Former AG: Settlements worse than Darfur

[Israeli]

Michael Ben-Yair, attorney general between 1993-1996 posts on Facebook: 'Settlements are the most evil and immoral act since World War II'

Tova Zimuki

Former Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair severely criticized Israel's conduct in the West Bank in a debate on his Facebook page over the last few days, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

His statement was prompted by the release of a report by the human rights organization Yesh Din.

(snip) ...

During his term he sought to place settlers under the jurisdiction of military courts in order to set them on the same level as Palestinians.

After the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron in 1994, in which a Jewish gunman shot and killed 29 Palestinians, Ben-Yair urged Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to evict the Jewish settlement in the city.

(more @ )

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4370755,00.html

[Jefferson23]

1. From the report, for those who may be link challenged:

According to a report by the group, released following the beginning of the olive-picking season, the 162 complaints filed by Palestinians over the past seven years – mostly against settlers – have so far yielded only one indictment.

The complaints detail acts of damaging trees, uprooting them, cutting them down and stilling the produce, Yesh Din said.

The majority of complaints entail damage done to olive groves across the West Bank, but some detail damage to fruit orchards as well.

According to the report, 124 of the cases were dismissed on grounds of "felon unknown"; 16 cases were dismissed over insufficient evidence; two cases were dismissed over "lack of criminal liability" and the reason for the dismissal of five other cases were not released.

The police told Yesh Din that files concerning two of the complaints were lost.


The Judea and Samaria District Police said in response that, "The report compiled by Yesh Din has yet to be received by the police. It will be reviewed and we will respond to it accordingly."


Yesh Din's report further criticizes the police for also failing to enforce the law and deal with what the group defines as "Ideological offences by Israeli citizens against Palestinians in the West Bank."


According to the group, less than 9% of all active cases resulted in any kind of legal action.

"The police's failure to enforce the law encourages such acts of vandalism, since the perpetrators are not punished."


K&R

[oberliner]

2. The Death Toll in Darfur

On Sunday, the Times ran an op-ed piece suggesting that the Save Darfur Coalition was exaggerating the scale of genocide in Darfur and that the number of deaths was perhaps 200,000 rather than 400,000. I happened to be hiking with my kids around Mt. Hood then, but I came back to find my email account burning up with indignant emails about the essay (written, I hasten to add, by an outsider).

In my articles, I tend to use “several hundred thousand” as the death toll, because any particular number suggests a level of certainty that we will never obtain. Is it possible that the toll is 200,000? Absolutely. Is it possible that it’s more than 400,000? Absolutely.

One factor makes me wonder if the toll is sometimes inflated, and that’s the record of past atrocities. I covered Tiananmen, and other “witnesses” talked about tens of thousands of dead, when it was probably in the hundreds. Ditto for the fall of Romania’s communist regime in 1989, particularly in Timisoara. In Kosovo, there were estimates of 100,000 dead; the actual toll turned out to be less than 1,000.

On the other hand, Darfur (including eastern Chad and northern CAR) is in some ways more similar to Congo, where you have an already vulnerable population stressed by war – and where people die not so much of bullets as from hunger and malaria caused by their displacement. In Congo, a good mortality survey suggests that 4 million people died from the conflict over ten years – and that would suggest that Darfur is higher than we believe.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/the-death-toll-in-darfur/

[Jefferson23]

3. I don't think he is attempting a contest..though some may find refuge in that presumption.n/t

[Israeli]

4. move on from Darfur oberliner...

One of Ben-Yair's Facebook friends, journalist Yaoz Sever, responded: "Do you claim that the settlements are worse than Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia? Than Stalin's crimes against his people? Than Darfur?"

"Definitely," answered Ben-Yair. "The settlement movement is a political act by a state against another people and as such is the most evil and immoral act since the end of World War II."

Ben-Yair served as the attorney general between 1993 and 1996 and is considered one of Israel's most daring general attorneys in political matters.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4370755,00.html

[Igel]

6. Really?

We could discuss the relocations of the Germans and Poles after WWII, or perhaps the Slovene/Italian swap and dispossession, or even the Nakba and the pressures and persecutions that led to the influx of Jews from N. Africa and the Middle East. But I suspect that the "end of WWII" would be conveniently interpreted in a "wider" or more "metaphorical" sense to cover these.

So one could point to the Indo-Pak conflict.

Or Biafra.

Or Bangladesh.

Or even Tibet.

Arguably the black South Africans weren't the South African government's "people" in the sense that mattered. Or that Suharto wasn't really looking out after "his" people's interests in Timor.

And I'm not entirely sure that the regimes set up in Central Europe by Stalin and his acolytes couldn't be called "against" people that weren't Stalin's. On the other hand, Stalin most certainly did consider them his people. Rather like a plantation owner in 1840 might consider many of those on his property to be "his people."

However, I suspect none of these qualifies as a "Real political act" because then the guy can't find a kind of glory in being more ignominious than others, with a greater burden to carry. Or, rather, a greater burden to foist off on his political foes, rendering them certainly more ignominious than himself. Vanity takes many forms.

[bemildred]

5. This sort of hyperbole does not help.

The settlements are quite bad enough without comparing them to Darfur/Rwanda/etc. The differences matter and ought not be diminished.

He is quite right about the legal double-standard though, and the intent behind it.

Edit: Actually, now I think about it, Darfur works to a degree, but I still think it will cause more trouble than the argument is worth.

[Shaktimaan]

7. Agreed np