ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/DETENTION Israel jails Israeli militants without trial as it experiences a rise in hate crimes

Record ID: 144516

  • Title: ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/DETENTION Israel jails Israeli militants without trial as it experiences a rise in hate crimes
  • Date: 11th August 2015
  • Summary: JERUSALEM (AUGUST 10, 2015) (REUTERS) LANDAU TALKING TO REPORTER (SOUNDBITE) (Hebrew) MENACHEM LANADU, FORMER HEAD OF JEWISH DIVISION OF ISRAEL'S SHIN BET SECURITY SERVICE, SAYING: "It is true that the cabinet decided to allow administrative detentions etc. but until they determine that this is a terrorist organisation or that the actions they are taking are terrorist acti
  • Embargoed: 26th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA3885SBNVZESBZNFBGD68BDA1N
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS VIDEO WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
    Israel jailed two suspected Jewish militants without trial on Sunday (August 9), the second time the measure has been used to detain Israeli citizens since the lethal torching of a Palestinian home last month.
    Meir Ettinger and Eviatar Slonim, were placed in "administrative detention" for six months, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement. A third man, Mordechai Meyer, was similarly detained last week.
    Yaalon accused Ettinger and Slonim of "involvement in activity by an extremist Jewish group". Meyer had been involved in "recent terrorist attacks as part of a Jewish terror group," Yaalon said. No specific incidents were mentioned.
    Menachem Landau, a retired Shin Bet Security service officer who headed the organisation's Jewish division said that Jewish militants should been treated harsher by the Israeli authorities in past years.
    "They have (Israeli authorities) dealt with this issue with forgiveness and I remember that many years ago I said, gentlemen, we are talking about terror and let us start treating it as terror because otherwise it will get worse, but back then the attitude was that this is just graffiti and deflating tyres, its not terrible," Lanadu told Reuters.
    Israel holds hundreds of Palestinians in administrative detention. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet approved using the measure for Israeli citizens after an arson attack on July 31 where suspected Jewish extremists torched a Palestinian home in Duma, a village in the occupied West Bank, killing an 18-month-old child and his father, who died of his injuries on Saturday (August 8).
    Following the attack the governor of the West Bank city of Nablus, Akram al-Rjoub, accused Israeli army of failure to prevent militant actions of settlers in the West Bank.
    "This clearly demonstrates that the soldiers of the occupation are supporting them (the settlers) to move freely around the West Bank, to practice the killing and burning of the sons of the Palestinian people," Rjoub said on the day of the attack from Duma.
    Israel defends its use of detention without trial, saying it is needed to stem violence and allow for further investigation in cases where there is insufficient evidence to prosecute, or where going to court would risk exposing secret informants.
    After the attack on the Palestinian family in the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to fight militant actions.
    "We are determined to fight vehemently against the phenomena of hatred, extremism and terror from any quarter. The fight against these phenomena unites us all. It is not a fight of one particular camp or another, it is a matter of basic humanity, of basic Jewish values that are a guiding light for us," Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday.
    Landau says that further steps needs to be taken in order to combat far-right militants.
    "It is true that the cabinet decided to allow administrative detentions etc. but until they determine that this is a terrorist organisation or that the actions they are taking are terrorist actions (there wont be a significant change) because at the end of the day, the Shin Bet (Security Service) works by the laws. And when you work by the law, and its been defined as a terror act, it means that you deal with it like you deal with terror - it means military courts, administrative detentions, long detentions for investigation purposes, and a lower evidence threshold than what is being practiced today, "he explains.
    Separately on Sunday, an Israeli police spokeswoman said the force's unit for combating ultra-nationalist crimes had carried out several arrests in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. She declined to give further details, citing a gag order.
    Last November, a far-right Jewish group attacked a mixed Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem in which a classroom was torched and "Death to Arabs" daubed on a wall in the yard.
    "The Bilingual School - May Their Names be Erased," was added to the location of the school, in Hebrew, on a Google -owned navigation app's map, Waze, widely used in Israel, which uses driver data to help people avoid traffic jams.
    Waze deleted the words after they were brought to its attention on Sunday. A source at the company said the entry had been made by a user who had had permission to list destinations on the map but had now been banned.
    Nadia Kinani, principal of the Hand in Hand school, a rare example of co-existence in Jerusalem, said the school was planning to file a complaint.
    Co-Chair of Parents Committee at Hand in Hand school, Samar Jaber Massarwa, warned against a dangerous rise in hate crimes and violence.
    "We are seeing trends of violence within the Jewish Israeli society, within the Palestinian society, within the Palestinian-Israeli society, between religious and seculars, between men and women. I'm afraid it is just one thing, you know, that shows a trend, a general trend that we should all hand in hand combat it and not specifically because of the school," she said.
    "I think there are personal fears, parents of children in this school want to know that their children are safe. But more than that there is a greater fear to where is our society is going to, is it just going to get more and more extreme as time goes by or will there be a serious say from our politicians, from our leadership, from the society at large, that this is it we can't continue like that anymore, and we must put an end to this violence and these attacks," added her fellow co-chair, Gili Rei.
    With peace talks with the Palestinians stalled since April 2014, Israel is struggling to contain hate crimes that it fears could spark renewed fighting.
    According to Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan, another new measure approved by the security cabinet on Sunday for Israeli suspects was the violent shaking of an uncooperative subject under interrogation, known in Hebrew as "tiltul".
    Deemed a form of torture by liberties groups, tiltul's use was largely curbed by Israel's Supreme Court in a 1999 ruling.
    Israel's top-rated Channel 2 television quoted Ettinger's lawyer as saying that his client had complained of being strapped to a chair by interrogators and shaken.
    The lawyer could not be reached by Reuters for comment and police declined to respond, citing a gag order on the case.
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