In a controversial decision, Israel’s High Court has ruled that Israeli policemen will not face trial in the shooting of a 10-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl Abir Aramin in 2007 because it feels too much time has passed. An earlier court found that there was “no debate” that Abir was shoot by border guards. Yet, her family will not receive a trial — or a hope for justice in the case.
Abir Aramin was killed after being shot in the head during a school break when she was buying snacks with her sister and two friends in the West Bank town of Anata. Witnesses gave statements that the identified guards fired from a passing jeep. While police insisted that she probably died from a thrown rock from other Palestinians, an autopsy showed that she was killed by the police with a rubber bullet to the head.
The court noted that the investigation of the police into the case was shoddy and negligent. It concluded that a trial would be too difficult given the passage of time. Just to remind you. This was 2007. We have tried murders from the 1950s decades later without difficulty. This is just five years ago. Indeed, it is not uncommon to have murder trials in this country that do not come to trial for years due to appeals and other delays.
I find the decision difficult to fathom given the earlier ruling that the culpability of police in the case was clear. One would think there was sufficient evidence for a trial — and defense lawyers could argue issues of evidence sufficiency.
Source: Independent
While Israel is still hunting down Nazi’s they continue their genocide of the Palestinian people. Shame on Israel. I used to support Israel but I don’t like their government.
Absolutely horrible. We have cops who murder without criminal charges in the United States. One example is the shooting of wood whittler John T. Williams by Seattle police officer Ian Birk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1VKo6-m27c .
Over the years, I’ve checked the innocent noncombatant(mostly women and children) kill rates of Palestinians against Israelis, and Israelis against Palestinians. The Israelis curiously lead by about 3 to 1. Even more curiously I noticed during one extended period of at least a year that Israelis monthly kills reflected almost exactly 3 times the Palestinian kills of 3 months prior, suggesting a premeditated disproportionate retribution.
Arab speaking Chris Hedges, while mideast bureau chief of the WSJ, wrote A Gaza Diary for Harpers, a firsthand account of IDF soldiers goading Palestinian children into range, and then shooting them “for sport”. Hedges then went to the hospital and witnessed their deaths and permanent injuries. He reiterated his account in an NPR interview
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/fa/20011030.fa.01.ram (20 min into program)
In addition to many others, here are two videos that highlight apparently institutionalized assault on innocents:
google “Israeli soldiers lined up, shot and killed 3 little Palestinian girls” – the BBC stumbled across an account of 3 little girls lined up and shot. The grandmother and one surviving little girl were interviewed recovering in the hospital, immediately after being shot, and the father was interviewed after the camera crew stumbled across him in the area of the shooting.
upper cadre involved, no retribution, suggests institutionalized plan:
“Israeli ‘shooting video’ causes outrage – 20 July 2008″[google] shows IDF in the presence of a Lieutenant Colonel casually holding up a prisoner and shooting him in the leg at close range[rubber bullet but it penetrates and acts similarly to regular bullet at close range]. What is common in the many IDF outrage videos is the outlandish immediate excuses and lack of inquiry the responding Israeli authorities have.
American Rachel Corrie gave a summary of the situation also on youtube, before she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer.
On a side note, there are several “Palestinian children taught to hate” videos circulating. These distort the situation, as independent psychologists claim that Palestinian children are collectively suffering from PTSD and other stress related personality disorders. The Palestinian responses to Israeli stress put upon them(stress being a mild synonym for a range from ‘denial of employment’ to ‘murder’) can be counted on to provide a builtin longterm pretext – future generations of hostile and severely psychologically damaged/alienated Palestinians. In case any of you are in the business of recruiting suicide bombers, one report by psychologists identified that Pal youth have an overwhelming lack of desire to live, combined with PTSD, depression, and low self esteem.
It’s clear that Israel understandably wants, and one might suspect sees a need for, clear separation and alienation from its surrounding culture. ‘Bad behavior’ is not unusual in “superior”(usually genetically, relatively) cliquish cultures. The problem is that Israel is doing this with American support, helping to bankrupt the USA, among other detriments. I am a former first gulf war tank commander, and am very concerned about the USA being taken down a self destructive path with the Zionist “sicarii” right. Ironically, my father was a key designer of the Israeli Arrow program, and received a medal from Israel for that; not a self hating Jew, just a Jesuit scientist in a US govt ordered technology exchange. Maybe posting this on a law blog can have a practical effect.
If the American people would read more books written by Israelis they would realize the truth is Israel is engaged in genocide against the Palestinean people, and that includes children. This is not the first child to be murdered by Israelis. One Israeli report writes of the military killing a teenage girl through her bedroom window when she was doing her home work (The Punishment of Gaza) Why are we giving Israel Billions of American Dollars, in the form of foreign aid, to kill innocent children? I thought we had a deficit problem.
They imprison 12 years old too!
Published in http://www.Haaretz.com newspaper 02:35 18.07.11
by Anshil Pepper
Rights group highlights overwhelming conviction rate for Palestinian children throwing rocks
B’Tselem says nearly 100% of Palestinian children charged with rock-throwing are convicted, because of overwhelming pressure to plea bargain.
By Anshel Pfeffer Tags: B’Tselem Palestinians IDF
Only one Palestinian minor of 853 charged with rock-throwing between 2005-2010 was acquitted, according to a new report by the human rights group B’Tselem.
B’Tselem based its report, which is being released Monday, on data it obtained from the Israel Defense Forces spokesman about minors who were arrested during those six years and charged solely with rock-throwing; it does not relate to those charged with other crimes.
