israeli military says it has opened criminal probes into two of its most publicized killings of Palestinian civilians during the summer’s assault on Gaza. Investigators will examine the killing of four Palestinian children on a Gaza beach and a later attack that killed 14 people in a U.N. school, one of several that hit U.N. shelters. Over 2,100 Palestinians, more than 75 percent civilians, were killed in the Israeli assault. Critics say Israel is seeking to deflect international scrutiny, including a United Nations Human Rights Council probe and potential cases before the International Criminal Court. However, the Israeli army has not announced plans to investigate another notorious episode that occurred during its recent assault on Gaza. That’s the Shejaiya massacre in July, when nearly 90 Gazans and 13 Israeli soldiers were killed.
AMY GOODMAN: Shejaiya is one of Gaza’s poorest and most crowded neighborhoods. Activists with the International Solidarity Movement posted a video on YouTube showing the fatal shooting of an unarmed Palestinian civilian during the massacre. Family members later stumbled onto the video and identified the man as 23-year-old Salem Khaleel Shamaly. In the video, we see Shamaly lying on the ground, apparently wounded by an unseen sniper. As Shamaly tries to get to his feet, two more shots ring out. He stops moving.
Well, our next guest interviewed three of the Israeli soldiers who witnessed the killing of Salem Shamaly. His confidential sources within the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, reportedly informed him that the real reason for the recent IDF Shejaiya massacre was that IDF soldiers were deliberately targeting civilians as punishment and retribution for the deaths of fellow soldiers in their units. This former soldier is named Eran Efrati. He’s a former Israeli combat soldier turned anti-occupation activist and investigative researcher. Later this month, Efrati will testify at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Brussels.

Eran Efrati, we welcome you to Democracy Now!

ERAN EFRATI: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about why you went to the border to interview Israeli soldiers?

ERAN EFRATI: Well, I’m doing this job for almost five years now, since Operation Cast Lead. I’m collecting testimonies from soldiers. I started in Breaking the Silence, the organization, and moved on independently to take testimonies, collect testimonies from soldiers in the IDF, because I was there as a soldier, and I know that what we get in the mainstream media and what we get in the news is most of the time very far from what’s really going on in the area. In this summer, I was sitting in Jerusalem in my home, and the atmosphere in Israel, the fascist atmosphere in the streets in Jerusalem, and the overall approval of this terrible massacre that happened in Gaza was so overwhelming that I decided to go on down to the border with Gaza and try to speak directly with the soldiers, because I knew that I will get something else from them.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d like to go to a—Channel 4 News’ Krishnan Guru-Murthy questioned Israeli spokesman Mark Regev about the shooting death of Salem Shamaly. He asked Regev if Israel plans to investigate the shooting. This is how Regev responded.

MARK REGEV: I’d urge that if anyone has information that is relevant, that they come forward and speak to our judge advocate general, the highest military man who deals with these sort of investigations. Obviously, if there are allegations of misbehavior by Israeli soldiers, they must be investigated. We can’t rely on hearsay from political activists. I urge people to come forward. The Israeli army, like other Western armies, like NATO armies, holds itself to a very high professional standard.

KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY: So you’re saying nobody is currently investigating one of the most notorious shootings of the military incursion, that was widely circulated around the world. Now, someone has come forward now and has spoken, he says, to some of the Israeli soldiers involved, and they make very clear allegations, that you just heard, about the conditions under which they could open fire. Now, you’ve heard those allegations. Are you concerned? Do you believe there should be an investigation?

MARK REGEV: Well, first of all, first of all, I don’t think a YouTube put out by activists is necessarily objective reality, as you yourself know. But once again, the person speaking had no direct knowledge. He was relying on testimony of others. And I would urge—

KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY: He’s a former soldier, not just an activist. He served his country.

MARK REGEV: I would urge—you said he was an activist, didn’t you? Or your reporter said so. At least that’s what I heard. But if he has information, it’s his duty. It’s his obligation. We have a very independent judicial branch of the army, which is very strong and independent in Israel. And if people have information, they must come forward.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Your response to what Regev said?

