Should You Trust the Police and Public Prosecution?

Kalman Liebskind had a life-exprience lesson which he blogged (in Hebrew) and here it is, in extracts:

I know. Arabs who throw rocks at Jews is not a story. If the stone does not split open someone's head the paper will not devote an inch of coverage paper. So it goes...

...A year ago I told you here about my experience, a few hundred meters from my house in Gamzu, the heart of the Green Line, when I returned from a trip with the family on Shushan Purim...[when] Arabs attacked us with stones. One stone hit my wife's car windshield, forty inches from the head of the child, and miraculously it was not shattered. Another stone hit my car. Other stones hit us a few friends. Trained citizen instinctively dialed the police. Meanwhile, members begin to try to identify the culprits...we found them...[and handed them over to the police]...

Three days later I received a phone from one of the investigators...."We need you to come in to complete the inquiry". It was a brilliant investigative exercise...Half an hour later, I sat opposite him and I found myself at the main suspect in this case. It turns out that one of the Arabs who came with us to the station that night, claimed the Jews filed a complaint that someone threatened him with weapons. When I heard that Arabs told about someone with a pink shirt, I relaxed. I was with a brown sweatshirt. But that didn't bother the police. "We checked and of all who was here, only you have a gun license which means you threatened". Bingo. We got cracking. Great investigative logic...

Was I laughing? Absolutely not. Threats with weapons? Me? Had someone fell on the head here? Very quickly, a member of the police bothered to tell me it was the system. When you submit a complaint against these guys, they automatically serve a counter-complaint, and we have a draw. Head to head. Not attacker and victim but a suspect against a suspect.

A severe-looking policewoman photographed me from all angles and took my fingerprints...The guy who tried to kill my kids laughing at me all the way to the mosque.

A month after that incident I realized that what begins stupid baseless complaint against you, can easily deteriorate into quite unpleasant areas. That was when I received notice that the District Attorney's Office have 30 days to apply to the prosecution and convince her, "Why not she should not be filing charges against you."..."You make a motion to review investigative materials and we will consider." Submitted.

Since then, I've had this terrible swift sword above my head...This week the Ministry of Justice explained that since the evidence in my case and that of the young terrorist "are intertwined and can not be separated ... more investigation needs be done and the work will be completed soon." Bullshit. Do not believe them...

I know I'm not the only suspect in Israel whose file is lying somewhere at the prosecutor's office but still, it is a scandal. A double scandal. Once because this should not be a country dangling people in the air due to a case containing perhaps four pages and the decision should take maybe five minutes. And the second time because of what the state is conveying to the stone throwers. No pressure. Nothing is urgent...no "special urgency".

I made one big mistake in this story. I dialed 100. Friends who were around me laughed at me. What are you calling the police, they told me. Let's get the whole moshav and bash them about. I resisted. I was wrong. The law enforcement authority passed on to me this story which I also suggest you learn: There are things you can handle them alone. No police and no prosecution, no Court and no B'Tselem.

What do I tell my children when I have to hire a lawyer to defend myself to not be convicted of threatening with a weapon? Yes, the children who were with me in the car and saw the young Arab throwing at us from point-blank range. What do I tell my child about what she learns in civics? That this is a nation of laws? ...We are in the jungle, my children. And in a jungle the fittest survive...Arabs throw stones at you? Go get them. One thing what not to do. Don't dare involve the police and the prosecution.  Never. They are not on the side of law and not on the side of justice.

^

Why Some People Don't Appreciate Israel High Court of Justice

Reported:

High Court delayed work on gap in West Bank fence which terror cell used to enter Israel

The gap in the separation fence in the Hebron Hills area, through which the terror squad uncovered yesterday apparently entered, is the the largest gap to adjoin a residential area. The hole extends for about 12 kilometers, from southern Jerusalem to the village of Jaba, south of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.