The nearly 100-percent conviction rate stems from, among other things, the willingness of the detainees to plead guilty as part of a plea agreement, the report says. The pressure to plead guilty is great, because generally minors charged with throwing rocks are held in custody until the end of legal proceedings; a regular trial could keep them detained for longer than the sentence they receive after pleading guilty, which is usually no more than a few months.
Of the 853 arrested, 18 were aged 12-13 and 255 were 14-15.
Sixty percent of the 12-13 year-olds received prison terms ranging from a few days to up to two months.
Fifteen percent of all the minors served terms of more than six months and 1 percent served longer than a year.
Because of the frequency of these incidents, B’Tselem was not able to get an exact tally of how many had actually occurred in the West Bank during those years. The Judea and Samaria police reported 2,100 to 3,000 incidents annually during those years, while the IDF Spokesman reported 3,600 to 4,300 incidents each year.
Nor could B’Tselem ascertain how many minors had been detained by the security forces for stone-throwing but were let go without being charged.
Because military law does not afford minors the same rights that they have under Israeli law, in many of the cases B’Tselem investigated, the minors were arrested at night, were not allowed to be accompanied by a parent or other adult when arrested, and were brought before a judge only eight days after being taken into custody.
“In terms of numbers, the [B’Tselem] report is not accurate, because during this period, I personally acquitted a number of minors,” said one judge in the army reserves, who dealt with many cases of stone-throwing minors.
“But there’s no doubt that it reflects a very problematic situation. Nearly all minors are convicted of stone-throwing because they have no choice but to sign a plea agreement, for which the punishment is usually between one to three months, and if they go to evidence they’ll sit longer. The High Court has ruled that anyone throwing stones at a person or vehicle can be remanded until the end of legal proceedings.
“Of course, it’s terrible that they arrest them in the middle of the night and question them without lawyers,” the judge said. “Sometimes this provides an impetus to release them. But there should be a legal mechanism under which a minor who throws stones for the first time and doesn’t hurt anyone can be released, and for the responsibility of probation to be imposed on the father, who will have to keep an eye on him.”
The IDF Spokesman, in a detailed response to B’Tselem, wrote: “Although legal systems that are established under military law do not include special arrangements for judging minors, over the past year a youth court has been established that improves the defense of minors’ rights.
“The Military Youth Court protects minors’ rights, allows the minors to be heard without adults present, gives more freedom of expression to the minors and allows for a broader discussion of parental responsibility as a substitute for punishment.”
The IDF Spokesman added that although it had asked B’Tselem to deal with the issue of judging minors in a fair and complete fashion, and had given B’Tselem information about 160 cases in which minors who were used by terror groups to carry out serious terror attacks, “the group chose not to deal with the issue of judging minors in a balanced manner and did not deal with the use of minors by terror groups in a fashion that violates human rights and contravenes international law.”
Such ‘peccadilloes’ depict the true nature of this “Jewish – Democracy” mongrel.
“Typical self-hating American leftist Jew. Why do American Jews hate Jews?
They walked right into the ovens of the Holocaust and are doing it again now”
Jana,
Are you referring to me? If you are than you are a complete fool and if Jewish a bad Jew to boot. I’ve lived in this world for almost 67 years and each day of those years I’ve been absolutely proud and grateful to be born a Jew. I’ve raised two daughters in a strong Jewish tradition and one of them, if you are Jewish, would make your “frum” look like “traif”. Many cousins in my extended family are Orthodox and both sets of my grandparents were Orthodox and “frum” to their dying days. My paternal Grandfather and two uncles lived their lives in Borough Park as daily attendees at their “Steibls.” In the 70’s i was NYC’s DSS liaison to the Lubavitcher Community and worked diagonally across the street from 770 Eastern Parkway. I’m hardly a self abnegating Jew.
Now why do I call you a bad Jew? I am a devotee of Rabbi Hillel who said:
“That which is unpleasant to you, do not to your neighbor. That is the whole law and the rest but it’s exposition.”
In your phony right wing fervor to attack me you forgot that and as such showed you have little idea of the essence of Judaism, no matter how many Yeshiva’s you’ve attended, or how Kosher your home.
Finally now when it comes to Israel, I have fervently supported its’ existence from the time I was old enough to understand anything about it and I am older than the current nation. Where I disagree with Israel is in the election of a dolt like Netanyahu and his Likudnik supporters. Being deeply involved in my Jewishness I can understand why this schmuck was elected, by a people weary of lifetimes of constant warfare.
Likud, led at first by that ex-terrorist, really screwed Israel’s chances of peace up by its settling the West Bank. Even Meir Kahane, the son of my Paternal Grandparent’s Rabbi, with all his vitriol understood the basic situation. Israel cannot viably exist in a state of apartheid. Kahane’s solution was to expel the Arabs. That wouldn’t have worked. The only sane way to peace is to give up the West Bank and allow it to become a separate State. Likud resists this and builds even more settlements thus assuring permanent warfare. Do I think that Israel has a right to the West Bank? Actually I do by right of conquest. However, maintaining it and having peace finally is in-congruent.
Now let us also examine what is implicit in your attack upon me. That would be that it is okay to have shot this child. That type of thinking goes against Torah and all that good Jews should stand for. We are a people who have suffered much brutality unfairly. We must not let ourselves become like those who have oppressed us. However, I know that not all Jews adhere to the basic lessons of our faith, they let their rage control their hearts and become just like those that have oppressed us. I’m sorry for you if that is what you have become. As Jews, the same as Hebrew National, we should answer to a higher authority for our actions in the world.
Les,
I’m guessing that Janna suffers from a fundamental inability to separate the crimes of the government from the people it governs.