Fear of the Arab Street

In her column in the Jerusalem Post last week (Israel's disengaged establishment), Caroline Glick wrote about the decison by the Justice Ministry not to indict any policemen for their actions during the Arab riots in October 2000.

She gives some background on the events from 5 years ago:

Following months of increased violence and extremism in the Arab-Israeli sector incited directly by the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli Islamic Movement and the Arab members of Knesset, violent riots seized the Arab sector of Israel in October 2000. During the week of riots, Arab Israelis threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli civilian cars throughout the country. Israeli motorists were dragged out of their cars on Highway 65 along Wadi Ara and beaten. An Israeli motorist was murdered when Arabs from Jasser a-Zarka threw a rock at his windshield as he drove down the coastal highway.

And so the commission was born:

In the wake of the riots, the government of then-prime minister Ehud Barak went into a state of panic, concerned that the Labor Party would lose its support base among Arab Israelis. And so, rather than arresting the Arab leaders who incited the riots, banning the Islamic Movement and ending PA infiltration into the Arab sector, Barak sought to appease the very leaders who had fomented the violence. This he did by offering to establish an independent commission led by a retired judge that would investigate the police behavior towards the rioters. That commission, led by retired justice Theodore Or, was given the perverse job of investigating only the police, as if the officers had simply been firing at ducks in a shooting gallery rather than trying to contend with a violent, heavily incited mob that was paralyzing and terrorizing the country.

Once the Or Commission was established, discussion of the actual events was silenced and replaced by a surrealistic parade of policemen and politicians summoned before a tribunal to defend their actions as if they had taken place in a vacuum. And so, this week's announcement of the decision not to indict any officers in the 13 deaths was the first opportunity that the public has had in five years to actually discuss what happened in October 2000.

In the wake of the decsion by the commission not to take action, there was of course criticism of the failure to indict the Israeli police for the Arab deaths. Glick boils down the criticism to basically 2 sides:

On one side were the critics who claimed that the fact that the Police Investigations Department could not find sufficient evidence to justify indictments was a flimsy excuse for not conducting trials. They claimed that the fact that the families of the dead refused to cooperate with investigators was no reason not to indict, and the fact that the investigators expected the poor families to cooperate with them was evidence of their racism.

On the other side was the Justice Ministry. On Wednesday afternoon, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz and his deputies held a press conference to defend themselves against the attacks of the members of their club. Mazuz and his associates made no mention of the fact that refusal to cooperate with investigators is a criminal act. They made no mention of the incitement of Arab Israelis by the Islamic Movement, the PA and the Arab MKs. For them, the deaths of the 13 were an unmitigated tragedy. The only thing that interested them was defending their honor as champions of Arab rights to their establishment colleagues.

All this becomes relevant once again now that the Justice Ministry has announced that it is going to go back and reopen the investigation:

The announcement was made Wednesday night by the Justice Ministry Police Investigations Department. It is widely felt that the ministry caved in to political pressure from the Arab community, which was angered by the recent decision not to press charges against policemen for their role in the killings.

Ministry officials explained on national television last night that the decision to reopen the case was made in light of the fact that family members of the deceased planned to appeal the decision to the courts.

It seems that in addition to the power of the liberal press, there is a new and growing voice that is expressing itself--the Israeli Arab community, which no doubt will get a helping hand from the liberal media, in the interests of fairness of course.

There is nothing wrong with the Israeli Arab community expressing itself and defending what it sees as its interests, per se. However they seem not to find fault with riots and murder that took place. Do they think that was as legitimate a means of expressing their political needs as terrorism?

In any case, perhaps the commission is merely responding to the potential of an Arab appeal.
Or maybe there is more to the timing:

In a related item, the police have moved to alert status as the Israeli-Arab community prepares to commemorate five years since the riots. A number of events are scheduled in the coming days to mark the date.

If the commission is responding to fear of the Arab street, it is not the only benefit that fear of the Arab street is reaping--there is a report that police know the identities of the Arabs who killed IDF soldier Eden-Natan Zada, yet have not arrested them, because they are afraid of Arab riots:

Zada, who opened fire on passengers on a public bus driving through the village of Shfaram under unclear circumstances, was handcuffed and in the custody of police when an Arab mob surrounded the bus, broke in, and killed him. A video of the lynch, with Zada seen alive after being placed in police custody, was aired by Channel 10 shortly after the incident.

It remains unclear whether Zada planned the attack in advance or whether something happened on the bus to provoke it, but the identities of the Arabs who killed Zada are known by the police. In the past, Jews who attacked or killed Arab terrorists after they were subdued or in police custody have been prosecuted in court.

The failure of Israel to defend itself properly in the world forum has been painful enough. Now it seems that in their own country they are unable to take the steps necessary to defend themselves from within.

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