ERAN EFRATI: My response to the idea that if the Israeli army committed crimes against humanity in Gaza, what they want is to investigate themself. They actually want activists and other civilians to come to the army and tell the army that he was doing something wrong, and they think it’s independent. The Israeli army is independent in the way it’s controlling all of Israeli society. The Israeli media, the Israeli court—everybody is working underneath the army censorship. Nobody can publish anything in Israel—of course, not researchers—and I’m not talking only on TV or radio or newspaper; I’m talking on bloggers in the Internet. Nobody can publish anything if it doesn’t go through the IDF censorship, the same IDF censorship that censorship crimes for years under the occupation of the Palestinians in Palestine. And now they want us to come to them, to be silenced by them. It’s, of course, ridiculous.

AMY GOODMAN: What brings you to the United States?

ERAN EFRATI: Well, I’m here because I’m doing my research from here. For the last five years, I’m doing investigative research on the Israeli army and the American army and the arm trades between them. The Shejaiya story that I encountered this summer was the most recent incredible story that I found, because not only did the war in Gaza—the massacre that was going on in Gaza was, of course, terrible; the story of the Shejaiya neighborhood was a particular story in this war that I think really described the entirety of it.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us more about it, because as you interviewed these soldiers on the border, who saw Shamaly killed—

ERAN EFRATI: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —you were arrested by the Israeli military.

ERAN EFRATI: Right, after publishing it. What happened is that I was in contact with the soldiers. I knew the soldiers from before this operation, and of course I am continuing to be in touch with them until today. I was talking to them by phone from inside Gaza. What happened in Gaza in 2014 was very surprisingly for the Israeli soldiers in the Israeli army, because we are not used to—the Israeli army, not used to getting resistance from inside Gaza like we get from in Lebanon, for example. So, in 2009 and 2012, we didn’t lose soldiers almost at all. We lost something like 12 soldiers to Hamas killing, and most of them was from our friendly fire. So we killed most of our soldiers. And the idea that soldiers are being killed in Gaza, it’s something new for the Israeli army.

And so, the Israeli army going in and losing almost immediately 13 soldiers in one day, that day will become the night of the Shejaiya massacre, the neighborhood massacre that killed more than 90 people in one night. After a hard night of bombing in Shejaiya, the infantry soldiers are going into the neighborhood and catching houses as bases and waiting for other commands. And in that time, they’re getting orders from their officers inside those houses to get ready inside the house for an extended killing. When they ask why, they’re explained to them that they understand they’re confused, they understand that they’re hurting, the killing of their friends from their unit—I’m talking about two specific unit, the Golani unit and the Nahal Brigade. And they’re telling them that they understand their frustration, and they will have a chance to get out to take out their frustration on Palestinians. They’re waiting until the morning.

And in the morning, families are starting to come back into their neighborhood, civilians looking for family members they left behind and looking for them under the rubbles. We can see in the video uploaded to YouTube and other videos that people going around the neighborhood and screaming names of family members, looking for them—obviously unarmed civilians. The soldiers are in the house, looking ahead. At that time, they decide to do an imaginary red line in the sand. Our officers tell them they had to do an imaginary red line to determine if they’re in risk or not. And whoever will cross this red line will be a risk for them, and so far, they can kill him. Of course, that’s not something new. It happened in 2009 and in 2012. But this time, this imaginary red line was drawn very, very far from the house. Snipers were sitting on the windows waiting for orders.

And when Salem Shamaly came back with international activists and other Palestinians looking for their family member, he crossed one of these red lines. The sniper on the window is asking his commander, is he have approve to shoot? His commander is telling him, "Wait," two times, and then he’s giving him the first approve. He’s shooting the first shot to the left side of his body and his hand. Salem Shamaly is falling down. And then the sniper is asking another approval to shoot again to finish him off. The officer is telling him, "Wait, wait," and then he’s giving him approve to finish Salem Shamaly out. This is not the only case we know of, but this is the only case documented by international activists in Shejaiya.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I wanted to ask you—you say that there were soldiers who you knew who talked to you. You, yourself, were a combat soldier in the Israeli army. Talk about your—why you decided to do this, the transformation that you went through.

ERAN EFRATI: Right. Well, I grew up in a very Zionist, militaristic home. My father was the head of investigation of the Israeli police. My mother was an officer in the army. My brother was a special—an officer in a special unit in the Israeli army. So I’m coming from a good background in Israel. And I was waiting all of my youth to join the army. It was obvious to me that this is the place I need to be. In the 11th grade, I went to Poland into the trip to the camps with my classmates and saw Auschwitz, the same camp that my grandma survived, and all of our family were killed there. And there, I got the message that if I want to stop a second Holocaust from happening, I have to go back home, join the best unit I can in the military and stop a second Holocaust from happening.

