American Attorney Examines Israel’s “Separate and Unequal” Legal Systems

By Jane Adas

Attorney Audrey Bomse recently returned from East Jerusalem, where she spent the past year working with the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Her aim was to examine how the Israeli criminal justice system deals with Israeli settlers in the occupied territories compared with Palestinians living in the same area. Bomse focused on the extreme crime of murder, and presented her findings in an Oct. 10 talk on the Newark campus of Rutgers University entitled “Two Separate and Unequal Legal Systems in Israeli ‘Democracy.’” The event was sponsored by the Rutgers Law School Lawyers Guild, NJ Solidarity, and the New Jersey chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

Israeli lawbreakers are tried in Israeli civilian courts, Bomse explained, while Palestinians who have committed the same crimes are tried in military courts. Israelis are guaranteed rights under Israeli civilian law that are absent from the military justice system. An Israeli can be held in custody for only 48 hours before being brought before a judge; a Palestinian, however, may be held for 36 days. An Israeli can be held without indictment for a maximum of 30 days; a Palestinian for six months, the American attorney pointed out. An Israeli detainee can be kept from meeting with an attorney for 15 days; a Palestinian for 90 days.

The sentencing structure of the two legal systems also is different, Bomse continued. The maximum sentence of an Israeli convicted of manslaughter is 20 years, for example, but for a Palestinian it’s life without parole. Moreover, there is systematic discrimination in application of the law, she said. In contrast to military courts, civilian judges rarely assign the maximum penalty and allow for plea bargaining. Under the Israeli penal code, prisoners may be released after serving two-thirds of their sentence; the military courts, however, do not allow for early release at all.

According to Bomse, the parallel legal systems institutionalize the obvious inequality of treatment. Beyond that, she noted, Israelis who commit crimes against Palestinians are seldom even apprehended. Fewer than 5 percent of settlers who assault Palestinians are ever brought to court, Bomse said, and she has yet to find a single case of a military tribunal ruling “not guilty.”

One of several case studies Bomse presented was that of Nachum Korman, a settler who stomped to death 12-year-old Hilmi Shusha on Oct. 27, 1996. In spite of the fact that there were Palestinian eyewitnesses to the assault and an autopsy report that found Shusha died from multiple bruises to the neck, Jerusalem District Court Judge Ruth Orr found a reasonable doubt and suggested that death could have resulted from a birth defect.

Her decision was overturned on appeal, and Korman was convicted of manslaughter. He received a 15-month suspended sentence—shorter than the sentence usually imposed for car theft—and six months’ community service, which he served in an old age home. Such a sentence obviously is not meant to deter settler crimes against Palestinians even in the case of murder, Bomse said, let alone lesser crimes of theft, assault and property damage.

Each agency of the Israeli justice system allows settlers to commit crimes against Palestinians with almost total impunity. Bomse said the parallel legal structures violate human rights, destroy the rule of law, and threaten Israeli democracy itself. Palestinians, she pointed out, can do little to change the system. It is therefore incumbent on the international community to intervene, she argued. Because such occupation tactics are the leading cause of anti-Semitism in the world today, Bomse said there must be a disassociation between “anti-Semitism” and Israeli behavior.

Bomse’s study was published in The Palestinian Human Rights Monitor (Vol. 6, #2) and can be read on the PHRMG Web site.

AMA Holds 7th Annual Convention

The American Muslim Alliance held its 7th Annual National Convention Oct. 5 at Edison, New Jersey. Workshops and panels addressed issues of citizenship, building civic institutions, and forming coalitions. The Alliance brought together at the convention Muslim officials elected after Sept. 11, 2001. They advised their listeners to “do the little things”: build a presence in their communities, join local civic groups, and encourage more Muslim women to get involved.

Dr. Agha Saeed, AMA national chairman, said the negative consequences for Muslims, Christian Arabs, Sikhs, and others did not begin on Sept. 11, but only intensified. The 1996 Anti-Terrorist Act already had compromised civil rights for Muslims, he said, and the 1999 decision in ADC vs. Reno concluded that someone who is not a citizen has no protection against selective persecution.

Since then, Dr. Saeed said, America has gone from secret evidence to no evidence at all and to open racism. The basic crisis of civil rights today is not airport profiling, he argued, but the denial of due process and of equality before the law. The most central issue, he emphasized, is the profiling of Muslim-Americans’ thoughts, consciences, and beliefs.

There have been positive post-9/11 signs as well, he said, including a more than 300 percent increase in conversion to Islam. Dr. Saeed described this as seemingly counterintuitive, but attributed it to the entire world now having a conversation about Islam, with many finding it has much to offer. The Qur’an, he said, is the most read book these days, and this makes Jerry Falwell nervous. The fact that Muslim candidates are winning local elections, Agha Saeed pointed out, proves that most Americans are fair.

The past year has forced Muslims to come out of their cocoons and learn about other struggles, the AMA leader observed. It has cemented the relationship between immigrant Muslims and American Muslims, he said, and has seen the emergence of a truly important coalition between Blacks and Muslims. Dr. Saeed called those Blacks who have sacrificed their political careers through commitment to principles and dignity, such as Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), the foundation of the coalition and the most honorable people in this country.

The keynote speaker, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, described a patriot as someone who, when she sees her country going wrong, does all in her power to set it right. “We are a great and good people who have done well with our power at times,” he said, “but now we are on a wrong course. We live in a moment of maximum peril.”

Clark called the war on terrorism a break with international legal and moral principles, of all cultures, throughout all time. It has compromised civil rights domestically, he said, and led to Israeli tanks in the West Bank, Indian soldiers on Pakistan’s borders, and repressive laws in Colombia. The U.S. is now set on aggression against a foreign country, he continued, and our first choice is the Cradle of Civilization.

Following the Gulf war, Clark pointed out, in which some 150,000 Iraqis were killed and the infrastructure destroyed, the sanctions that have been in place for more than 12 years have killed another million and a half. U.S. aircraft overfly Iraq every day, regularly fire rockets and drop bombs, and have never lost a plane. The psychology of the plan to initiate war against Iraq, Clark charged, is that you hate the people to whom you have done an injustice.

The goal should be to contain violence, not to expand it, he said. Clark concluded by quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., who said one year to the day before he was killed, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my own country.”

The Dr. Martin Luther King Award was presented in appreciation to Dr. Agha Saeed and the Malcom X Award to Rep. Cynthia McKinney for her courage. In accepting the award, McKinney thanked the many people who put their faith in her. She said the U.S. used to be admired not for its military might, but for values of dignity, justice, and freedom. Now horrible things are being done in our name, she said. The three wealthiest Americans are richer than two-thirds of the most impoverished countries, she told the audience, suggesting that our value today is vulgar greed and attention to wealth.

Her campaign didn’t lose the election, McKinney said, but was stolen through AIPAC involvement in targeting her election and because 40,000 Republicans voted in the Democratic primary, in effect hijacking the election. Her initial thought after the election, she said, was, “Free at last.” Rep. McKinney then realized, she said, that it is a turning point and the beginning of a movement. “Let no one take away our voices, our votes, or our dignity,” McKinney urged.

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York metropolitan area.