Yesterday was surely one of the black days in the annals of Israeli jurisprudence. It was the day that an Israeli chief justice acquiesced in her government’s strangulation of a civilian population for the sole purpose of collectively punishing them because some in their midst attempt to do harm to Israel:
The High Court of Justice yesterday ruled that Israel’s reduction of power and fuel to the Gaza Strip is legal as the remaining supplies still meet the humanitarian needs of the population.
A three-justice panel, headed by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, rejected the petitions submitted by the human rights organizations Gisha and Adalah.
The Gaza Strip is controled by a murderous terror organization, which works tirelessly to harm Israel and its citizens, and breaks every possible rule of international justice in its violent actions against men, women and children,” Justice Beinisch wrote.
Beinisch wrote that in war, civilians were the first to suffer.
However in the actions against Israel, civilians were the intended target. The High Court of Justice said Israel was not required to transfer unlimited supplies of goods and fuel, but only to fulfill its obligations by international law.
They said that this is the case, because Israel has not had effective control of the Gaza Strip since the disengagement.
The human rights groups Gisha and Adalah called the ruling a “dangerous legal precedent.”
“In war civilians are the first to suffer.” This statement is somehow meant to excuse the suffering inflicted by the Gaza siege. Then Beinisch claims that the Qassam attacks are deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians which somehow justifies Israel inflicting suffering which deliberately targets Gaza civilians. Remember Martin Luther King’s remarkable phrase: “If we live by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth then we all end up blind and toothless.” This is the logic of this decision.
Of course the argument that Israel has no obligation to provide sufficient fuel and electricity for Gaza because it no longer controls Gaza is utterly bankrupt. Israel, in fact, controls Gaza in effect through a practically air tight siege. Nothing goes in or comes out unless the IDF approves. This constitutes “effective control” whether Beinisch acknowledges it or not.
I would go farther than Gisha and Adala in their condemnation. I would say that this decision amounts to monstrous and tortured legal casuistry. It reminds me a bit of Roger Taney’s decision in the Dred Scott case in which he found that a slave was property and not entitled to any legal protections under the Constitution.
In this decision, as in Bush v. Gore, the judiciary had an end result in mind and merely twisted the facts in order to arrive at a predetermined outcome. I hope this decision will live in infamy and the name of Beinisch will always be associated with it. Let it be a moral stain she must always live down for the rest of her days.
This was reader S’s succinct characterization of the decision (S is a lawyer):
This is how the Israeli Supreme Court renders decisions concerning Palestinians: human rights organizations petition the Court relying on extensive, verifiable evidence including affidavits of experts and people that are directly harmed by the decision. During oral hearing, the IDF representative or the State Attorney stand up and simply deny that any harm is caused. They offer no evidence. Why should they? It’s the State of Israel’s word.
Then, the judges throw out the petition. This is how it operates, for more than forty years.
Kangaroo justice.
Richard,
In all fairness to the Israeli judicial system, if you’re a Jew – you will find a fairly liberal, civil rights-oriented legal system. However, a Palestinian or a human rights group petitioning on behalf of Palestinians will find a judicial system that is 99% of the time subservient to the Israeli government or Shin Bet. My conclusion is not based solely on the cases that I and other civil rights lawyers litigated in the Israeli Supreme Court but on a comprehensive reserach conducted by Hebrew University Professor David Kretzmer and presented persuasively in his book The Occupation of Justice(State University of New York Press, 2002). In one of his concluding remarks he notes (p. 196):
“Given this perception of the political context, Israeli judges will not be neutral in judging the conflicting claims of the government and Palestinians subject to military rule. In the struggle between government policies and Palestinian arguments of rights based on justice, international legal standards, or lofty legal principles, the Court has shown a marked preference for “state arguments.” The dominant narrative holds that the state is being attacked, the authorities are trying to protect it, and the ultimate duty of the Court is to assist them in this task.”
You are an anti zionist who is not interested in Tikun Olam and wants Israel replaced with a Binational State!
s is an Anti Zionist who also wants a Binatonal State! He is a shame who was fro an Orthodox Backround and wasin Hesder Yeshiva what a piece of work. Israel has the right to defend itself against the Kassmas. Yet you and Mr s do not feel that Isrtael has the right to exist hence doe3s not have the moral right to defend itself
AP, Middle East, by american goy:
“A Hamas convened court in Gaza to answer a charge that the Kassam rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas are meant to harm civilians and that it is a war crime.
The 3 person Hamas court released a statement, stating that ‘The Kassam rockets at fired at Israel, which is controlled by a murderous terror organization, which works tirelessly to harm Gaza and its citizens, and breaks every possible rule of international justice in its violent actions against men, women and children,’ Justice Akmullah wrote.
‘In war civilians are the first to suffer.’ added Justice Hekmatyar.”
In light of americangoy’s comment, how sadly apt does Dr King’s statement that you, Richard, quoted: “If we live by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth then we all end up blind and toothless.” The truly disgusting tragedy of it all is that had Israel and its all-adoring patron, the US, accepted the simple fact that Hamas overwhelmingly won a clean democratic election and not denigrated and then ignored such a result, whatever inflammatory rhetoric Hamas issued at the time (the three no’s, etc.), and instead had demonstrated intelligence and a degree of courage, then, I suspect, the unquantifiable suffering that has ensued could very likely have been largely avoided. One would like to think that maybe over the millennia humankind has learned something, but then wisdom does not seem to interfere with an ideology and its resultant outrages that I fear serve an ultimate goal of the powerful in Israel to achieve for eternity God’s insistence that there be a Greater Israel. I simply cannot imagine how any halfway ethical person would wish to be part of an unjust, rogue society, whatever its name and place. Certainly our own society here in these United States, with its military expenditure exceeding that of all other nations combined, screams for reform before its self-assigned 21st Century Manifest Destiny,, its thirst for hegemony, goes much farther in harming a good part of the world even as it denies and shrinks its own unique promises.
“I simply cannot imagine how any halfway ethical person would wish to be part of an unjust, rogue society, whatever its name and place.”
amen!
Your first & last comment here. Needless to say it is full of lies fr. start to finish. Amazing how little people like this are willing to actually read or understand what they’re attacking.