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(IMEU) – 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.
Anat Kam: 'Disappeared' Israeli journalist (Ido Kenan)
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 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.
The news was broken several days ago by Donald McIntyre from Britain’s ‘Independent’.
(Tikun Olam) – Though Kam denies this, Israeli sources maintain she has been fingered by the Shin Bet as the source of a highly damaging 2008 Haaretz report that noted that a number of Palestinian militants who, the IDF claimed in separate media reports, were killed during firefights were actually assassinated in cold blood. This of course wouldn’t be news since it has happened many times before.
What was news was that in 2006 the Supreme Court laid down specific and limited procedures under which targeted assassinations may be pursued.
Haaretz revealed that the IDF was ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling and essentially killing militants in cold-blood and covering up the fact. It approved killings even if civilians were also likely to be killed. It approved killing suspects who were not “ticking-bombs,” another contravention of the Supreme Court. In fact, as recently as 2009 the IDF killed Palestinians under suspicious circumstances which Palestinians have labelled murder in cold blood, leading one to believe that targeted assassinations continue.
… Then, at dawn on Saturday, Israeli forces were sent to the Nablus homes of three Palestinian men who Israel later accused of being responsible for the killing. All three Palestinian men — members of the Fatah movement led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — were killed on the spot.
Palestinian Fatah member Qaddura Fares told Al-Jazeera TV in Nablus a few hours later that if Israel had evidence against these three men, they should have been arrested and tried, but not killed.
(Reuters) – Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said yesterday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Israel to topple his rivals Hamas in the Gaza War last year. An aide to Mr Abbas, leader of the Fatah party, denied the allegation. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: “Mahmoud Abbas is no longer fit to represent our people, who conspired against his people during a war.”
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Freedom fighters, rebels and resistance movement should be called terrorists and illegal combatants to qualify for approved extra-judicial assassinations by the Israeli High Court of Justice (Alan Dershowitz). See below HCJ ruling in 2006, definitely no killing permissable where an arrest is possible.
Second, according to the state, given that members of the Palestinian organizations are “combatants,” albeit illegal, international humanitarian law does not require the state to arrest them, where arrest is possible, rather than kill them. When Israel prefers to capture the “illegal combatants” instead of killing them, the state argued, it does so “though not required by law.” The High Court rejected this argument and held that the principle of proportionality requires Israel to always use the means that infringe human rights to a lesser degree. “Arrest, interrogation, and trial are not means which can always be used,” the court noted, “but this possibility should always be considered,” primarily where the army maintains effective control (Section 40).
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It is unimaginable that the highest court in any country could condone the killing of participants in resistance against an illegal military occupation, which is permitted by international law.
The Israeli High Court has in essence accepted Israel’s propagandized position as a victim of its own military occupation, and the colonialism it supports.