I joined the IDF. I went through seven months of boot camp, getting ready for a war, getting ready to stop the second Holocaust from happening. But in the end of these seven months, I’m not finding myself in a war; I’m finding myself in al-Khalil, or Hebron, in the middle of the West Bank, a city counting 180,000 Palestinians, and in the middle of the city a Jewish settlement of 800 settlers, Jewish settlers, that I need to protect. And very fast, I will understand that my job here is to control the Palestinian lives. My job here is to control their life for the arm trade that’s going on, for testing weapons on the ground, for workers’ rights in Israel, for Palestinian workers that we need for mines, for fuel. All of this stuff, I’m doing daily, not for protection of anybody, but for protection of the rich government in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk about what happened then. And what was the Israeli military’s response to your transformation?

ERAN EFRATI: Well, I think, you know, very fast during my service, I understand what’s going on. I started giving stories outside, from Hebron, into Breaking the Silence. When I’m losing—I’m sorry, when I’m leaving the army almost after four years, I was a sergeant in the Israeli army. When I’m leaving the army, I’m joining Breaking the Silence and started taking testimonies and trying to publish them out. Very soon I will find out, after Operation Cast Lead, that we cannot publish everything that we want, because even Breaking the Silence is going underneath the army censorship.

AMY GOODMAN: Breaking the Silence is the organization, and Operation Cast Lead was the attack in 2008 on Gaza.

ERAN EFRATI: Right. So it’s an organization that collect testimonies from soldiers all across the West Bank and Gaza, and trying to publish them to the Israeli public and to the world. The problem is that even Breaking the Silence is under the military censorship, so Breaking the Silence is actually only breaking the silence that the Israeli government let them.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: When you say that they’re under military censorship, that they clear their material with the Israeli army?

ERAN EFRATI: Exactly. They’re giving every booklet they’re taking out, they have to give to the Israeli—to the army censorship before it’s letting out to the public.

AMY GOODMAN: As we end on the young man, Shamaly, in Shejaiya—and we’re going to show the video, and you’ll hear him—possibly, you’ll hear him as he is laying there shot, and then shot again, and shot again, as we’re showing this now. Let’s listen. He has been shot once now. He is reaching up. He’s with other activists.

SALEM KHALEEL SHAMALY: [speaking in Arabic]

AMY GOODMAN: His family saw this on YouTube?

ERAN EFRATI: Yes. His family—we need to understand that there was hundreds of thousands refugees in Gaza during this operation running away, trying to save their life, leaving family members behind. They didn’t know—until today, not everybody’s sure who was killed and who was not. People are still looking for their relatives. And then, his family is watching YouTube and seeing their son being killed by a sniper in Shejaiya. And this is how they found out he’s dead.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will leave it there. And for our listeners, we are showing the video on television, the horror that his parents discovered afterwards, his family. Eran Efrati, we want to thank you for being with us, former Israeli combat soldier turned anti-occupation activist and investigative researcher, recently interviewed a number of Israeli soldiers who participated in the Shejaiya massacre in Gaza. Later this month, Eran Efrati will testify at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Brussels.

Link:  .democracynow.org/2014/9/12/the_untold_story_of_the_shejaiya.

Economist Ha-Joon Chang on Currency Wars, the G20, and Why "There’s No Such Thing As a Free Market"

November 19, 2010

Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at the University of Cambridge and is the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. "Obama] has to buy time to restructure the economy without creating a recession by sustaining this deficit spending, because otherwise our other option is going back to the 1930s," Chang says. "Don’t forget that in the 1930s a lot of countries started cutting this deficit as soon as things looked slightly better, and many of them went back into recession."


Ha-Joon Chang, teaches economics at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. His previous book was titled, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.



AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has just left again for Portugal. He just came back from his 10-day Asian trip where he emerged from the G-20 summit in Seoul, South Korea saying the countries at the summit had agreed to "Get the global economy back on the path of recovery."

