Soccer Dad

In Violation of International Law

Earlier this week a court found that one of the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict acted in violation of standards of international law. Of course, I'm talking about Judge Ronald R. Lagueux's affirmation of Magistrate Judge David Martin's ruling that the PLO and PA were responsible for the murder of Yaron Ungar. (His wife, Efrat, was not an American citizen so their families could not sue for damages to her. Similarly, individual claims against Yasser Arafat and other leading lights of the PLO/PA were dismissed "due to lack of personal jurisdiction." The PLO/PA was determined to be responsible and denied "sovereign immunity" because it was not legally a state.) But if the Hamas Tzurif gang killed Yaron Ungar how could the PA be responsible? The plaintiffs claimed:

We have a tape of Mr. Jabali indicating that he provides Hamas terrorists support. He puts them into his own security forces. We have Mr. Dahlan. Mr. Dahlan met with Mr. Deif who is the Hamas leader right around the time of the Ungar murder. And we have information that he was given a green light to specifically conduct terrorist activities in June of 1996. We’ve asked to depose Mr. Rajoub. His men, men under his control, were the ones who gave the fake PA police documents to the actual murder[er]s of the Ungars. They’re the ones who supervised the Tzurif gang, the actual gang that was involved in killing the Ungars. We’ve asked to depose Tawiq Tarrari. He gave money. It’s been proven and documented that he gave money and weapons for specific terrorist attacks during this period of time. Mr. Al-Hindi has been accused and has documents of his same activities. Mr. Boughati is a mastermind of a series of activities during this entire period of time. Mr. Arafat, he is not just a person who happens to be a Palestinian Authority, but he himself has a direct hand in various forms of terrorism, and more specifically his signature itself was on a piece of paper indicating approval for the killing of Americans after the fact. He rewarded Palestinian terrorists in the form of compensation, financial compensation, for killing Americans.

While I doubt that this would necessarily stand up in a criminal case, the case of Ungar vs. the Palestinian Authority is a civil case brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991 that allows Americans to sue terrorist organizations for damages.
I find it interesting that when a family wanted to establish the PA's complicity in Hamas terror it was able to do so, but that journalists have any interest in doing so.
I find it interesting that when a family wanted to establish the PA's complicity in Hamas terror it was able to do so, but that journalists have any interest in doing so.
I also find it interesting that so few news outlets carried the news. A google news search on "Yaron Ungar" yielded only 4 initial results. The New York Times ran only an AP story and the Washington Post ignored it totally.
The PLO's representative who was contacted about the case had this gem:

Hassan Abu Libdeh, secretary of the Palestinian Cabinet, told The Associated Press he believed the ruling was a political trick, raising the possibility the judiciary will be used as a political tool to fight the Palestinian Authority and PLO.

"If this ruling were applied to the U.S. administration itself, I think all the U.S. resources would not be enough to compensate the families of victims of U.S. policies all over the world," he said.

Of course the PA/PLO wasn't sued due to its policies but to its specific actions. But this sort of vituperative rhetoric is typical and it reveals that the PA/PLO is not our friend.
The AP story explained what happened in this paragraph:

The Ungars were killed in a drive-by shooting near the Israeli village of Beit Shemesh as they were returning home from a wedding. One of their two children was with them but escaped unharmed.

Beit Shemesh, a village? Please. It's a city. At least they didn't call it a "settlement."
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at July 14, 2004 05:50 AM | TrackBack