Soccer Dad

Selective legalisms

Scott Wilson impressed last week when he reported that a member of the family of the children killed last week in an Israeli (defensive) airstrike actually blamed Islamic Jihad for their deaths. This week he's back to his regular tricks in Israeli Court orders rerouting of barrier

The Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit has been planning to build a new neighborhood on some of the Bilin land that is on the Israeli side of the barrier. But the three-justice panel ruled that the 24-foot-high wall that splits Bilin, which is set among olive groves northwest of Jerusalem, should follow a course that takes less of its land.

"We were not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bilin's lands," Chief Justice Dorit Beinish wrote in the unanimous decision.

The opinion, one of only a handful that have gone against Israel's military in more than 100 cases challenging the barrier, noted that "this will require destroying the existing fence in certain places and building a new one." It gives Israel's government a "reasonable period of time" to comply..

It's remarkable that, for the most part, the military has taken enough care to avoid the interference of the Israel's meddlesome courts. My guess is that the court was probably ruling less on the facts of the case than on the publicity it garnered.

Wilson isn't good on describing the risks inherent in Israel abiding by the decision - something he devoted a single sentence to - but he is scrupulous in describing the damage that the barrier does.

The village of roughly 1,700 residents, most of whom rely on their farmland to make a living, has been the scene of regular Friday demonstrations. The protests draw Israelis, Palestinians and international opponents of the barrier and often end in tear gas-shrouded clashes with Israeli police and soldiers.

And, of course, he manages to get quotes from an opponent of the barrier.

"The fact the justices even agreed to hear this case is attributable to the struggle," said Jonathan Pollak, an organizer with the group Anarchists Against the Wall. "It's a great political victory for the popular movement. When people unite, they have power over Israeli institutions, whether it's the army or the courts."

But Pollak said the proposed alternative routes for the wall near Bilin all remain within the West Bank rather than along the boundary with Israel that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.

Finally he tells us.

A 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice at The Hague declared the barrier illegal because it did not follow that prewar boundary, a decision Israeli officials said ignored the Jewish state's security concerns.

Later he describes the latest rocket attack on Sderot. But he, of course, reports this by focusing on possible Israeli responses to the attacks.

Meanwhile, Israeli political leaders proposed increasingly harsh measures Tuesday to stop steady rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. On Monday, seven rockets landed in the Israeli town of Sderot on the second day of the school year. Although no one was injured, one rocket landed close to a day-care center, terrifying more than a dozen children and their parents.

"Increasingly harsh?" Israel has a city where the whole population is being terrorized and Wilson is concerned only with the effect responses might have on the terrorizers! (Israel may have no good options to respond effectively, its hands being tied by the planned "peace conference." h/t Daled Amos)

Wilson then reports

The group that asserted responsibility, the Islamic Jihad, declared that the attack was a reprisal for the death last week of three Palestinian cousins, ages 10 to 12 , in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. The children were playing tag near an Islamic Jihad rocket launcher when an Israeli airstrike killed them. The Israeli military later characterized the attack as a mistake.

"Mistake?" Actually the only statement that the IDF made that I could find does state that if the army could have identified the figures near the rocket launchers as children it wouldn't have fired. However it is very clear in assigning blame. Though the IDF doesn't say it, according to the Geneva Conventions, international law would find the party that placed a weapon in a civilian area guilty of the deaths of the civilians.

Israel regrets terrorist exploitation of children

"The terror organizations are making cynical use of children, they are sending them to areas where the launchers are located, they are sending them to collect weapons and are consciously endangering them in places where there are IDF targets."

"More than once we preferred not to carry out this type of attack so as not to harm civilians. Nothing is certain here, if Palestinian civilians are identified, we hold fire, but this is not always possible," the source said. "In many cases, upon investigating the incidents, we find that civilians were killed because the terror organizations sent them to the battle zone, because the terrorists were staying among civilians or carrying out a certain activity that endangered the civilians."

But think about the IDF's response. What does it mean? That if the IDF could have ascertained that Palestinian civilians would have been harmed in its counter-attack it would have allowed Israeli citizens to remain at risk. It's mind-boggling.

But it still place the legal burden on the terrorists. Funny, but Wilson who is so careful to mention every legal reason Israel should endanger itself can't find it in himself to show that the IDF's claim is legally correct. Rather he simply writes that the IDF claims that striking the children was a "mistake."

In another blow to Israel's credibility Wilson throws in some gratuitous modifiers. He refers to "highly inaccurate rockets." In other words, the threat that Israel was responding to, wasn't that great.

Finally who gets the last word in the article? Why that expert in international law, Ahmed Yousef,

"We are just reacting to Israeli violence," said Ahmed Yousef, a senior adviser to deposed prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. "This is just self-defense."

Right. And what did Deborah Howell write two months ago?

Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt said, "We frequently run op-eds from people with whom we disagree, sometimes vehemently. Sometimes we even run op-eds that express views we find repugnant. I think it can be useful for readers to get a sense of how people in the news think -- or how people in the news want to be perceived. I think our readers are smart enough to evaluate a Hamas piece in that light." My view is that we need to know what a group labeled as terrorist is thinking.

You see it was important to give Yousef an unchallenged op-ed because otherwise we wouldn't know what Hamas was thinking. Well then why does he get an unchallenged sound bite in a news story?

israel, hamas, terrorism.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 6, 2007 6:31 AM | TrackBack