But critics have pointed to Obama’s failure to secure a free trade agreement with South Korea and the lack of progress between the United States and China on currency issues. Before leaving Seoul, Obama defended the $600 billion move by the Federal Reserve to buy up government bonds and rejected claims that the U.S. is waging a currency war by devaluing the dollar. Meanwhile, although the U.S. has accused China of artificially manipulating the price of the yuan for economic gain, Obama failed to win international backing for his effort to pressure China to raise its currency value.

JUAN GONZALEZ: For more on the currency wars, capitalism, and the free market, I spoke to the Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang last week. He teaches economics at the University of Cambridge. He’s the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. His previous book was titled, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. I began by asking him for his assessment of President Obama’s visit to Seoul.

HA-JOON CHANG: Currency, I think was unrealistic to expect any concrete agreement there. Both countries have such different views about what is the right way forward; they have all very different interests. So I think it was quite unrealistic to expect anything on that account.

But I think that there was probably a more realistic expectation of the Korea-U.S.A. free trade agreement. But once again, the problem is that the deal was already agreed and then the Americans are asking for more. The South Korean government is actually quite keen to sign this agreement, although I personally oppose it. But even they couldn’t quite stomach it because they had made all the concessions – well they thought they had – and then now the U.S. is coming back, “We want more.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: What were some of those concessions? Because the president portrayed it as an attempt to get more protections for American workers in a renegotiated part of the deal.

HA-JOON CHANG: Yes, that is the fundamental problem with bilateral free trade agreements because when you open up trade in this kind of way, a lot of people on both sides are going to get hurt and none of the countries have come up with an adequate compensation mechanism. It’s understandable that the Korean farmers or U.S. auto workers – people who are going to get hurt – want to protect themselves and oppose these agreements.

JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the currency debate, clearly, the United States now and other countries in the world for more than several years have been claiming that China is refusing to peg its currency at what it’s really worth now on the international scene.
And now suddenly though the tide – especially after the Federal Reserve action in the past week, to begin to buy up more bonds and in effect drive the currency value of the U.S. dollar down – now the charges are being leveled against the United States. Who is right here? And what is the role not only of the emerging Third World countries, but also of the European Union in this debate?

HA-JOON CHANG: Well, you know, it is quite understandable why Americans are frustrated by the slowness in the adjustment of the Chinese currency. Let’s get the facts right. It has been adjusted, only very, very slowly. So it is not like China is absolutely refusing to move, but yes, given the imbalances that the U.S. is facing, it looks painfully slow.

But on the Chinese side, you have to understand. First of all, they don’t want the kind of abrupt adjustment that Japan had to make to its own currency in the 1980s in the so-called Plaza Accord, which then created this huge financial bubble and destroyed the Japanese economy. So the Chinese want to do it slowly. Secondly, it’s not just China who manipulates currency value. As you just said, the Fed flooding America with this money is also currency manipulation, so the Chinese are rightly upset.

But on the other hand, yes, the problem is that since the 1970s, we have lived under the notion that only the deficit countries have to make adjustments. Surplus countries have to make adjustments, too. But in the last 30 years, the reigning orthodoxy has been that anyone who is spending beyond his means has to be punished. This is exactly the logic behind the punishment of Third World countries in the debt crisis and later, the Asian economies and Argentine economy.

So in that sense, actually, the very thing the U.S. has tried to impose on the world is coming to haunt itself. If the U.S. has been on the forefront of this logic that it’s only the deficit countries that have to make adjustments, and now other countries are logically saying, “Well, why don’t you then, do the same?”

JUAN GONZALEZ: But in terms of the currency, in terms of this flood now of American capital that is heading overseas now because the government has driven interest rates down here so drastically, several of the emerging economies – certainly Brazil, India, and others – are increasingly looking at how to prevent this entrance into their economies of basically, speculative capital.

What is your sense of how this will develop? And again, how Europe, which is this other huge power force in the world economic scene, how Europe will react to the debate between the emerging countries and the United States over currency controls?

HA-JOON CHANG: Well, first of all, let’s put this into perspective. The reason why the Fed has to engage in this massive quantitative easing is because of the inability of the American political system to agree on continued deficit spending. So although the brunt of adjustment is put on monetary policy, this is at the root of the problem. In a way, monetary easing wouldn’t be as big if the American political scene is such that it can continue the stimulus package. But it is not going to happen.

