Last month, I discovered the Shabak was secretly holding a foreign citizen on suspicion of serious security offences. I tweeted this on November 26th (see tweet below). But I could not obtain further information except that his name was “Adam L.”
This morning, an Israeli security journalist confirmed the story in an e mail to me and within an hour the Shabak “coincidentally” released a full account of the arrest and charges against him. Haaretz’s Hebrew language story here.
As you read MSM accounts of this story and see this fact omitted, you may wonder why.
The suspect is Adam Livix, age 30, a resident of Texas and wanted there on drug charges. He appears to have jumped bail. As a a fugitive on the run, he might’ve fled to the West Bank to avoid capture. Bergman told me that Livix is a Christian fundamentalist and “probably not very stable.”
According to the Shabak release, he first traveled to the West Bank, where he lived in Hebron. During Pres. Obama’s trip to Israel last year, Palestinians allegedly approached him in hopes of organizing an assassination attempt. He purportedly refused, then moved to Israel and started amassing stolen IDF weapons in order to blow up Muslim holy places. I find this part of the story to be the most lacking in credibility. I simply don’t believe Palestinians would attempt to assassinate the U.S. president. It’s possible that Livix approached settlers or Palestinians with this goal in mind. But not for Palestinians to have initiated such a plot. I would challenge the Shabak to produce any evidence justifying this claim.
Livix was secretly arrested last month and has been held incommunicado since then. The Shin Bet statement claims that the FBI has been apprised of the arrest. I asked the agency for comment and they released this:
“We are aware of the recent arrest of an American citizen in Israel and are currently working with the Israeli authorities to assist in their investigation. The FBI continues to work closely with our counterparts in Israel to identify, apprehend, and hold accountable those who threaten the public with violence.”
This would presume that the domestic intelligence agency endorsed the Israeli secret police’s abusive treatment of Livix. It also goes a long way to presuming Livix’s guilt since it presumes he “threatened the public with violence.” My impression was that this needed to be proven in a court of law and couldn’t be presumed. But given today’s release of the CIA terror report and the revelations of U.S. torture of suspected Al Qaeda militants, it appears we’re fine with Shabak’s torture techniques as well, even if used on U.S. citizens. In fact, the CIA has exploited Israeli use of torture as a justifying precedent for its own brutality.
Generally, the Israelis arrest Jewish and Palestinians security suspects in secret. They gag the media from reporting the story. They hold victims without charge and without legal representation for periods of time determined solely by the secret police in collaboration with a malleable judicial system. They use abusive interrogation techniques, even ones specifically excluded by Supreme Court rulings. This is what Adam Livix has endured. He has, in this case, the benefit of not being Palestinian and holding U.S. citizenship, so they probably went somewhat easy on him. That is, comparatively easy, since U.S. officialdom has apparently washed its hands of him.
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