What’s at Stake for Israel in al-Sharif Killing: Japanese Officers were Executed for Killing POWs
By Juan Cole | Apr. 5, 2016 |
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
The Israeli military and security forces have a problem. They are fairly obviously being ordered to commit summary executions of prisoners. The problem: This behavior is one of the more heinous of war crimes as defined in international law. At the very least it is a crime. Amnesty International began documenting the practice last fall, as Palestinian youth reacted to what they saw as the Israeli undermining of Sec. of State John Kerry’s peace talks by launching a series of violent attacks.
The issue was pitched powerfully last week when an Israeli soldier shot a wounded and immobilized Palestinian assailant at point-blank range in the head. The Palestinian, Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, was suspected of having been involved in a knife attack on Israeli personnel at a checkpoint. Had the soldier killed al-Sharif in self-defense or while defending his colleague, the action would have been justified. But once al-Sharif had been wounded and immobilized and disarmed, shooting him in the head and killing him was simple murder. The soldier, whose identity is being shielded by Israeli authorities, maintains that he feared the Palestinian might have a bomb, but the victim had already been checked for munitions, and the video taken by another Palestinian of the event does not bear out this interpretation. An Israeli court has only charged the soldier, who appears to have harbored a profound hatred of Palestinians, with manslaughter.
And Israel itself has a problem: the vast majority of Israelis approved of the summary killing, with only 5% seeing it as murder and only 19% even disapproving.
If the al-Sharif killing were the only one, that would be different. As noted, human rights organizations are alleging a pattern here, which implies that Israeli officers are setting rules of engagement premised on the commission of war crimes.
After Japanese officers ordered the killing of 300 p.o.w.s on the Indonesian island of Ambon during World War II, they were put on trial in Australia and 4 were hanged and many others given prison sentences.