Soldiers posing with manacled Palestinians to be tried
By YAAKOV KATZ
26/08/2010
Attorney: Fighters being used as scapegoats for Goldstone and Turkish flotilla.
Are IDF soldiers who took pictures with a handcuffed Palestinian paying the price for Israel’s failure to properly deal with the Goldstone Report and the Turkish flotilla? The answer is yes according to Shlomo Tzipori, attorney for a soldier from the Kfir Brigade’s Netzah Yehuda battalion who, together with two other soldiers, has been arrested for allegedly taking a picture next to a Palestinian they arrested earlier this year.
On Thursday, the IDF Prosecutor’s Office informed the Military Court in Jaffa that it planned to file charges against the soldiers for posing for pictures with a Palestinian they arrested during an operation in the Jenin area in January. The three soldiers, according to Tzipori, took the pictures since they were excited about succeeding – on their first raid in Jenin – in capturing the wanted man.
“It is not right to take pictures next to a Palestinian with handcuffs, but these soldiers do not need to be hung out to dry,” Tzipori said.
The attorney’s comments were made in response to an earlier court hearing where the IDF prosecutor claimed that the incident needed to be examined in light of the “moral siege” Israel was under following Operation Cast Lead last year and the results of the Navy’s raid in May on the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship.
The IDF prosecutor said at the hearing that the “importance of the case and the arrest is in the context which we live in. After the Goldstone report and the [Mavi] Marmara, in a period when we as a military and a state are under a so-called moral siege, we as a military are being examined under a magnifying glass. The severity of the actions is beyond the specific incident.”
The pictures taken by the soldiers came out just days after pictures of a former female soldier Eden Abergil were found on Facebook showing her posing with bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees. The two cases are not connected and the IDF cannot press charges against Abergil since she is no longer in IDF service.
Tzipori said that at Thursday’s hearing, the IDF prosecutor presented the written testimony of the Palestinian arrested eight months ago by the soldiers. The Palestinian claimed that he was not hurt or threatened by the soldiers and that what did hurt him was being arrested in front of his family and friends.
“These soldiers are paying the price for the Goldstone Report and the Mavi Marmara,” Tzipori said. “By indicting the soldiers and handcuffing them, the IDF is the one causing the real damage here.”
The two biggest dangrs facing Israel today are Bibi and the IDF prosecutors office.
Bibi as outlined in the article below is not smart enough just to say no to talks with the Arabs.
But the conduct of the IDF prosecutors office is CRIMINAL !
We send our boys to protect us, while the liberal elite send their boys to prosecute our boys.
Look at soldiers from the time cameras were invented, they take pictures of their world. Which at times can have dead people in the picture or handcuffed TERRORIST.
The Palestinians in the pictures are not cuffed and blind folded, so we can give them a prize for being model citizens
They are terrorist scum that want to murder Jews. If the IDF chair warming self hating Jews, liberal scum that occupies the prosecutors office does not change their evil ways, Jews will die.
But maybe they don't care about dead Jews, they only care about being as we say in Israel beautiful souls.
My soul hurts for the pain these self righteous lawyers are causing combat soldiers and for the Jews that will die because these lawyers are neutering the IDF.
