Killing the helpless

نيسان ـ

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URI AVNERY

arabnews

By now every Israeli has seen the TV clip several times — showing a 14-year-old Arab girl being shot dead near the central market of Jewish Jerusalem.

The story is well known: Two sisters, 14 and 16 years old, decided to attack Israelis. The clip, taken by a security camera, shows one of them, clad in traditional Arab garb, jumping around on the sidewalk, brandishing a pair of scissors. The whole thing looks almost like a dance. She is jumping around aimlessly, waving the scissors, threatening no one in particular. Then a soldier aims a pistol at her and shoots her. He runs to the girl and kills her while she is lying helplessly on the ground. The other girl is grievously wounded.

The soldier was lauded for his bravery by the defense minister, a former army chief, and by his present successor. Throughout the political establishment, not a single voice was raised against the killing. Even the opposition was silent.

This week one person raised his voice. Avigdor Feldman, a lawyer, informed the Attorney General that he was going to apply to the Supreme Court, asking it to open a criminal investigation against the soldier. He wants the court to order the authorities to investigate all cases in which soldiers and civilians have shot and killed “terrorists” after they had already become unable to act. In today’s Israel, this is an act of incredible courage. Feldman is no crackpot. He is a well-known lawyer, prominent especially in the field of civil rights.

Now Feldman has done what nobody else has dared to do: Taking the army by the horns and challenging the high command. In Israel, that is close to lèse majesté.

Since the beginning of October, Israel has been experiencing a wave of violence that has not yet acquired an official name. Newspapers call it a “wave of terrorism,” some speak of “the Intifada of the individuals.”

Its outstanding characteristic is that it lacks any organization. Some Arab teenager takes a knife from his mother’s kitchen, looks for a uniformed person in the street and stabs him. If no soldier or policeman is available, he stabs a settler. If he sees no settler around, he stabs any Israel he can find.

If he drives a car, he just looks for a group of soldiers or civilians waiting by the road and runs them over. Many others just throw stones at a passing Israeli car, hoping to cause a fatal accident.

Against such acts, the army (in the occupied territories) and the police (in Israel proper or in annexed East Jerusalem) is almost helpless.

What pushed them? The official Israeli stock answer is: Sedition. Mahmud Abbas incites them. Hamas incites them. The Arab media incite them. Almost all these “incitements” are routine reactions to Israeli actions. And anyway, a young Arab does not need “incitement.” He sees what’s going on around him. He sees terrifying nightly arrests, Israeli troops invading towns and villages. He does not need the lure of the virgins awaiting the martyr in paradise.

Since there is no immediate remedy, politicians and other “experts” fall back on “deterrence.” Foremost method: Summary execution.

This was first discovered in April 1974, when an Israeli bus was hijacked by four inexperienced Arab youngsters. It was stopped near Ashkelon and stormed. Two of the four were killed in the shooting, but two were captured alive. Three photographers took their pictures alive, but later the army announced that they were also killed in the fighting. This was a blatant lie, protected by army censorship. As the editor of Haolam Hazeh magazine, I threatened to go to the Supreme Court. I was allowed to publish the photos, and a giant storm erupted. The chief of the Security Service (Shin Bet or Shabak) and his assistants were indicted, but pardoned without a trial.

In the course of the scandal, a secret directive came to light: The then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, had issued an oral directive saying that “no terrorist should remain alive after committing a terrorist act.”

Something like that must be in force now. Soldiers, policemen and armed civilians believe that this is an order: Terrorists must be killed on the spot.

Officially, of course, soldiers and others are allowed to kill only when their own lives or the lives of others are in direct and immediate danger. According to the laws of war, as well as Israeli law, it is a crime to kill enemies when they are wounded, handcuffed or otherwise unable to endanger lives.

Yet almost all Arab perpetrators — including the wounded and the captured — are shot on the spot. How is this to be explained? An argument often used is that a soldier has no time to think. He has to act quickly. A battlefield is no courtroom. A soldier often acts instinctively. Yes and no. Very often indeed there is no time to think. He who shoots first stays alive. A soldier has the right — indeed, the duty — to defend his life. When in doubt, he should act. No one needs to tell me that. I have been there.

But there are situations when there is no doubt at all. If a handcuffed prisoner is shot, it is clearly a crime. To shoot a wounded enemy, lying helplessly on the ground, like the girl with the scissors, is disgusting.

The soldiers shoot and kill because they think that their superiors want them to. Probably they have been told to do so. The logic behind this is “deterrence” — if the perpetrator knows that he is going to be killed for sure, he may think twice before doing it. There is absolutely no evidence for this. On the contrary, the knowledge that he or she, the perpetrators, are probably going to be shot on the spot, just pushes them on. Becoming a martyr, will make their family and the entire neighborhood proud. Ah, say the deterrers, but if we also destroy the house of the perpetrator’s family, they will think twice. Their family will beg them to abstain. Sounds logical? Not at all. There is absolutely no evidence for this, either.

Summary executions and collective punishments are, of course, diametrically opposed to the international Laws of Warfare. Many Israelis despise these laws and ignore them. They believe that such naive laws should not hinder our army in the defense of our country and us. This argument is based on ignorance.

Such acts are not just immoral and ugly. They are also counterproductive. Atrocities create hatred, which creates more martyrs.