Israeli War on the Rule of Law

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Like the US and other Western nations, Israel is a fantasy democracy. 

Never the real thing, the notion was long ago banned by its repressive regimes.

Israel controls the Occupied Palestinian Territories by militarized ruthlessness.

Military orders control virtually all aspects of Palestinian lives — prohibiting their fundamental rights.

Activist Palestinians for long denied justice are considered threats to Jewish supremacy.

Freely expressing political views risks arrest and imprisonment for invented reasons  — including uncharged under administrative detention that at times is longterm.

Jews are treated one way, Palestinians another for praying to the wrong god.

Activist Palestinian politician, Legislative Council (PLC) member, civil society leader, human rights champion Khalida Jarrah has been ruthlessly persecuted by Israel for decades.

She's been mercilessly harassed, lawlessly detained, targeted with bogus charges, and imprisoned a number to times to silence her.

On Monday, a police state Israeli military court sentenced her to two years imprisonment, banned her involvement in political activity for five years after release, and fined her NIS 4,000.

Phony charges against her included  "inciting violence (sic) and belonging to a "banned organization (sic)" — the activist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Time and again, Israel imprisons Palestinians it wants silenced on invented charges. No legitimate ones exist.

On October 19, 2019, Jarrar was arrested like many times before.

She's been charged and recharged for invented reasons that relate to her activism for Palestinian rights.

She forthrightly opposes Israeli colonization and repression.

Her truth-telling threatens Israeli apartheid. 

The Addameer prisoners support group earlier called her mistreatment "an attack against Palestinian political leaders and Palestinian civil society as a whole."

Her political activist husband Ghassan was arrested over a dozen times, at times imprisoned.

He and Khalida want to live free on their own land in their own country.

The same goes for millions of other Palestinians, their fundamental right  under international law.

Israel considers these rights a high crime against apartheid rule.

Jarrar was Addameer's director from 1994 - 2006.

Since then, she's been a PLC and Palestinian National Committee member.

Addameer denounced Monday's unlawful ruling against her, saying the following:

"Israeli military courts' illegality goes beyond the serious violations of the right to a fair trial." 

"The basis of their establishment and jurisdiction itself is a grave breach of international standards principles." 

"Addameer further urges the international community to abide by its responsibilities under international law and uphold its legal and moral commitment to end the prolonged Israeli occupation and apartheid regime over the Palestinian people and the immediate release of all Palestinian political prisoners."

Before sentencing on Monday, Jarrar was administratively held uncharged since her October 2019 arrest.

Administratively detained in mid-2017, she was released in February 2019, then rearrested eight months later.

In 1989, Israel arrested and detained her uncharged.

Unlawfully held for a month, then released, she was arrested again in 2014 and imprisoned for 15 months.

Arrested for a third time, then released months later was followed by another arrest.

As long as her activism for justice continues, she'll be marked for persecution ahead when released from her current police state imprisonment.

PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashwari earlier said "political arrest(s) (of Jarrah) is further proof that the judicial system in Israel has no relation to justice."

Addameer called her arrests "an attack against Palestinian political leaders and Palestinian civil society as a whole."

"It also constitutes one arrest in the context of continuous arrest campaigns against (all) Palestinians" unjustly.

The PFLP once stressed that Jarrah's mistreatment at the hands of a brutal occupier shows the futility of trying to resolve longstanding conflict with Israel diplomatically.

Its contempt for rule of law principles is longstanding – worst of all with Netanyahu regime fascists in power.

As virtually always before in response to Israeli lawlessness against Palestinians and cross-border, the world community yawns and does nothing.

A Final Comment

Ahead of Palestinian legislative elections scheduled for May, the first since January 2006, eight Palestinian lawmakers languish in Israeli gulag imprisonment, including Jarrah.

No matter how things turn out in May, Israel will maintain iron-fisted control over the Territories — continuing to steal Palestinian land, dispossessing its occupants, and suppressing all Palestinians brutally.

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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