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The blood of Iman al-Hamas By Amira Hass 9 Feb 2005
Analysis / Absolutely illegal By Amos Harel 23 Nov 2004
http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node.php?id=1438
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1126/p07s01-wome.htm
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/9927859.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
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editCase 3. Iman al-Hams
The I.D.F. Investigation: The Israeli army on Friday cleared an officer accused by comrades of repeatedly shooting a 13-year-old Palestinian girl to make sure she was dead, but upheld his suspension because of his poor relations with subordinates. An army investigation also found no wrongdoing by soldiers who fired at the girl as she approached a military observation post near the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 5. The investigation backed an earlier army account that soldiers opened fire because they suspected she was planting a bomb.... Announcing the results of a preliminary investigation, the army's southern commander, Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, said he found no "unethical" behavior by the commander or his soldiers in the shooting. (Source)[1]
The Reality: A tape recording of radio exchanges between soldiers involved in the incident, played on Israeli television, contradicts the army's account of the events and appears to show that the captain shot the girl in cold blood. The official account claimed that Iman was shot as she walked towards an army post with her schoolbag because soldiers feared she was carrying a bomb. But the tape recording of the radio conversation between soldiers at the scene reveals that, from the beginning, she was identified as a child and at no point was a bomb spoken about nor was she described as a threat. Iman was also at least 100 yards from any soldier. Instead, the tape shows that the soldiers swiftly identified her as a "girl of about 10" who was "scared to death". The tape also reveals that the soldiers said Iman was headed eastwards, away from the army post and back into the refugee camp, when she was shot. (Source)[2]
Rule 4: Don’t deliberately shoot unarmed civilians unless you are sure your unit will back your story. If you serve in a dysfunctional unit, your subordinates might see an opportunity to finally get rid of you by leaking to Israel’s Channel 2 the story of how you killed a child, along with the incriminating evidence that your own commanders didn’t consider [5][3] in clearing you [4] in their “preliminary investigation”. Once the story is broadcast on TV, it is beyond the ability of the J.A.G. to refuse an investigation. This would be the Iman al-Hams scenario [5], and variants of it are going to be more and more common in the coming months and years as individual soldiers of conscience do what their army has institutionally failed to do, and describe the extent to which war crimes have become a routine aspect of I.D.F. activity in the Palestinian Territories over the past four years.
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 14:24 09/02/2005
The blood of Iman al-Hamas
By Amira Hass
And the blood of Iman al-Hamas - on whose hands is her blood? With or without the confirmed killing, the soldiers in R.'s unit, with him or without him at the Girit outpost in Rafah, killed the 13-year-old schoolgirl who was walking on October 5 with her schoolbag in broad daylight.
She wasn't even infiltrating in the middle of the night, trying to find work in Israel. Someone in the IDF, after all, drafted the orders that allow soldiers to shoot Palestinians walking in an open field near an IDF outpost or a settlement built on that field. Someone, after all, gave the order that day to shoot the girl. Someone executed the order. With perjury or without it, the girl is not coming back to life. An army that takes pride in its night-vision equipment, in its precise sniping instruments, that same army's soldiers could not see it was a little girl?
Iman's name became famous because of the perjury of the soldiers. Her futile death was reported in the Israeli media, which very rarely reports on dead Palestinians. There is a long list of Palestinian civilians whose blood was spilled neither in battle nor because they endangered someone, and their blood has evaporated from our consciousness.
What about the blood of Rasmiye Arar, 37 when she died, a mother of seven? On May 12, 2003, she left her house in Qaraut Bani Zeid in the West Bank to join a relative, Ramez Arar, 17, who was standing in a yard on a hilltop watching IDF jeeps about two kilometers away. He was shot from a distance and fell. She hurried to his side and was shot, too. In other words, she was shot by soldiers. Five days later, soldiers shot 11-year-old Tamer Arar, killing him. The soldiers marched through the village. Tamer was in a field near his house. He was eating a sandwich. True, children
threw stones at the soldiers. But they were not near Tamer. And for that
matter, why is it so obvious that it is okay to kill children who throw stones? The children who threw the stones apparently ran away. A boy eating a sandwich remained in place.
A month earlier, two other members of the Arar family were killed by soldiers, in the school yard at the entrance to the village: an adult who hurried to help a wounded child (yes, children threw stones at an army jeep that parked right outside the school during recess), and a child who hurried to save the adult.
In its day, the IDF Spokesman excused all the killing of various sorts with the explanation that the "force was under attack," but admitted that Rasmiye was not involved in "attacking the force." The villagers said that a new unit was in their village, "trying to provoke." Months later, an IDF commander revealed to Haaretz that steps were taken against soldiers in that unit after it turned out they behaved improperly. Quietly, with no publicity and headlines.