The delay in building the fence in this area apparently stems from a petition to the High Court of Justice. But Shaul Arieli, an expert on the fence from the Council for Peace and Security, claims that were the state determined to build the fence in this area, it could do so without any problem.

This is carrying the law to its extreme.

Or its militancy.

We can't say "terror", can we?

^

Real Estate That's Expensive

It's worth your life:

Palestinian Sentenced To Die For Treason,Selling Land To Israelis

A Palestinian court in the Tuesday sentenced a man to death by hanging for treason and for selling land in the West Bank to Israelis. Anwat Breghit, 59, was found guilty of selling property belonging to his village of Beit Omar near Hebron to Israelis from the nearby Jewish settlement of Karmei Tzur.

The sentence still requires the approval of president Mahmud Abbas to be carried out.

Dozens of Palestinians have been sentenced to death since 2000 over charges of collaboration with the Israeli authorities. Only two death sentences have been carried out, but many others were summarily executed over similar suspicions.

A Legal Eagle Opinion on the Katsav Rape Indictment

The indictment against former president Moshe Katsav has been through unprecedented reversals - from almost negligible charges under a plea bargain, to an indictment for rape, the most serious sexual crime.

This glaring discrepancy would justify the court in considering a preliminary argument, the "natural justice defense," which entitles it to cancel an indictment if either the indictment itself or the conduct of the trial seems to "fundamentally contradict" the principles of justice or the right to a fair trial...

...The process that led up to this trial, before the indictment was finalized, has been revealed in all its weakness. The court thus faces a very sensitive task in conducting the trial - publicly, insofar as is possible - that will decide serious crimes case 1015/09: The State of Israel vs. Moshe Katsav.

Ze'ev Segal

Justice Shackled

I reported on this case previously, and am amazed that our liberal civil rights groups haven't taken up her case. Could it be that ideological and political principles overcome concern for freedom and jutsice? (Just allow me a second to remove my tongue from deep within my cheek before I proceed).

ISRAELI JUDGE ACCEPTS POLICE EVIDENCE IN LIGHTNING HALF-MINUTE HEARING

An Israel judge spent less than one minute to order a Jewish woman prisoner back to jail despite the lack of a formal indictment. In a move that the defense termed unprecedented, Kfar Saba Magistrate Nitza Maimon Shashua spent less a minute before she accepted police evidence against Rivka Meirchik, who has been imprisoned for over two months without formal charges. The judge also refused to hear defense arguments and left the courtroom. "This makes a mockery of the law," defense attorney Aviad Visoly said on June 5. "It's disgusting."

Visoli said that the judge refused to schedule another hearing in the next two days and he said the court is not abiding by its decisions. "The judge has to bring her [Ms. Meirchik] before a court every 48 hours," Visoly said. "We will appeal to the Petah Tikva District Court."

Ms Meirchik, who suffers from severe food allergies, appeared emaciated and remained handcuffed and shackled in leg irons during her court appearance. "She doesn't eat anything except for fruit," prison guard Orit Hasidi said. "We don't have in prison the other foods she eats.

Ms. Meirchik, who was arrested on April 2 at the Jewish community of Shvut Ami in the northern West Bank, is being held in solitary confinement until the end of judicial proceedings and has been denied visitation and phone rights.

(Kippah tip: IMRA)

Evelyn is So Good

Civil Fights: The Third World according to Aharon Barak

It is only January, but former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak already has the chutzpah prize for 2008 sewn up. From anyone else, his statements to Israel Radio on Sunday could have been dismissed as ignorance. But for Barak to declare that Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann's proposed reforms "could turn Israel into a third-world country" is the height of chutzpah - because the former chief justice is sufficiently familiar with other legal systems to know that in fact, Friedmann's proposals would finally bring Israel into line with first-world norms.

- - - -

America, Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Japan are hardly third-world countries. So how exactly would making Israel's judicial appointment system more like theirs reduce Israel from first-world to third-world status? Fortunately for Barak, his interviewer neglected to ask.