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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Commentary Home page  back Print  Send To friend Red Rag column: terrorist judges; lynching in Jerusalem By: Gideon Spiro 27 January 2015 Terrorist judges To: Zvi Zilbertal Judge of the Supreme Court Shaarei Mishpat St. Hakirya, Jerusalem Aharon Farkash Vice-President, District Court Salah al-Din St. Jerusalem 9711060 Today I learned of your ruling in the case of Sadeq Gheith, a resident of Silwan in Palestinian Jerusalem. The Minister of Defence signed an administrative detention order against Sadeq Gheith on the grounds of “acts of popular terror” [i.e. as opposed to organized terror – trans.]. He filed an appeal against the detention, first before you, Farkash, and after you approved the detention order he appealed to the Supreme Court, where you, Zilbertal, approved Farkash’s travesty. Sadeq could not defend himself before either of you because he does not know what he is accused of. Only you were shown the “secret” material in a revolting ex parte proceeding behind closed doors with representatives of the Israel Security Agency who tell all kinds of stories without being subjected to any cross-examination. The state prosecutor, Attorney Anar Hellman, who represented the security agencies and was an active partner in that flawed proceeding, claimed that the sources of information should not be disclosed, and you did not have the professional integrity to say: Mr. Prosecutor, if the accused cannot have an opportunity to prove his innocence or question the reliability of the information – no administrative detention. There is a vicious circle in the Israeli judicial reality that the accused cannot escape from. He is sent to detention without knowing why. Administrative detention is judicial villainy, a violation of all norms of democratic justice and law. You, along with the prosecutor Anar Hellman, are acting as obedient emissaries of the ISA. You speak a great deal in your rulings about the fact that administrative detention is done in accordance with the law, which gives the Defence Minister authority to sign the order. And most unfortunately the law does indeed permit this, but it also gives the authority not to approve it, which you chose not to exercise. I am writing this letter on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and I am reminded of the words of the late Professor Yeshayahu Liebowitz who pointed out that Eichmann too acted within the law. That was also the claim of the Nazi German judges who were tried at the Nuremberg Tribunal. It was not their fault, they said, that those were the laws according to which they had to judge. To which the Allied judges replied that their willingness to judge according to the criminal laws that Germany had legislated did not absolve them of their responsibility. They were partners in crime and in evil, and for that they had to face justice. They were an essential level in the constitutional hierarchy. And so are you. Former Justice Minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapira, who was no leftist, heaven forfend – he was a Mapainik in all his 365 sinews and 248 organs – described the emergency laws that permitted administrative detention as worse than the Nazi laws. It turns out that one need not be a Nazi judge to judge according to Nazi laws. A strictly Kosher Jew can also fulfill the role of judicial scoundrel. The harmony that has been created between the system of Occupation and apartheid and Israeli judges, not all of them but most of them, certainly including the judges of the Supreme Court, proves that the lessons of the Holocaust have not been learned. For that there is no need to march into Auschwitz with flags and drums, and no need for ceremonial flyovers by the Israeli air force over the death camp, which only desecrate the memory. The lessons that demand to be learned – justice, equality and freedom for all who are made in the Image – are engraved in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that was passed by the United Nations in 1948 as a lesson from the era of the Holocaust. But word has not yet reached you, apparently. Back to Sadeq Gheith. He is accused of “popular terror”, another linguistic invention of the Occupation. You are indeed afflicted with racist judgeship, but as far as I know your brains not defective. You know how to read and write, you read newspapers, hear the news on the radio and watch it on television, and I have no doubt that it is just as clear to you as it is to me that what is going on in Palestinian Jerusalem is a popular uprising against the terror of the Occupation, against exclusion from human and civil rights. Palestinian Jerusalem is under occupation and you are acting in the service of that occupation, while deceiving the citizenry that you represent justice. You wrap yourselves in prayer-shawls made of pigskin and sell them as a kosher product certified by the High Court of Justice. For such fraud people get put on trial. A public lynching A young man named Tommy Hasson was walking on a street in the capital, Jerusalem, speaking in Arabic with a friend, when suddenly they were accosted by 10 kippa-wearing youths who beat them bloody. A private “Hannibal procedure”. [1] And for what? Because he was speaking Arabic. The lynching took place not in a dark alley but on the edge of the city, next to the central bus station, in full view of everyone. It was observed by security people too, not one of whom went to the aid of the victim. After the Hannibals finished pouring their wrath on Tommy and left him battered and bleeding on the street, an ambulance was called, which took him to the hospital. How would fate have it? That Tommy is a young Druze Arab, a product of the divide-and- rule policy of the governments of Israel according to which the Druze are not Arabs and so they must serve in the military. He completed his military service only a month ago and is studying in a music academy. What a convergence of events that this man who had just finished serving in the army that is oppressing his people then himself fell victim to Israeli racists who do not distinguish between different kinds of Arabic-speakers, for in their eyes they are all Arabs who must be persecuted. Israeli policy has partly succeeded. Evidence of this is the many Druze who serve in the Prisons Service and the Border Police. But there are also a not inconsiderable number of Druze who refuse to enlist in the military and declare that their Druzeness does not negate their Arabness and so they refuse to join an army that is oppressing their people. As a refugee from Nazi Germany, who as a child experienced the Krystallnacht pogroms of November 1938 in Berlin and immigrated to British Palestine in March 1939, five minutes before the outbreak of the Second World War, I am of course particularly sensitive to all manifestations of racism and more than once I have noticed a similarity between the racists of Berlin and those of Jerusalem. The lynching of the Druze Arab or Druze Palestinian student reminds me of the picture that is displayed in Yad Vashem of German soldiers cutting off the ear-locks of a Jew on a crowded street, not concealing their enjoyment in humiliating him. What happened after the photo was taken we do not know. Maybe they beat him, maybe not. But both incidents were cases of public humiliation and abuse on racial grounds, the only sin of the victims was their being different in religion or language or colour and that they were not members of the majority group. I hope the music student Tommy Hasson, after he comes to terms with this traumatic event, will come to the conclusion that this is not the time to serve in the army of Occupation. If he is called for reserve duty, let him reply to the army: not now; when peace comes get back to me. Translator’s note 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent gm Links to the latest articles in this section Three weeks into the Gaza War - a somber and sober assessment, with some historical perspectives Israelis, Palestinians, Gaza, Hamas - trying to preserve sanity Gush Shalom: The UN decision is a very necessary message to Israel’s extreme right-wing government