Israeli activist Ezra Nawi was sentenced to a month in prison today on trumped up charges that he assaulted a police officer in July 2007 while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home in the South Hebron Hills.
After the sentencing Nawi told Ynet:
"The court has been permitting the occupation for years, they are trying to stop me at all costs. The judge doesn’t scare me, and neither does the 30-day sentence. This is testimonium paupertatis to the court, I tried to stop criminal activity, and I ended up having to pay two officers who acted brutally. This is the Israeli reality."
Fellow Ta’ayush activist Joseph Dana adds:
The worst aspect of this sentence is that the judge also sentenced him to 6 months in prison if he violates law in the occupied territories in the next 3 years. Most of Ezra’s work and that of Ta’ayush in the occupied territories is about protest and nonviolently opposing the occupation, which in many cases translates to violation of law according to the Israeli legal system. In this way the state got, in my estimation, exactly what it was after.
Anti-demolition is becoming a sort of anti-holocaust to the desperate Zionist Mafia. This is the continuation of Herl’s theory of a demographic Jewish state within Arab Palestine – which most of the WZC believed is the only solution to the European colonization of Palestine and its neighboring Muslim-majority countries.
Early this year – Quebic court heard the petition from 1700 Muslim and Christian natives of Palestinian village Bilin against two Canadian firms which propose to build 42 apartment buildings for the Jew settlers on the stolen land.
Palestinian village sues Canadian firms
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Shmuel found a rather interesting follow up to the above story:
“Officers won’t be prosecuted for ’slight beating’
State Prosecutor’s Office decides Border Guard policemen documented hitting Palestinians will not face criminal charges, ‘as they did not cause real damage’”
link to mondoweiss.net
Thanks, Chaos. I mentioned this story, because it just happened to be staring me in the face, on the same page as the report on Nawi’s sentence. The whole Nawi case however, exposes not only the hypocrisy of Israeli “justice” – whereby it is the person who stands up to violence and immorality who is punished – but the fact that Israel does not even respect its own laws. It punishes where it wishes to punish and turns a blind eye where it wishes to turn a blind eye (without even addressing the fact that the charges against Nawi were trumped up). Another blatant example of this is the way in which Israeli courts relate to Palestinian claims to property owned prior to ’48, and to similar claims made by Jews. Such inequality before the law, or “arbitrariness” in its application, are clear signs that Israel is not a democracy – a claim that lies at the heart of Zionist apologetics. Prove that Israel is not in fact a democracy, and you have demolished the better part of hasbarah, which is why the mere mention of the word Apartheid (and its correlative, BDS) sends them into a hissy fit.
It also answers, again, the ridiculous question “Where is the Palestinian Ghandi?”
In Israeli jails.
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There is a new approach to reduce the impact Israeli and foreign nationals have protesting occupation in West Bank.
The Military Administration will impose fines of up to $2000 on West Bank Palestinian farmers if their land is used for “demonstrations” or if they allow Israeli and foreign nationals onto their land.
The whole thing is to make occupation and apartheid self-funding without resource to public funds. Very …….conservative.
Had Mr. Nawi taken the time to understand “the other”, he wouldn’t have found himself in his current predicament.
Judge Eilata Ziskind wrote in her ruling that “even if there is a supreme goal, it cannot be used as an excuse to commit offenses.”
I wonder if Judge Ziskind would condemn Israel’s use of supreme goals as excuses to commit offenses…