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Extrajudicial Assassinations As Official Israeli Policy
By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 3 of 5 page(s)
"My crime was to protest Israeli assassinations"
On January 5, 2007, the London Guardian headlined that comment in reporting on Jewish activist Tali Fahima's first interview following her release from Israeli incarceration. Sitting with her arms handcuffed to a chair's legs 16 hours a day, her captors said they wanted to teach her to be a "good Jew." She was imprisoned for 30 months for traveling to the West Bank, "meeting an enemy agent and translating a simple army document."
She explained and said her crimes were for refusing to work with Shin Bet (Israel's secret service), going to see the Palestinians, then protesting the Israeli assassinations policy. She was kept in isolation for nine months. Finally, at the urging of her lawyer, she struck a plea bargain for a shorter sentence, and ended up being "unbowed" by her experience. She learned how Sin Bet "terroriz(es)" people, both Palestinians and Jews. "About the nature of the government, how they do not want us to see what is going on in our name."
On August 8, 2004, she was arrested and placed under administrative detention in September. In December, she was charged with "assistance to the enemy at time of war." It was trumped up and false. In January 2005, the Tel Aviv district court ruled that she should be placed under house arrest during her trial. Jerusalem's high court overruled it on the grounds that she "identifie(d) with an ideological goal." In December 2005, she pled guilty under her plea bargain to meeting and aiding an enemy agent and entering Palestinian territory. In January 2006, she was released.
She felt compelled to make regular Jenin visits. Talk to hundreds of people, including Palestinian resisters, and for the first time heard their point of view and how hard things are under occupation. For showing compassion and disagreeing with Israeli policies, she was imprisoned for nearly 30 months on false charges. Not even Jews are safe from harsh state retribution against anyone showing defiance or daring to resist injustice.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Documentation of Israeli Targeted Assassinations
The (1995 established) Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) functions independently in Gaza and enjoys "Consultative Status" with the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It's also an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists-Geneva, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in Paris, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network in Copenhagen, the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Cairo, and the International Legal Assistance Corsortium (ILAC) in Stockholm.
Palestinian lawyers and human rights activists established it to:
-- "protect human rights and promote the rule of law;"
-- create, develop and promote a democratic culture in Palestinian society; and
-- work for Palestinian self-determination and independence "in accordance with international law and UN resolutions."
PCHR issues documents, fact sheets, and reports like its quarterly accounts of Israeli extrajudicial executions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Its latest one is from April through June, and a more comprehensive one covered August 2006 through its latest June 2008 data.
PCHR states: It's "investigated and documented these (killings) in depth (and) concluded that the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) have consistently acted with utter disregard for the lives of (mostly innocent) Palestinian civilians in the OPT, and that IOF have continued to carry out state sanctioned extra-judicial executions, (in violation of) international human rights law....in the overwhelming majority of cases....suspects could have been arrested, but no efforts were made....and they were instead extra-judicially executed" - according to official state policy.
The Human Toll
Since the second Intifada's September 2000 inception through June 30, 2008, and excluding all other Palestinian killings, the IOF carried out 755 OPT executions. Victims included 521 extrajudicially targeted and 233 bystanders, including 71 children and 20 women. In Gaza, 405 were killed. Another 350 in the West Bank. The methods used included:
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