Israel's High Court legitimatizes murder of Palestinians
galway |
rights, freedoms and repression |
other press 
Thursday December 14, 2006 19:59
by TJD - Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign
"there is no doubt there is a predisposition here"
A month after the Israeli human rights group Yesh Gvul, filed a petition against what the organization said was the failure to rule on a petition filed five years earlier, today, the justices involved, obscenely ruled that the Israel Defense Forces policy of targeted killings of militants does not categorically violate international law, and the legality of each targeted killing must be evaluated on an individual basis.
A year ago, one of the attorneys involved in last month's petition, Avigdor Feldman, told the Israeli Haaretz newspaper in an interview that "there is no doubt there is a predisposition here. From the start, the case was handled at snail's pace, from one preliminary hearing to the next, and a great deal of time passes between each session. The pace stems from the unwillingness of the court to decide in this matter. The Supreme Court has very few ways of avoiding cases, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, which can decide not to deliberate a certain case, and therefore the only possible tactic is to create procedural twists, so changes may take place with a changing political environment."
Aping the yanks perverted legalese in justifying Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition, the judges ruled that "terrorist operatives are not legally defined as combatants and therefore must be considered civilians and that civilians involved in terror activities are not afforded the same protections granted to innocent civilians under international law (Haaretz).
