International Laws From the Perspective of War Criminals

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Sep 14th, 2009 by kawther.salam

On Thursday Sep. 10 2009, GOC Central Command Gadi Shamni said during the mock trial of First Lt. Adam Malul of the Kfir gang, one of the IDF criminals who smashed, tortured, and hit a Palestinian victim while he was under arrest, which was held for the media, that “the IDF soldiers were not authorized to attack Palestinian civilians during arrest raids, adding that those who cross the army’s ‘red lines’ must be put to trial”. “Click on Pictures to see them bigger“.

The felonious Adam Malul commented on what Gadi Shamni, saying: “the GOC Gadi Shamni is trying to pretty the picture; in fact he knows what’s going on the ground, but he chooses to stay in his ivory tower and keep his face clean. I am not ashamed of smacking the Palestinian; it was what I had to do. My commanders on the ground, my company commander, battalion commander, and brigade commander backed me up, and I did what I was taught by my superiors”. He added: “in the territories. There are those that get dirty every day to defend the State’s security”.

On 29 July 2009, the Israeli military war criminal Central Command Chief Major General Gadi Shamni issued Military Order 1644 related to so-called “juveniles”. The order is a violation of the Fourth Geneva and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel itself had signed. The order is further a grave crime against humanity, as it implements the stance often expressed by representatives of the “state of Israel”, according to which Palestinians have no human rights, what implies that we are not humans.

Shamni concludes his criminal military order by referring to paragraphs which clearly show bad faith, and the bad intentions of Shamni towards the Palestinian children detainees, as it is clearly intended by the Central Command GOC to circumvent the international laws and treaties related to children, and to “legalize” current criminal practices of Israel. See the English translation of the military order 1644 as PDF. See the Arabic translation of the military order 1644 as PDF.

• Instructions of this order do not apply to cases in which the list of charges were made prior to the entry of this order into force. He means the 342 children who are currently incarcerated.
  
• The order enters into force sixty days from the date of issuance, and expires one year later. This means during this time, the troops of Shamni will catch some hundreds of Palestinian children among the peace protesters who throw stones at the Apartheid wall, and that they will be “found guilty” by military judges acting under Order 1644/2009 amendment number (109) issued by Shamni. It does not mean that less children are shot, murdered, tortured, abused or incarcerated – it just means that now these crimes are legalized.

Has anyone heard of any country in the world where children are torture and incarcerated because of throwing stones at the concrete walls of the concentration camp where they live?

Has anyone heard that a state establish a military court to submit oppressed children to “trials”, because these children dared to express their anger over the violation of their rights by throwing stones at the concrete walls of the concentration camp in which they live?

Has anyone heard about any state which claims that the establishment of a military court was in response to the terms of international conventions on children rights?

Since when do the rights of children call for the establishment of military courts to more effectively prosecute them?

Since when have concrete walls needed armies and military courts to defend them?

This farce and the sanctimonious resolutions and crimes against humanity are taking place only in the zionist “state” called Israel. If this happened in any other country in the world, then the so-called, self-nominated democratic governments would issued a formal and explicit condemnation against that country. But rarely, if ever, do these countries issue such condemnations against Israel, which are governed by war criminals, and psychopath military leaders.

Dozens of journalists from Israeli newspapers reported about this military order issued by the IDF Central Command GOC, the war criminal Gadi Shamni, as an achievement. If these wannabe-journalists had read the order issued by the Shamni, resolution 1644 on the establishment of a military court for “juveniles”, actually for Palestinian children, they would understand that the military order of Shamni is not only a crime against children, but against humanity, and against the present of Israel.

People acting as judges in these so-called military court for juveniles would be war criminals themselves. These “judges” of military courts are responsible for incarcerating thousands of Palestinian children during the past 42 years.

Currently there are 342 children incarcerated by these psychopaths among criminals, drugs dealers, sexual perverts, and these children are all subject to continuous sessions of torture to force them to become collaborators with the IDF military intelligence.

Shamni himself is directly responsible for the murders of 975 children by snipers over the past years and the currently incarcerated 342 Palestinian children in his jails. Before that, while Shamni was a colonel and the military commander of Hebron in the years between 1995 – 1997, he himself was involved in terrorizing, sniping and incarcerating many Palestinian children as well as adults, looting Palestinian agricultural lands, vandalizing Palestinian property lands and opening road for the jewish squatters.