So we’re stuck with the situation now. Given the low interest rate and a huge amount of liquidity released into the system, a lot of money is flowing into the so-called emerging economies – that is, middle-level developing countries – and they are really desperate. I mean, some of these countries have seen huge appreciation of their currency values which is making their export difficult.

Now, most of them are beginning to put capital controls in place. This is quite amazing because until recently, it was a mortal sin. Now, in certain countries, even the IMF is saying, maybe you should put capital controls in so that the speculative capital wouldn’t destabilize your economy.

JUAN GONZALEZ: By capital controls, you mean what, precisely? The taxing of investments, of financial investments that are coming in from abroad? Restrictions on their leaving?

HA-JOON CHANG: Yes, well, there are a range of measures. The most kind of draconian measures will be that you have to get government approval when you are bringing money, you have to get approval when you are bringing it out. That is still where a lot of countries are putting, for example, deposit requirements. When you’re bringing money in, you deposit, say, the equivalent of 30% to 50% of the money, which you will get back when and if you leave after, say, a year or two, but if you leave earlier, then you lose the money. So this is to –

JUAN GONZALEZ: To curb speculation.

HA-JOON CHANG: Exactly, yes. Some other countries have studied taxing capital gains from this speculative flows. So a range of measures are being used, but the direction is clear: these speculative inflows cannot be managed through market mechanisms.

Just put it into perspective, even the biggest stock markets in the developing countries are less than 1% or 2% of the U.S. stock market. So a tiny drop flowing out of the U.S. is a flood for these economies so that they need these kind of protective mechanisms.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Ever since the financial collapse a couple of years ago, first, all the governments tried to engage in some sort of stimulus of their economies, but now the clear debate is over is the way forward to reduce deficits and to impose austerity on government spending? Or is it to continue to stimulate economies and promote economic growth? Obviously, you fall clearly on one side or another – could you explain why?

HA-JOON CHANG: Yes. Look, one thing that has to be made clear at the very beginning is that the main reason for these large deficits is not excessive government spending, but falling tax revenue through the collapse in private sector demand. So if we are in a full implement situation, cutting government spending might create room for the private sector to come and create jobs and so on.

But the very reason why we have this deficit is the private sector is not investing, and cutting deficits is not going to make them invest because the root cause of their unwillingness to invest is the problems with their balance sheets. This cut is not going to solve the problem.

But more importantly, in the short run, that is viewed that it is the best if you cut the deficit as much and as quickly as possible. There’s no economic logic. The British government, you know, says to cut the deficit down to basically zero in four years’ time. But four years makes sense in calendar terms, but in economic terms, it doesn’t make any sense.

If you want to cut this deficit, you have to cut to the state of the economy. So maybe in some cases, you can cut it in two years, maybe in some cases it will have to be 12. Unfortunately a lot of deficit hawks have a hidden agenda. They basically want to rollback the welfare state and they’re using it as an excuse to do it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: As Naomi Klein says, “Disaster capitalism is the opportunity to implement policies that you have always wanted to do.”

HA-JOON CHANG: Exactly and then the kind of political sleight of hand they have deployed is quite remarkable. All this crises that have basically been generated by the bankers and other financiers, I mean, these people are still paying themselves billions of bonuses while the poorest people are asked to make the adjustment. I mean, this is outrageous.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now you are seeing one country after another – Greece, France, England with its austerity measures – and now, of course, the United States, the Debt Commission recommending potentially huge cuts in Social Security and Medicare here in the United States. How do you see President Obama’s policies so far in terms of the way he’s handling this crisis, since he got into office?

HA-JOON CHANG: Well, luckily the U.S. still hasn’t yet given into the deficit hawks, but with the Republican victory in the midterm elections and the Debt Commission, it’s coming. But he has to resist it. He has to, if possible, buy time to restructure the economy, without creating a recession, by sustaining this deficit spending.

Otherwise, the other option is going back to the 1930s. Don’t forget that in the 1930s, a lot of countries started cutting the deficit as soon as things looked slightly better and many of them went back into recession. It is already happening in Ireland. They started cutting the deficit, now they are in bigger trouble.

AMY GOODMAN: Korean-born economist Ha-Joon Chang speaking to Juan Gonzalez. He teaches economics at the University of Cambridge in Britain; the author of the forthcoming book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism; his previous book, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.

