International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, May 12, 2004

Canada’s national broadcaster CBC has responded to the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner scandal by suggesting that the Israelis were behind alleged US army abuse, according to media watchdog Honest Reporting.

In a May 4 lead story on the national news correspondent Neil Macdonald suggests that together with the Iraqi occupation, "George Bush's unprecedented alliance with the right wing government of Israel has placed Americans overseas in danger."

To back up the suggestion Macdonald enlists retired US diplomat, Eugene Bird, who claims that the Israeli Mossad may have been behind the tortures.

"We know that the Israeli intelligence was operating in Baghdad after the war was over," Bird says. "The question should be: Were there any foreign interrogators among those that were recommending very, very bad treatment for the prisoners?"

According to Honest Reporting Eugene Bird serves as the president of the Council for the National Interest, an anti-Israel lobby group whose mission statement is "to restore a political environment in America in which voters and their elected officials are free from the undue influence and pressure of a foreign country, namely Israel."

Furthermore, according to the HR analysis, the only basis for Bird’s suggestion is an urban myth, perpetuated by the pan-Arab al-Jazeera satellite channel.

In a similar report to Macdonald’s al-Jazeera.net quoted the belief of a Palestinian Authority official suggesting that the Americans "copied" alleged Israeli interrogation techniques. "I can't prove it in an objective manner, but the striking similarities are overwhelming," said PA Minister for Prisoner Affairs, Hisham Abd al-Razzaq.

When interviewed by the Qatar-based network Ofer Yisler, spokesman for the Israeli Prison Authority, vehemently denied any "similarity between our treatment of the Palestinians and what we have seen in Iraq."

But according to the report, Israeli-Arab Knesset member Talab al-Sanai asserted that Israel is indirectly but heavily involved in "the systematic mistreatment of Iraqi people at the hands of the American occupation troops," citing the reported presence of US Marines shadowing their IDF counterparts in a number of high profile West Bank raids on the eve of the 2003 Iraq campaign.

"It took Israel 37 years to develop and perfect these barbaric methods of repression and humiliation. Surprisingly, the Americans surpassed and outmatched the Israelis in their savagery in less than two years," al-Sanai told al-Jazeera.

In Washington Tuesday, the US Army general in charge of the Abu Ghraib abuse allegations told a Senate committee hearing that "a failure of leadership" was to blame for the scandal, which has prompted outrage across America.

There was no evidence the soldiers involved were acting under orders, he testified.

In contrast to the CBC suggestion that the Israelis trained the Americans in abusive interrogation techniques, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said that the problems in Abu Ghraib stemmed from a complete absence of any such experienced oversight, blaming "lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision."