http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/show_katava.asp?id=28892&mador=4&datee=9/27/98
Ha'aretz, September 27, 1998
Israeli Justice and Equality
By Gideon Levy
Here is a lesson in Israeli justice. Atta
Jabbar, a 53-year-old Palestinian whose home
was demolished for the second time two weeks
ago, was beaten by Israeli Defense Forces
(IDF) soldiers and has been jailed in the
military prison at Aduraiyim for 10 days.
Meanwhile, Avshalom Ladani, a Jewish settler
who killed a Palestinian youth and seriously
wounded a younger boy, is passing the time in
a youth hostel.
At the end of last week, Jabbar was still
finding it hard to stand up because of the
kicks and blows landed on him by the soldiers.
He is accused of "pilfering government
property," "rebuilding structures that were
razed," and "injuring a soldier." His real
crime is that he built his home on land for
which his father brandishes a deed from the
time of the Turks but which is now too close
to the bypass road, the security road and the
gasoline station of the Jewish settlers from
Givat Haharsina, all of which were built on
his father's vineyards. For this crime Jabbar
has already been punished twice by the razing
of his home. His other sin is that he tried
somehow to oppose the act of destruction, and,
as the charge sheet has it, cursed the
soldiers and even tried to throw his baby son
Rajjah at Border Policeman Sami Sirhan. To
throw his baby? At the court in Aduraiyim,
Jabbar told me that all he tried to do was to
pass four-month-old Rajjah over to the
policeman as a demonstration of protest: "Take
the child. I can't bring him up without a
home," he told the officer who came to
demolish his house. Today, Jabbar will be
brought before military judge Gena
Modogvarshvili, who will pass judgment on him.
For 10 days he has been rotting in the
military jail, suffering from the pain of the
blows. He has left behind him, on the wreckage
of his home, his wife and his three small
children. Why has he been under arrest for 10
days? He just is. Perhaps because he is a
danger to the public; a skinny porter from the
Hebron market, when I saw him last Wednesday
in the jailyard, he was able to walk only with
great difficulty from his cell to the
courtroom, in handcuffs and with his feet also
chained and his back bent from the beating.
Jewish settler Avshalom Ladani of Dolev, by
way of contrast, who shot the youth Ayyad
Karabseh and seriously wounded the boy Issa
Jibarin after his car was stoned on Sept. 17,
spent the holiday and the Sabbath in the Bayit
Vagan Youth Hostel in Jerusalem. Ladani was
arrested and quickly released after the Judea
and Samaria Council and its representatives in
the government raised a rumpus lest the
murderous settler have to spend the Jewish
holiday in jail. Anyone's best guess is that
nothing bad will happen to Ladani. His
neighbor, settler Yosef Levy of Dolev, was
acquitted this April after he shot at and
wounded the youth Ayyad Hamoudeh.
Many other settlers, who had a hand in killing
about 135 Palestinians in the territories over
the past 10 years, have never even been
arrested. For the 48 cases of murder that took
place from 1988 to 1992, for example, only 21
charge sheets were drawn up against those who
used the firearms. Only one settler has been
convicted of murder and one of manslaughter,
and even he was sentenced to only three years
in prison. Tens or maybe hundreds of settlers
who have vandalized cars, orchards, solar
heaters and houses have never been brought to
trial. But even this is not enough. According
to the leaders of the settlers, who feel that
they are cheated and oppressed, marksman
Ladani is a law-abiding citizen who fell
victim to the caprices of the Jerusalem
prosecutor's office. They launched an
aggressive and self-righteous public campaign
orchestrated by their extremists, Transport
Minister Shaul Yahalom (who also took the same
opportunity to make a crude attack on Dr.
Ahmed Tibi) and the secretary general of the
Judea and Samaria Council, Aharon Domb. They
lashed out at the prosecutor's office for
having dared to place the shooter under
arrest. In their pursuit of justice, needless
to say, the settlers could not care less about
the unnecessary and cruel detention of Atta
Jabbar. Maybe it even makes them happy.
It is not hard to understand the settlers'
outcry. As they see it, they are the masters
of the land in which they settled and where
they are allowed to do almost whatever they
like. Their trigger finger is frighteningly
itchy; every stone leads to a shooting
according to their perverted standards. What
traveler on the roads of the West Bank has
never been exposed to stone-throwing? But only
the settlers are so quick to shoot. Usually
they fire not to defend themselves, as their
leaders so piously claim. They shoot to punish
and avenge, they shoot to frighten and above
all they shoot to show who is the boss around
here. Self defense? Would the leaders of the
settlers justify such self-defense on the part
of their Palestinian victims, who are attacked
by them day in and day out? Are the
Palestinians, too, in the settler's conception
allowed to defend their lives and property in
a similar way? After all, the lives and
property of the Palestinians in the
territories are more exposed to danger than
those of the settlers. Is it necessary to
mention yet again that nearly 400 Palestinians
were killed over the past decade, 276 of them
children, and some of them for absolutely no
reason at all?
But the real problem is not the lawbreakers
and those who defend them. The real problem is
the law enforcement authorities. There is no
way to avoid saying that they bend the values
of law, justice and above all equality in the
face of the settlers' wrath when it is
directed at them. Therefore, the fact that
Avshalom Ladani is vacationing at a youth
hostel and Atta Jabbar is rotting in jail and
groaning in pain is, above all, a disgrace to
the Israeli law enforcement system that takes
such pride in its values.
(c) copyright 1998 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