National Outcry Over TSA Body Scanners and Invasive Pat-Downs

November 19, 2010

As one of the busiest travel seasons of the year approaches there is a public outcry over new airport security measures that include full-body scanners and invasive police-style pat-downs. We speak with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as New York City Councilman David Greenfield, who introduced a resolution to ban the use of the full body scanners in airports within the city.

Ginger McCall, assistant director of the open government program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center
Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union.
David Greenfield, New York City Councilman representing Brooklyn residents living in the 44th Council District.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We are approaching one of the busiest travel seasons of the year, but there’s an outcry over new airport security measures that include full body scanners and invasive police style pat-downs. Pilots and frequent-flier worry about the radiation the scanners emit. The ACLU has denounced the scans and the group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC ) has filed a lawsuit to suspend the deployment of body scanners at U.S. airports, pending an independent review. The group alleges the scanning procedures are, “unlawful, invasive, and ineffective.” A national protest is being put together over the Internet, calling on people who are flying on the day before Thanksgiving to opt out of the scans and insist on public pat-downs. The stated goal of the National opt out day is to draw lawmakers’ attention to the new security measures and respect the privacy of the flying public. Here in New York City, City Council members introduced a resolution to ban the use of scanners in the city. This is City Councilman David Greenfield.

COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: It is an outrage, it’s acceptable, it’s ineffectual and that is why I introduced legislation with the support of many of my colleagues on the City Council to ban these naked body scanners from the entire New York City, including New York’s airports.

AMY GOODMAN: Some lawmakers like Florida’s Republican Congress member John Mica are pushing for airports to switch to private security guards instead of agents for the Transportation Security Administration or TSA. On Wednesday, Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas introduced the American Traveler Dignity Act, a bill that would hold airport security agents legally accountable for airline screening procedures.

RON PAUL: What we are putting up with an accepting at this airport is so symbolic of us just not standing up and saying enough is enough. Let’s make sure that every member of Congress goes through this. Get the X-ray, make them look at the pictures, then go through one of those groping pat-downs. Then I think there would be a difference. Have everybody in the executive branch—a Cabinet member, make them go through it and look at it. Maybe they would pay more attention. But this does not work. This is not what makes us safer.

JUAN GONZALEZ: For more on the body scanners and the new airport security procedures, we’re joined by two guests from Washington, D.C. Ginger McCall is assistant director of the Open Government program at EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center. And Chris Calabrese is Legislative Counsel with the ACLU. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

I was in Washington at the National Airport, Reagan Airport, and I refused to go to the scanner. This was a couple of weeks ago and I saw everyone going through it. I said to the TSA guys, “I don’t get it. Am I the only one?” They said, “You are the only one to refuses to go through.” I think that’s hardly the case. Ginger McCall, can you talk about the scanners, the electronic scanners and what epic is doing about this and the invasive pat-downs if you refuse? Because boy, you sure get one if you refuse to go through the electronic machine.

GINGER MCCALL: EPIC has been working on this issue since about 2005. We’ve actually filed a lawsuit to suspend the program while it’s evaluated for privacy, health and effectiveness. We have really been working on this because these machines are clearly a violation of the Fourth Amendment. They’re highly, highly invasive. It is a procedure that is applied to all American travelers.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the science behind it? I always wondered when your luggage goes through underneath, what kind of scanning does that get? Yet when we go through, what is in those body scanners? What is the level of radiation, not to mention the pictures they are taking of your body?

GINGER MCCALL: There are two different kinds of scanner – there’s millimeter wave and there’s backscatter. The scanners produce a small amount of radiation. It has not really been properly tested. There is not a clear maintenance schedule for who’s going to ensure that the scanners will continue to only put out the proper amount of radiation. There’s not proper testing of the effect of that radiation on children, on pregnant women, on immune-compromised individuals. What happens with the scanners is that you walk through it, you pose, the scanner will scan you and the picture gets sent back to a TSA official in a back room. It is a very, very invasive picture. It shows cellulite. It shows love handles. It is very detailed and very graphic.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And also these scanners are able to store these images as well as to transmit them to other government agencies if necessary?