Mahmoud Abbas was instructed yesterday at the summit not to ask whose hands were bloodied with the blood of the Arar family. Mohammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub are expected not to remember nor remind the Israeli commanders who gave the orders to shoot and blow up and shell and kill civilians, of all the orders that killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians civilians, in the last four years, in the first intifada, in Lebanon, in Qibiyeh. The Palestinian people are not allowed to ask their leaders why soldiers of the occupation who killed civilians, and their officers, are not arrested and put on trial.
That's the upside down method: occupy them, their land, their natural resources, take over their lives and judge them as criminals when they resist us - when they kill either civilians or soldiers. We admit we killed civilians, but the "war" apparently not only justifies our cruelty, it erases it. On the other hand, the war - in other words, the occupation, in other words, the war for the preservation of the loot from the 1967 war: the settlements - does not justify or even explain their cruelty in our eyes.
If the Palestinians had warplanes and tanks so their killing was sterile, they would prefer to use those. And then, even if they killed Jewish civilians, they would not be called murderers with blood on their hands but enemy soldiers. And when caught they would be considered prisoners of war. If the policy makers of the Olso Accords really were thinking about peace the way they are said to have been, they would have freed all those prisoners. But then, like now: those who speak about gestures and then only free Marwan Barghouti's son, even if it was at Abbas' request, continue to operate with the old diskette of the colonialist who throws candy to the natives.
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w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 01:48 23/11/2004
Analysis / Absolutely illegal
By Amos Harel
There have been dozens of cases during the past four years in which IDF
soldiers killed unarmed Palestinian civilians. The circumstances are different
from case to case, and in many cases the army provided detailed
explanations for the shootings, even if in retrospect the judgment was
wrong. Only rarely is the curtain completely lifted on what really took place
so that someone who was not there can understand what happened. The
leak last night to Channel Two's Fact program, of the tape from the
communications radios at the Girit outpost on the Philadelphi corridor
provides such an opportunity.
The legal proceedings have only begun, but based on what the tape
showed and the indictment against the Givati company commander R.
claims, it is possible to cautiously draw a few interim conclusions.
Most of the debate about the incident was over whether the killing of the
little girl was "verified," and the debate was based on the conflicting
versions of the events as provided by R. and his troops. Last night the tape
left no room for doubt - R. himself is heard saying, "I also verified her
killing."
But that is far from the key question in the case. At least from the moral
aspect, the main question is why the company commander and his soldiers
fired at the girl who was 100 meters away from the outpost, was not
armed, was not a danger to the soldiers inside the protected outpost, and
when at least some of the soldiers knew that it was a little girl. A soldiers is
explicitly heard saying "it's a little girl," and that she is "scared to death."
Nonetheless, the shooting went on. Moreover, R. himself reports later that
he shot "the girl."
No less important is the tone of the voices on the tape. Officers trying to
explain what happened constantly said that the areas is dangerous, and that
the soldiers were under threat. But that does not come across in the voices
of the soldiers. They don't sound worried or pressured, but almost
apathetic. They seem to be shooting because those are the orders - to
shoot at anyone who comes close, even if some know it's only a girl, and
there is no sense of fear. It seems, at least, that the order to shoot is
blatantly illegal, and therefore the soldiers should have refused it. The
question becomes, therefore, why only the company commander is being
prosecuted, and only for illegal use of his weapon and not for manslaughter
at the very least.
The Girit affair was one of the reasons for the tension between Chief of
Staff Moshe Ya'alon and the deposed regional commander, Brig. Gen.
Shmuel Zakai, who completely accepted the company commander's
version of events, persuading Ya'alon to do as well - and then Ya'alon was
embarrassed when the Military Police probe discovered a completely
different reality.
Now it turns out the original corps level inquiry into the event did not even
listen to the communications recordings, which were easily available. If
they had, the entire fiasco of the original backing for the company
commander could have been avoided. The affair raises questions about the
way the IDF investigated other cases of Palestinians being killed.
One prevalent view in the media is that it is impossible to judge the
behavior of the soldiers in these cases given the dangerous conditions
under which they operate. But that is a dubious argument at best since it
has gradually turned into the legitimization of worsening incidents over the
years. It's convenient for the IDF to call R. a "rotten apple," but in effect,
Iman al Hamas, the little girl killed at Girit, is not alone. There have been
dozens of innocents killed in Gaza, under circumstances not much different
from those in which she was killed.
During the first two years of the intifada, the rules of engagement allowed
shooting at civilians simply because they were in the wrong place at the
wrong time, like near a settlement fence, or at night. Since then, the army
has tried to crack down, and has toughened the rules of engagement. But
there are plenty of hair-raising stories about what happened to civilians
during offenses like Operation Rainbow and Operation Days of Penitence.
The first intifada saw Givati trials one and two, which opened the
pandora's box for the Israeli public about what soldiers were doing in their
name in the territories. If R. insists on going through with his defense and
does not work out a plea bargain with the military prosecution, it is entirely
possible that this case will yet open the pandora's box to the public about
what the army did in its name during the intifada.
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