If you are an Israeli citizen living in the West bank towns of Samaria and Judea and you beat up a Palestinian, even kill him or her, there’s a 90 percent chance you will get away with it.
The latest Data Sheet from Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, confirms what many have long suspected to be the case — that the system of law enforcement in Israel treats Palestinians in much the same way as black South Africans were treated by that country’s police force when the apartheid regime was in place.
Yesh Din has tracked police 205 investigation files opened in recent years. 81 of these files relate to attacks on Palestinians by Israeli civilians and this includes two cases of shooting that led to death, and nine cases of serious injury. The remainder deal with incidents where Palestinians were assaulted with sticks, knives, rifle butts, as well as attacks on their houses and vehicles.
Then there are 79 cases of criminal trespass which involve cutting down, uprooting and setting fire to Palestinian crops and stealing olives during the harvest season. The remainder of the cases involve theft and vandalising agricultural equipment.
Yesh Din reports that of these 205 investigations “police processing and prosecutorial review have concluded in 163 files. Out of those 163, only in 13 (8%) of the cases were indictments filed against defendants. One case file was lost and never investigated, and 149 (91%) investigation files were closed without filing any indictments against suspects.”
And what reasons are given for the closure of a staggering 91 percent of files — 91 were closed on grounds of “perpetrator unknown” (61%) and 43 cases were closed on grounds of “lack of evidence” (28%).
The methods used in investigations by the Israeli Police in the Samaria and Judea districts are designed to ensure failure. Yesh Din observes that:
…victims complaints and testimonies were recorded in Hebrew rather than Arabic, the language in which they were given; the police investigators rarely visited the crime scenes, and in the cases when they did arrive on site, defects were noted in documenting the events; in many cases testimony was not collected from key witnesses, including suspects and both Palestinian and Israeli eyewitnesses of the incident; live identification line-ups of Israeli civilian suspects were hardly ever carried out.
The Yesh Din findings are not an aberration. The group reports that when in 2006 it first examined the record of the Israeli Police in the Samaria and Judea districts it found that the rate of closure of files without any further action being taken was 90 percent. In other words, there has been no improvement in the two year interregnum.
One of the loudest claims of the pro-Israel lobby is that it is, as Kevin Rudd wrote on December 10 2004, “a vibrant, democratic state in a region where democracy remains far from the norm.”
But in genuine democracies law enforcement authorities do not discriminate on the basis of race. And Mr Rudd there can be no excuses for a nation that calls itself a democracy allowing so many serious criminal investigations to go into the “who cares, they are only Palestinians” basket.
Israeli governments of the past 60 years, by their oppressive, ruthless and selfish treatment of the Palestinians, have done more to dishonour the memory of the Jews who died in the Holocaust than any of the hostile Middle Eastern countries. However, we must not forget the debt owed to Israelis, like Yesh Din, who stand up courageously for human rights and true democracy .
Of course, Rudd would say that; by his own admission, he is `passionate` about Israe. However, it`s not just because he is `afraid` of the Zionist lobby, it`s de rigeur if if you are a servile ally of the US, the way successive Australian Governments have been.
With respect, Steve, all that John James says is not “quite correct”. His references to “Arab cut-throats” are nothing more than crude racist slurs. The rest of his comments, as you point out, are simply an attempt to divert attention from the point of the article. John kindly adds the obligatory paranoid rant about the so-called “Left”. Israel might well say “With friends like John, who needs enemies?”
I think Israel does remarkably well in maintaining the open society that it does given the band of Arab cut-throats with whom it has to deal. Here you begin to see the Left in all its glory when it aligns itself, as it always does, with the cut-throats. Israel has a mult-party democracy, an open and free press, an independent judiciary, freedom of religious expression and of course groups like Yesh Din operate with impunity. Can you imagine a similar group operating under the auspices of Hezbollah or Hamas? Israel returned the Sinai to its vanquished foe , Egypt, and has attempted to assist Lebanon deal with Syrian terror as Muslim and Christian opponents of Syria are murdered. But for Hamas, a palestinian state would be much closer to fruition.
To call Israel a “democracy” is farcical as a number of respected commentators have noted for years. Quite apart from its appalling treatment of ther Palestinians Isreal is consistently defying UN resolutions; it has defied a ruling of the World Court; it continues to build a wall (rarely shown on tv for what it is); it continues to confiscate Palestinian land for its “settlers”, it continues to bomb and otherwise attack its neighbours; and it continues to be the major source of agitation for policies that enable its expansion of territory and influence for a ‘greater Isreal” as set out in documents over the years.
In truth it is no more a democracy than Zimbabwe but it continues to get a free ride from the Australian Press and politicians like Rudd who are more afraid of the local Israel lobby than they are concerned for the legitimate rights of one of the most appalling oppressed groups anywhere in the world.
Who cares? I do and it enrages me that the Australian government cares so little.