GINGER MCCALL: EPIC had a Freedom of Information Act request with DHS to get more details on the scanners. We initially made that request. DHS ignored the request. We took them to court over it. As part of that lawsuit, we got documents, procurements specifications documents that were scripted by TSA and this document described everything that TSA require the manufacturers to put in these machines. One of the requirements was these machines be able to store and transmit the images.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re also joined on the line by New York City Councilman David Greenfield who represents the 44th District of the city in Brooklyn. On Thursday, Councilman Greenfield and six other councilmembers introduced a resolution to ban the use of the full body scanners in New York. Welcome to Democracy Now! Councilman.

COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: Thank you, good morning.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now why did you take this stand? If this passes, Councilman, this would affect the two airports in New York City, Kennedy and LaGuardia?

COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: Absolutely. I took the stand because every American wants to be safe. You trust the government when the government says this is going to make you safe. What’s shocking is that a lot of research has been done with the folks at EPIC that actually indicates that these scanners do not work. In fact, the safest airport in the world, Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv—their security experts rejected the scanners. The former head of security at Ben Gurion said you could get enough explosives through these naked body scanners to blow up a jumbo jet.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the company that manufactures them and who approved? We’re talking a multimillion dollar sale all over the country as they’re put in all over the country.

COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: I think that actually is the concern right here. That’s a fascinating question. In fact, last year, right after the Christmas Day bombing, Michael Chertoff, the former director of homeland security ran around and told many news outlets including the New York Times that if only we had these scanners we would have been saved. He conveniently forgot to mention that he actually is the lobbyist for the two manufacturers of this technology. Then they rushed to get a $350 million contract to these two companies.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re also joined by Chris Calabrese, the legislative counsel for ACLU. Chris, your organization has also condemned the scanners. Can you talk about your concerns?

CHRIS CALABRESE: They are pretty simple. The fact is, that the government is giving you an intolerable choice. It’s either take a virtual strip search or endure a really aggressive groping. We do not think either of those options is appropriate.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to play something else. The uproar of the new security procedures really picked up after one cellphone video when viral. The video was taken by a man named John Tyner, 31 years old, software engineer. He was flying out of a San Diego and refused to go to the full body scanner and was subjected to enhanced patdown instead. He recorded the encounter with the airport’s security agent, using his cell phone. Listen carefully.

TSA: Also, we are going to be doing a groin check. That means I am going to place my hand on your hip, my other hand on your inner thigh. Slowly go up and slide down.

TYNER: Okay.

TSA: We are going to do that two times in the front, two times in the back.

TYNER: Alright.

TSA: And if you would like a private screening we can make that available for you also.

TYNER: We can do that out here but if you touch my junk I’m going to have you arrested.

TSA: Actually, we’re going to have a supervisor here because of your statement.

AMY GOODMAN: Soon after he said, "If you touch my junk, I will have you arrested," he was told he would face a fine up to $11,000 and be investigated by the TSA. The investigation onto Tyner is still open, but the head of the TSA told a Senate hearing this week that he did not expect anything to come of it. It is also interesting that this is coming at the same time of this news that the Federal Labor Relations Authority is allowing airport security screeners to vote on union representation, clearing the way for a history-making election among federal government employees. We’re talking about 50,000 Transportation Security officers being allowed to vote on union representation. Remember when President Bush had them all under the Department of Homeland Security and said they could not unionize. That has turned around. I think it’s interesting when we have people like the Florida Congress member Mica talking about privatizing these scanners, the people who are doing this, is this also in response to breaking a possible union? Let me put that question to Chris Calabrese.

CHRIS CALABRESE: One thing that is very interesting, DHS came out, the inspector general of DHS, with a report this week that really faulted TSA for its training of screeners, saying was not giving TSA enough time to train people, it wasn’t letting them train at airports. That clearly contributes to this problem and it is something that unionization might fix. Certainly, a union rep would want to make sure all of its members got proper training before they did their job.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Chris, I’d like to ask you to broaden the whole issue of the government’s invasion of citizens and travelers. Your organization, through a foil request, was able to find out that 6,600 travelers have been subjected to electronic searches of their computers or electronic devices over a two-year period as they were traveling and in one case in particular, that of a French-American citizen who was traveling on Amtrak from Montreal to New York and was stopped at the border and his computer was confiscated. Your concerns about this increasing searching of the electronic equipment of American citizens without any search warrants?

