Two stories from Israel

While there are no details at present owing to a police gag order, it seems that an Israeli soldier, possibly a Druze, has been arrested on murder charges. The tipoff to police was given by a relative who is a convicted fraudster with a personal grudge and hence entirely unreliable.

Apparently the story is that while on duty at a military base in the south of Israel earlier this year, this IDF soldier saw someone approach the boundary of the base on a 4WD RV ("traktaron" in Israeli Hebrew). He warned the intruder away, but the intruder continued. He followed procedures, first firing in the air, then at the intruder's lower body. The intruder, I would guess a Bedouin, died. The investigation at the time found no reason to fault the soldier who followed the required procedures. It is only with the tipoff by the ex-con relative of an admission of guilt that the police decided to make an arrest yesterday. The police, it seems, are now inclined to release the suspect and suspend the charges but they aren't speaking yet.

I know from Israeli soldiers that Bedouin track the soldiers in the desert and even follow them right onto army bases to steal everything they can get. They have unbelievable Chutzpah. IDF soldiers on training treks often see Bedouin in 4WD RV's seemingly following them, even for several days at a time. There is no attempt to hide. Sometimes, the soldiers drop their backpacks to perform some training exercise, leaving the backpacks in a pile in the desert. The Bedouin then pounce, pilfering goods and chattels from the backpacks including military equipment, mobile phones, wallets, whatever they feel like, piling it up on the 4WD RVs. The soldiers are only allowed to call the police, who usually don't respond. On the radio today, the brother of the arrested officer repeated these accounts that I have already heard directly from soldiers and added that the Bedouin robbers steal military equipment, weapons, ammunition and metal for scrap, even from inside IDF firing ranges. In at least one incident, while trespassing on a firing range, some Bedouin were injured and then sued the state for millions (and apparently won). The ludicrousness of the situation is hard to believe. Chelm springs to mind. (There is much more that can be said about the Bedouin, but those are other matters.)

The problem, essentially, is that Israeli soldiers are either forbidden to shoot or are terrified of the lengthy investigation and prosecution that they will face in most situations. Israelis, who seem to have to account for every bullet, are held to an impossibly difficult standard that no soldiers in any other army would have to contend with. The disproportionate criticism and separate rules that apply to Israel are a moral low that convict the accusers and not the accused.

The other story is delicious. In a brilliant move, Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat has written a letter to the Attorney General asking him to clarify his stance on Amona, keeping in mind the implications for the city of Jerusalem. The Israeli courts have decided that the Jews living in Amona are in houses that are built on Palestinian-owned land and therefore the Jews must be evicted and the houses demolished. The courts have been insistent on the evictions being carried out. If this is how the law must be enforced, then the same will have to apply to Arabs living on land owned by Jews. That is something that the Lefties, especially in the courts, weren't planning on.

Let's get a few things clear here. Israelis do NOT build houses on stolen land or on property that they know belongs to someone else. They DO, however, build houses and villages and towns (aka "settlements") on property belonging to the government, after receiving the necessary approvals, permits, authorizations, etc. In recent years, some very dishonestly named NGOs have been trying to undermine the "settlements" in every forum possible. (Peace Now, which is blatantly not promoting any peace moves, seeing as there is no Arab partner for peace, has instead morphed into an anti-settlement movement, that being their main effort today.) One method they use is to dig into records going back to Jordanian and Turkish times to find out who once had some claim on the land and then search for descendants now living in Jordan, Syria or elsewhere and convince them to file a claim of ownership in Israeli courts. The courts, liberal and afraid of appearing to support Jews in any way, then decide that even if ownership is not clear, Jews must be evicted. Thus Israelis who innocently buy real estate are sometimes forced out of their homes by court order. The false accusations of "land theft" quickly follow.

Mayor Barkat's reasoning is very simple. If the courts demand that Jews who live on land that might be owned by Arabs must be evicted and their houses knocked down, then the very same will have to apply to Arabs in Jerusalem who live on land that is very clearly owned by Jews. Surely they must also be evicted and their houses knocked down. Applying separate laws to Jews and Arabs would be apartheid and the courts wouldn't want to be accused of apartheid, right? :-) So the ultra-liberals in the courts who have been demanding that Jews be evicted are now facing the prospects of evicting many thousands of Arab families from their homes in Jerusalem and restoring possession to the rightful Jewish owners. The Left has tied their own hands on this one. Peace Now, Ir Amim and the other NGOs won't be able to talk their way out of this one. Barkat's checkmate is brilliant. We'll see how this one plays out now.

Never a dull moment here.