The spat continues
The military advocate general was shocked Thursday when the military court ruled that the soldier who was involved in the shooting of a terrorist in Hebron last week should be placed under supervised detention. While this was a public relations victory for the Right, it changed nothing when it comes to the legal merits of the case.
The fact of the matter is that despite what has been reported, the suspect was never told he would be charged with murder. When the case was handed over to professional investigators, they told him that he could ultimately face a murder charge. They simply explained the spectrum of the charges. But some interpreted this differently, and cunningly claimed that the military planned to charge him with murder. As a result, politicians on the Right -- those who already want to settle scores with Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon -- stormed the barricades in defense of the soldier.
The decision to place him under supervised detention in a military base rather than behind bars was made after one of the prosecutors said he may be charged with manslaughter.
The body of the terrorist should undergo an autopsy to determine whether he was alive during the incident. It should be carried out on Sunday, with a representative of the Palestinian family and/or the Red Cross present.
The soldier's actions, while extremely troubling, could be seen a "kill verification" if he was already dead; but if not, then it means he shot to kill. Both supporters and detractors of the soldier are accusing the other side of tainting the investigation. Two days ago, I heard the claim that Ya'alon and IDF Spokesperson Moti Almoz compromised the investigation because they publicly commented on the internal review carried out by the military and that this review, by law, should be kept out of their hands.
Defense officials countered that the military had no choice but to brief the media on the matter because Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman stood firmly behind a soldier who was accused of a heinous crime. Had Ya'alon and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot equivocated on the matter, the footage of the incident, filmed by left-wing group B'Tselem, would have spread like wildfire on the world stage.
The outrageous letter that U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy submitted to Secretary of State John Kerry on Israel's alleged human rights "violations" underscores the degree to which anti-Semites would like to tarnish the Israeli democracy and make it look like its neighbors and enemies. Israel's promise to uphold the law in this case is essential for its own good, at home and abroad.
The Ya'alon-Bennett spat is yet another example of the anomaly that was mentioned by yours truly several days ago : in Israel, the military establishment counters the politicians' attempt to undermine democratic values. This is unheard of. In other countries, it works the other way around.
The politicians are meddling in the investigation in their attempt to tap into populist sentiment, at the expense of the rule of law. But this spat is inevitable. The fact that Ya'alon and Bennett are at loggerheads over the shooting is just a symptom of their overall ideological disagreements over policy. It also attests to the bad blood on a personal level.
Their interest in the fate of the suspect takes a back seat to the much wider ideological disagreement, which will be settled through other mechanisms.
As far as I am concerned, if Lieberman and Bennett were at the helm, the Middle East would be set ablaze at record speed.
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