BBC (Monday): Israeli guilty of shooting Briton

[Jack Rabbit]

From the BBC Online
Dated

Israeli guilty of shooting Briton

A former Israeli soldier has been found guilty of the manslaughter of a British student in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

Ex-sergeant Wahid Taysir was convicted at Castina military court in Ashkelon, near Tel Aviv, of the manslaughter of Tom Hurndall, 22, of north London.

Mr Hurndall was involved in protests against Israeli military actions in the Palestinian town of Rafah when he was shot. He died nine months later.

The court was told Taysir fired from an Israeli army watchtower.

Read more.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. "...there is no policy of tolerating the shooting of civilians."

Running them over with bulldozers, on the other hand...

I am always surprised when the Israeli military is held accountable for its crimes in the occupation. I have to wonder --

Would Taysir have been convicted if he was not himself an Arab?

Would he have been convicted if his victim had been Palestinian instead of British?

I remember when the Israeli military was the pride of the nation, disciplined but democratic, offering equal opportunities to men and women, Jewish and Arab, well trained, highly skilled and respected world wide. The typical Israeli soldier was the equal to the elite soldiers of other nations, and before the '80s there was but a single black mark on their reputation, from an incident during the war of independence in '48.

Then the Likkudist radicals took control, invaded Lebanon and began to seriously talk about annexing all the occupied territories, jumpstarting the annexation by beginning the unfettered 'settlement' building in the West Bank and Gaza. The majority of those settlements were nothing more than military camps situated to disrupt the economic viability of the territories, and they numbered in the hundreds.

For a hundred years the righteous goal of re-creating the nation of Israel, of carving a small slice of a nation out of the decaying body of the Ottoman Empire, returning self-government to a land that had not been self-governing in nearly 2000 years, had been gaining legitimacy through hard work and principled action.

In one generation the Likkudniks had, to paraphrase our Great Leader, spent their political capital and left their cause bankrupt.

This conviction is a band-aid on an arterial wound.

[Violet_Crumble]

2. It'll be interesting to see how he's sentenced...

And for all those now mostly departed folk who after the time of Tom Hurndall's murder not only swallowed by repeated the many lies spread about him, I hope they all learn a lesson from this and not be so quick in future to regurgitate every little thing IDF spokespeople come out with and treat it as though it's a cast in concrete fact...

Violet...

[Englander]

3. Aye. I think,whatever the sentence,he's unlikely to serve 20 yrs..

He is also,not the only guilty party here.

'Hurndalls' fight for justice goes on

Tuesday June 28, 2005
The Guardian

For Tom Hurndall's parents, the real criminal is not the Israeli soldier convicted yesterday of shooting their son in the head as he shepherded young children to safety from gunfire in the Gaza Strip.

The 22-year-old photography student and pro-Palestinian activist from Tufnell Park, north London, remained in a persistent vegetative state for nine months until he died in London in January 2004.

But long before that, the Hurndalls had concluded from a bitter struggle to discover the truth about the shooting of their son that responsibility for his death runs much higher in a military that the family says encourages the shooting of civilians.

After Sergeant Idier Wahid Taysir was convicted yesterday of manslaughter and five other charges that carry up to 20 years in prison, Tom Hurndall's father, Anthony, said the trial had exposed a culture of impunity within the army.

"This brings out something that is only part of the culture that we are concerned with, a culture that contributed the lack of accountability and the freedom with which soldiers feel they can shoot civilians in the field, and our son was unfortunately a victim of that policy," he said.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1516194,00.html

[drdon326]

4. Interesting.....

Good to see a justice system that ACTUALLY works.(a lesson that was missed by some).

Help me out, remind me, when when the last time a pali-terrorist was ever sentenced to 20 years for killing an israeli?

Aw hell,when was the last last time a terrorist was ever EVEN aressted
for killling an israeli?

Aw hell, when was the last time a terrorist was even arrested for PLANNING to kill israelis ?


Always looking foward to your insight.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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[Englander]

6. Taysir'll be out of jail in 2yrs or less - you read it here first. n/t

[bennywhale]

7. Don the justice system was dragged kicking and screaming after already

accepting the armies fraudulent investigation which blamed no one. Or accepted the snipers version that the British activist was wearing camoflauge and holding a gun, rather than leading children away from their bullets.

Justice (if he's not a scapegoat) has been done after his parents quit work, raised sponsorship money, set up a fund, lobbied the British government who in turn lobbied the Israelis, and used their media connections to keep it in the news.

A dead Palestinian would not have got justice.

I accept your point about the terrorists being brought to justice, although i assume you are talking of the PA bringing them to justice.

Again (i repeat myself i know) but Israel as a member of the democratic world must be judged by higher standards than the Palestinians.

If i were to judge Britain or America (which bush tries to do) with Saddam Hussein, i give myself quite a bit of leeway for oppression. Its like the "torture-lite" justification of Rumsfeld.

We (democracies) must judge ourselves by the highest standards. We shouldn't measure ourselves against corrupt and/or brutal regimes

[eyl]

8. Unfortunately

I won't be too surprised if he gets a relatively light sentence, but not because of the reasons you might assume.

Examples of Israelis who got light sentences for killing Palestinians have been given here, but I've never seen them compared to "non-political" sentencing in general. The sad fact is that overly lenient sentences for crimes of violence is an endemic problem in our justice system (a particularly notorious, fairly recent case was someone who had been convicted of repeated sexual assault of his daughters, and received a half-year or so community service)*. It's the primary drawback, IMO, of a system of trial by judge rather than by jury; also, I suspect that judges are more susceptible to arguments of mitigating circumstances in cases of violence than in property crimes (greed is, after all, an easily understood motivation; OTOH, when someone bashes someone else's head in for no apparent reason, you'll be more receptive to an insanity or similar plea). Lately, in response to a peak of violent incidents, there's been a rise in severity of sentences; hopefully it'll stick.

*Of course, part of the problem is that the cases you tend to hear about are the ones with disproportional sentences. To go back to the "political" category for examples, you have the members of the Bat Ayin conspiracy (who, IIRC, didn't actually manage to kill anyone) who got sentences of around 15 years, or Yitzhak Pass (who got a couple of years for weapons possession), and so forth.

[Matilda]

9. Nothing would have happened at all if not for the courage

of the Hurndalls. It would be so hard on them, because they would
have to continually relive their son's last moments, but they've
never wavered in their determination to find the truth.

I have so much respect for them.

[The Magistrate]

10. The Conviction Is Good News, Ma'am

Mr. Hurndall displayed that day a courage and selflessness of a degree soldiers might expect a decoration for, and sufficient evidence was developed to demonstrate the soldier who shot him did so deliberately, and in the knowledge he was no threat. The sentence probably will be lighter then we would prefer, and that is a shame.