CHRIS CALABRESE: The thing is we carry around our entire lives in our pockets now. What the founders would clearly have considered materials covered by the Fourth Amendment – out letters, records about our lives, our financial information, our pictures, if there had been pictures. These are detailed information about our life and I do not think anyone at the time of the Constitution would consider the government to be rummaging around in that information to be OK. But now, because of the way we live now, we carry around in our iPhones and our laptops and it has become almost impossible to travel without it as a business traveler, so the idea that the government can look at it for whatever it wants, and go through it for other investigative purposes, we think that is completely contrary to the Fourth Amendment.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris, you’re also looking at the issue of Facebook and Google. Talk about with the government is demanding they be allowed to have access to.

CHRIS CALABRESE: Right now, the privacy laws in the U.S. are incredibly outdated. The privacy law that governs the internet was actually passed in 1986, so it’s pre-’www’. So you can imagine it does not track terribly well to our existing problems today. So the government can get a lot more information with much less than a warrant standard simply under existing law. For example, email, which I think most people can think of as being protected by a warrant, which is very personal information. After a very limited period of time, 180 days, the government can get that information basically just with a subpoena. No court order, no warrant. We think the law needs to be updated so the government has an appropriate standard whenever it accesses this information.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the demands? Were you surprised about what exactly they’re asking of Google and Facebook? Can you explain for people who are not aware of this latest request, changing, actually, how the Internet works?

CHRIS CALABRESE: Well, what the government has been asking in its most recent request is really to build in a back door into communications. So the way that the Internet and communications are actually architected would have to be changed so if the Government presented some kind of warrant, or some kind of other order, and as we said they do not need a warrant in many cases—the company would have to be able to flip a switch and present the government with all of that information. I mean, not only does that make surveillance easier, it changes the way the Internet works. It is supposed to be a dispersed distributed system that’s secure because the communications between to the people cannot necessarily be broken. If you create a back door, it’s not just the government, it’s hackers and other individuals that can into the back door.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Ginger McCall, your concerns at EPIC about some of these continuing invasions by the government of our use of the Internet as well as our own personal electronic material, whether computers or cell phones?

GINGER MCCALL: Definitely. EPIC we have been following this. We have freedom of information requests regarding the Internet wiretapping proposal that Chris was just talking about. Certainly, if you have an Internet that is constantly monitored, you’ll have a really chilling effect on free speech and.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, David Greenfield is still with us, a councilman from Brooklyn who has sponsored legislation in NYC council to not allow theses scanners to be at LaGuardia and Kennedy, then you would have the patdowns. What is the most effective way to keep people safe at airports?

COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: What the Israelis actually do is behavioral profiling. They have a conversation with you. These are trained ex-military officials who after they have a conversation, can pick up things like facial tics and nervousness. That seems to be very effective. The problem we have with the TSA is that they engage in theatrics to try to convince us that were safe when in fact we are not safe. Now they’ve crossed the line to endure a virtual strip search. That is why we are introducing legislation to stop the practice.

AMY GOODMAN: That could of course lead to a whole other discussion about racial profiling which we can’t have right now. This is an important discussion to continue. What should be happening at the airports. David Greenfield, a councilman from New York City, Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union, is this a concern to you?

CHRIS CALABRESE: I am sorry, the racial profiling?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

CHRIS CALABRESE: I think that the problem with the Israeli model is in many ways that it does not scale to the U.S. that doesn’t mean that we should not do as the president said, after the Christmas bombing, more intelligence gathering ahead of time to make sure that we’re catching people before they get to the airport. But the bottom line is we’re in aviation security for the long haul. This is not a short-term thing. TSA needs to turn its attention to developing technologies that not just make a safer, but also protect our dignity and our privacy. I think a good example of that is the swabs that they rub on your hands at the airport that t can detect traces of explosives. That is really what we’re worried about here – someone sneaking a bomb on a plane. I think we should look for explosives. These are much less invasive technologies. They exist. They can be developed. They are much better than a virtual strip or a grope.

COUNCILMAN GREENFIELD: I would add that I do not think we are in favor of racial profiling. I think there’s a significant difference between racial and behavioral profiling. But I think it is also important that, as you mentioned, we should start screening what goes underneath the planes. We still do not have 100% screening of packages that go underneath the airplanes. If you are a terrorist, that is probably a much simpler thing to do that put the bomb on your body.

AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Councilman David Greenfield, of Brooklyn, Chris Calabrese of the ACLU, and Ginger McCall of EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center