Major General Gadi Shamni, the current IDF Central Command GOC, was the military occupation commander in my homeland, the city of Hebron. I know him in person. I know that he participated in and committed crimes against humanity and crimes of war against the civilian populations of Hebron, which all together amount to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

One of the most horrible military operations which Gadi Shamni lead in Hebron was with the “mistaravim” (“those who look like Arabs”), IDF paramilitary death squads, after the Hebron redeployment in 1997. These units wear civilian clothes and they hide their weapons under their long shirts. These units are manned with Druze soldiers who look like Palestinians, so that normal people going about their business are not aware of their presence. In one operation which I witnessed, which took place at the end of July 1997, Shamni sent these death squad units into the middle of Al-Shalala street in the (in name) Palestinian controlled area. It was later said that the undercover soldiers who took part in this incident were from the Duvdevan unit. The mission of these death squads was to catch and kill some children, young boys from the area under the purported control of the Palestinian Authority, and that is what they did.

Shamni himself was leading the mission. He was in the middle of the separation area in Al-Shalala Street, near the Al-Ja’abari pharmacy. His plan was to let his troops stationed on the rooftop of the Al-Said building in the same street throw an Israeli flag in the middle of the Palestinians going about their personal business, just for provocation. His death squads were ready to shoot, murder and arrest anyone. When the youths in the area started stepping on and burning the flag, the “mistaravim” started arresting these children and shooting in the middle of crowded street. A boy of age 9 in the crowd was killed next to me, and I was nearly shot. I witnessed several people in the crowd, some with bullet wounds, being dragged on the ground like sacks by the death squads to where Gadi had set up his command post. I remember being very scared and angry.

I went to the area where Colonel Gadi Shamni was standing and smiling of happiness after this incident. I told him in angry voice that what he had done to catch some children aged under 15 years was a disgusting bloody game. Gadi did not pay attention to my words, he just continued smiling and expressing his “victories” of having snatched some children, of shooting and the terrorizing innocent people in the street.

In the words of the lawyer of the Defence of Children International “DCI” human rights organization, Khalid Quzmar:

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DCI-Palestine is of the view that children should not be tried in military courts with minimal fair trial guarantees and has a number of particular concerns regarding Military Order 1644 and the treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military legal system. DCI-Palestine’s concerns include the following:

Palestinian children are still being interrogated in the absence of a lawyer or family member. The overwhelming majority of these children report being mistreated and forced into providing confessions during interrogation. These interrogations are still not being video recorded, as recommended by the UN Committee Against Torture in May 2009.

Children as young as 12 can still be tried in the military courts, and are treated as adults as soon as they turn 16. This is in contrast to the Israeli domestic legal system that fixes the age of majority at 18, in accordance with generally accepted comparable principles of juvenile justice.

Military Order 1644 provides for the appointment of ‘juvenile judges’ by the Military Court of Appeal. These ‘juvenile judges’ are themselves, military court judges who ‘must be prepared to be competent for the post’. No further information is provided to shed light on how it is anticipated these military court judges are suitably qualified to adjudicate cases involving 12 year old children.

Military Order 1644 exempts all hearings to determine whether a child should be kept in pre-trial detention until the end of the legal proceedings from the requirement of having to be heard before a ‘juvenile judge’.

Much of the language used in Military Order 1644 is discretionary in nature, not mandatory. For example, the ‘juvenile military court’ must convene in separate rooms ‘as much as possible’ and children must not be brought to the court, or detained with adults, ‘as much as possible.’

It must be recalled that over 700 Palestinian children are prosecuted in Israeli military courts each year and the most common charge is throwing stones, including throwing stones at the Wall. The changes proposed by Military Order 1644 appear to lack substance.

As a minimum safeguard, DCI-Palestine continues to call upon the Israeli authorities to:

Ensure that no child is interrogated in the absence of a lawyer of their choice or family member;

Ensure that all interrogations of children are video recorded;

Ensure that all evidence suspected of being obtained through ill-treatment or torture be rejected by the military courts;
Ensure that all credible allegations of ill-treatment and torture be thoroughly and impartially investigated and those found responsible for such abuse be brought to justice.