The Israeli military indicted just 6 percent of all soldiers accused of criminal offenses against Palestinians between September 2001 and the end of last year, an Israeli human rights group said yesterday.
The Yesh Din group said that from the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising, more than 1,200 investigations into suspect activities by Israeli soldiers were conducted, but only 78 of the investigations resulted in charges being filed. Yesh Din said its the report was based on information provided by the Israeli military.
The military said the group failed to provide a copy of the report for study and it could not immediately comment on specific allegations but added that it had enlarged its military prosecution staff and “works tirelessly” to maintain ethical standards.
In the 78 indictments, 135 soldiers were charged with crimes, and 113 of those soldiers convicted, the report said. Many of the cases, including an incident where a soldier shot a Palestinian with rubber bullets at close range and was publicly criticized by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, resulted in minor convictions, such as “inappropriate behavior,” the group said.
Only four soldiers at the time of the report’s publication had been convicted of manslaughter.
“To me, it means that the Israeli military is not doing enough to protect Palestinian civilians from criminal actions by its own soldiers,” said Lior Yavne, research director for Yesh Din who helped compile the study on military investigations into crimes against Palestinians.
The military said each case is dealt with according to its own particular circumstances and the evidence available.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have assassinated Palestinians in the West Bank in apparent defiance of High Court rules for these kinds of operations, the Haaretz daily reported yesterday.
Such killings, authorized in writing by top-ranking army officers, were conducted even if the operation put the lives of innocent bystanders at risk or when it could have been possible to arrest the suspects instead, the paper said.
”If the guy doesn’t put his hands up we don’t ask questions, we immediately establish contact,” former regional commander General Yair Naveh told Haaretz.
The newspaper said the documents were apparently in violation of a 2006 High Court ruling, which held assassinations are permissible only if the target cannot be arrested.
In other developments, Israel closed its cargo crossings with Gaza on Tuesday because of Palestinian rocket fire at Israel.
Also on Tuesday, the Supreme Court also ordered the government to respond within 15 days to an appeal by the Tel Aviv-based Foreign Press Association against a ban on foreign reporters entering the Gaza Strip.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
RSS