Dr. Hatem Kanaaneh, a retired doctor in the Galilee who blogs brilliantly here, covered this week the closing session in the year-long trial of the suit for wrongful death brought by the parents of Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death while trying to stop an Israeli military D-9 bulldozer from razing Palestinian houses in Gaza in 2003.
Kanaaneh wrote that the trial’s final session heard the testimony of Colonel Pinhas Zuaretz, “better known by his nickname, Pinky, [who] was the commanding officer of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade at the time”.
Here is an extended excerpt of Kanaaneh’s report:
Col. Zuaretz’s “body language and his automatic assumption of priority in communicating with the judge [Judge Gershon], whose ruddy complexion suggested another longish repose on some tropical seaside, did little to reassure me. But [Corrie family lawyer] Husain Abu-Husain proceeded right away to tangle with the man and to try to cut him down to size … Would he commit to the principle of protecting human life? To this last one Colonel Pinky acquiesced begrudgingly after stressing his first allegiance to protecting the life of his soldiers. And was he still convinced of his conclusion after his rushed investigation of the case of the late Rachel Corrie only hours after his soldiers’ D-9R Caterpillars had crushed her to death that their conduct was flawless? To this he responded in the positive stating that Rachel had died through her own carelessness and willful interference on the side of the terrorists who had sent her to disrupt the soldiers’ orderly carrying out of their duty of leveling an area … In Colonel Pinky’s logic there seemed to be no place for doubt: things were either white or black. What he repeatedly asserted was that the whole area was a war zone and anyone present in it was as good as dead, “ben mavit — mortal” by definition. Rachel was on the side of the enemy and her death should have been a forgone conclusion. How could someone miss such simple logic? Pinky shook his head repeatedly in exasperation at the unbelievable stupidity of his doubters. And his soldiers were performing their duties in a war zone. That included the killing of enemy combatants or of their supporters and messengers, he seemed to imply. And yet his soldiers acted in a humane manner. They tried to give first aid to the accidentally injured woman. Pinky emphasized this ‘humane gesture’ that his soldiers extended to another victim whom they had shot dead as well … Indeed this was beyond the call of duty …”
Kanaaneh’s account continued” “Twice, in his attempt to shield the witness from the aggression of his unjust doubters, the judge made pronouncements so damning of the IDF that I expected Pinky to get up and slug him in the mouth: When Abu-Husain brought up the case of a soldier under Pinky’s command who had killed another international activist, lied about the circumstances of the murder and his story was taken as the honest truth by Pinky, the judge did not allow that into the record because he thought it was irrelevant to Rachel’s case. Besides, the judge rationalized, soldiers lie just as others do including in his court. Then there was the issue of drug abuse in the unit the members of which were involved in Rachel’s demise. Again the judge threw that out explaining that drug abuse was widespread in all units of the IDF. I expected Pinky to maul him so hard that he would need to go back to R&R at some far off rehab facility. But the commander swallowed the insult quietly. After all, from the start he gave signs of a common understanding between him, the defense, and the judge, not the result of some collusion, God forbid, but of each doing his duty in repulsing the onslaught of so many goyim on ‘the most ethical army in the world’. But especially Pinky had an expression of disgust at being badgered by a team of Palestinian lawyers … How terribly insulting it must have felt to the colonel. Thanks God the judge interfered and promptly halted the assault on the defenseless soldier even before the defense lawyers objected. He angrily explained the inappropriateness of such a gesture before He Himself had a chance to issue His ruling. In rural Galilee the older folks tell a story about a wild Bedouin’s first encounter with the law. He was dragged into town and kept overnight in a cell repeatedly threatened by his jailers with having to face the judge. After the affair was over he was heard explaining gleefully: ‘I was scared stiff by the prospect of tangling with the judge. But the judge turned out to be a man’. After all, our judge turns out to be an Israeli man. I bet you my last Aloha shirt the Corries will not get the one dollar they are suing for”.
This post can be read in full here.
Also this week, Haaretz published a book review — probably written originally in Hebrew, and not perfectly translated into English, which makes it difficult reading — entitled “A critical look at Israeli militarism”, by Israeli attorney Michael Sfard, who is described in Haaretz as “an expert in international laws of war and international human rights law”, and who has litigated extensively against military abuses in the occupied Palestinian territory.
In his article, Sfard reviews a Hebrew-language book, (Who Governs the Military? Between Control of the Military and Control of Militarism), authored by Yagil Levy.
Sfard writes: “Levy’s central hypothesis is that army-politics relations in Israel derive from a balance between the scale of civil supervision over the army – that is, over the army as an organization, over its administration, including who controls it and who has the power to send it into action; and the scale of civil supervision of militarism, meaning the mechanisms of legitimizing the use of force in international relations. Levy’s cogent argument is that in recent years, while civil supervision of the army has intensified, supervision of militarism has grown more lax, and that this is how the balance in the army-politics parallelogram of forces is being preserved. The freedom that was appropriated from the generals as a direct result of greater supervision over the army is returned to them in the form of the militarization of Israeli society, the heightened legitimization of the use of force as a means to solve the country’s problems and, consequently, a more central role for the generals in policy making … Levy’s book necessitates conceptual stocktaking by all critics of the use of military force in Israel. His study shows that closer supervision of the army is liable to create the illusion of a restrained military, but blind us to the fact we, as civilians, have been seized by the brutality that should have been restrained, and a tendency to resort to lethal force as a cure for every ailment. Thus, the whole nation is the army, even if not everyone serves in the army”.
Michael Sfard’s review is published on the Haaretz website here.