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Rabbi Shea Hecht is chairman of the board of NCFJE (National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education). He is a Rabbi and activist in the Jewish community. As a life strategist, Shea's expertise centers on family crisis intervention- particularly as a marriage counselor and helping troubled youth and a drug abuse and cults counselor. He has spent many years fostering racial harmony and diversity and he is a liaison between the government/law enforcement and the people.
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By Rabbi Shea Hecht
June 15, 2005
You know the well-known fairy tale about a shepherd boy who cried wolf because he was bored while watching the sheep? What's the lesson behind the story and its not-so- happy ending? Someone who makes it a habit to lie is not believed. The consequence for those who 'cry wolf' is that even when there's a real 'wolf' they are not believed.
The latest political shepherd-crying-wolf story comes from the al-Qaeda camp. While searching an al-Qaeda cell in England, the British police found a handbook with instructions to operatives what to do if they get caught by the police. One of the instructions in the handbook is that every commander must train his recruits that no matter what the circumstances, when an operative is caught and stands before the judge he should say he was abused in prison.
This little tidbit sheds a new light on all the stories of al-Qaeda prisoner abuse in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan. The stories of alleged abuse of Muslim prisoners and their religious artifacts are many and varied. The most notable accusation of prison abuse, with the worst consequences, was that of the Koran being flushed down the toilet by guards at the Guantanamo base prison. That charge, which was told to a Newsweek reporter by a detainee who did not see the event, cost lives in Afghanistan, where a riot was sparked by the news report. According to Guy Taylor of The Washington Times, it was true, there was an attempt to flush a Koran down the toilet -- by a Muslim detainee.
The Newsweek story sparked an intensive investigation of abuse within the Muslim prison population being detained on charges of terrorism. And yes, they found 20 acts of abuse involving the Koran in the Guantanamo Bay prison -- of which 15 were perpetrated by the detainees themselves. According to Larry Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, some detainees are expert at riling up the whole prison population, by making allegations about abuse -- particularly of religious objects.
Fascinated and a tad concerned by all these allegations of abuse of religious objects --particularly the Koran -- I wondered how all these Korans are getting into the prison system altogether. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the American army gives them out. In fact, they issued more than 1,600 Korans in 13 different languages! Do you think a nation that respects religion and makes sure that their prisoners religious needs are met, can seriously be accused of such gross misconduct with religious articles?
The detainees have hurt themselves with their false accusations. Their accusations have caused the world spotlight to be focused on our treatment of detainees to find the minutest abuse -- real or imagined. This prompted Amnesty International to compare Guantanamo Bay to the Russian Gulag. No prison system -- including that of the U.S. itself -- is perfect, but these unwarranted and false accusations had nothing to do with the prison system; they were intended to manipulate world opinion against the U.S., which has the best record in history on humanitarian issues.
Ultimately, I don't think the terrorists were smart in instructing their operatives to cry wolf over prison abuses. After hearing this story, each and every one of us has to ask themselves a question: if the terrorists are lying about something as serious as prison abuse to achieve their aims, what else are they lying about?
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