MIDEAST:
Israel Gags News on Extra-Judicial Killings
By Mel Frykberg
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50903
RAMALLAH, Apr 2, 2010 (IPS) - An Israeli journalist remains under house
arrest and another lives abroad, after they broke news on Israeli undercover
units carrying out assassinations or "targeted killings" of non-combatant
Palestinian political opponents.
Anat Kam, 23, who used to work for the Israeli news site ‘Walla’, was arrested
last December for allegedly copying secret Israeli Defence Force (IDF) documents
during her compulsory military service.
These documents outlined how Israeli assassination squads would plan the killing
of Palestinian political leaders and fighters months beforehand and then pass
their deaths off as "mishaps" during "failed" attempts to arrest them.
Uri Blau, a reporter from the daily ‘Haaretz’, then wrote a piece on the copied
documents and is refusing to return to Israel from Britain fearing that Israel’s
domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, will arrest him if he does.
Due to a military gag order the news has remained suppressed even as Israeli
journalists fight the suppression order in court.
The news was broken several days ago by Donald McIntyre from Britain’s
‘Independent’.
The controversy has highlighted Israel’s extra-judicial killings which violate
international law and have caused death and injury to thousands of Palestinian
civilian bystanders despite the country having no death penalty.
Israel’s judiciary has approved "targeted killings" but only of militants who
were allegedly involved in carrying out or planning armed attacks against
Israeli soldiers or civilians both within the Palestinian occupied territories
and in Israel proper.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza says that during the
period September 2000 to March 2008, 500 Palestinians suspected of being
involved in military resistance to the Israeli occupation were executed.
However, the "collateral damage" during the assassinations included another 228
civilian bystanders - 77 of them children. Eleven Palestinians have been
assassinated in the last two years.
"Israel is using disproportionate force. Civilians are paying the price. In the
overwhelming majority of cases the targeted individuals could have been arrested
and brought to trial without being killed. Many of them have been killed in cold
blood," Jaber Wishah from PCHR told IPS.
"International law’s right to life says that state authorities are obliged to
follow due process when they are in a position to arrest individuals," says
Michael Kerney from the Ramallah-based rights organisation Al Haq which
researched and documented many of the killings.
"Everybody is entitled to a fair trial and no state can dismiss this," Kerney
told IPS.
Some of those targeted have included individuals who were "pardoned" by the
Israelis after having agreed to give up armed resistance to the occupation.
Last December three pardoned members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a
military offshoot of the Palestinian Authority (PA)-affiliated Fatah movement,
were shot dead in Nablus in the northern West Bank following the death of an
Israeli settler.
According to their families and the subsequent investigations of human rights
organisations they had already surrendered and were unarmed despite Israeli
claims that they had refused to surrender.
"By failing to produce any evidence linking the targeted individuals to attacks
allegedly committed by members of the Palestinian resistance, as well as failing
to utilise peaceful means in order to arrest and detain suspects, the soldiers
assumed the role of both judge and executioner," reported Al Haq.
Furthermore, unarmed Palestinians, who have not been involved either politically
or militarily in resisting the occupation, also continue to die in what some
have called deliberate premeditated murder.
Several weeks ago four Palestinian teenagers were shot dead amidst dubious
circumstances in two separate incidents in the villages of Awarta and Iraq Burin
near Nablus.
According to medical reports they were shot at close range with live ammunition
after clashes between Palestinian youngsters and Israeli soldiers had broken
out.
However, the individuals concerned had not been involved in the clashes
according to several investigations carried out by Al Haq, PCHR and Israeli
rights group B’tselem.
One was shot in the back and another had a bullet lodged in the back of his
skull despite Israeli soldiers saying they had only used non-lethal ammunition.
The Israeli military police declared they would investigate the incidents
following contradictory testimony given by the soldiers involved.
However, when IPS visited one of the sites a week later with family members,
approximately 20 spent cartridge cases, bloodied gloves, a saline solution kit
and other bits of evidence lay on the ground undisturbed.
None of this is new. Israel has a history of assassinating political opponents
predating its official establishment.
In 1944, the Israeli terrorist group, the Stern gang, assassinated Britain’s
Lord Moyne, the military governor of Egypt, accusing him of interfering with
Jewish migration to Palestine.
In 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte - a Swedish diplomat who had secured the release
of 15,000 inmates from Nazi concentration camps while he was vice-president of
the Swedish Red Cross – was also murdered by the Stern gang.
Stern gang members believed Bernadotte, as the U.N.’s Palestine mediator, to be
too sympathetic to the Arabs. Yitzhak Shamir, later to become an Israeli prime
minister, was one of the Stern gang’s leaders.
"Since the outbreak of the second Intifada, Israel has increasingly avoided
accountability for the serious violations of the human rights of residents of
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for which it is responsible," says B’tselem.
"This avoidance is seen, in part, in its policy not to open criminal
investigations in cases of killing or wounding of Palestinians who were not
taking part in the hostilities, except in exceptional cases, and in its
enactment of legislation denying, almost completely, the right of Palestinians
who were harmed as a result of illegal acts by Israeli security forces to sue
for compensation for the damages they suffered."