Hamas War

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Public "enemies"

Last week, I met an old friend, a young mother, who has a child in jail. He's one of the kids on the poster. (I couldn't find it on google, so luckily I had one at home to photograph.) He's not a criminal. All he did was protest government policy.

Lots of kids I know were arrested during the anti-Disengagement protests. Some were beaten and injured by the police. Some spent time in jail.

In the almost two years since, most everyone has been trying to recover, get on with their lives. Some of the kids have married. Some have been drafted into the army. They're studying. They're working. And in some cases, the legal wrangling has continued unabated.

Even though nothing had been promised by the government, it was hoped that the government would follow the precedent of what Menachem Begin did after the anti-Camp David, Sinai withdrawal and destruction of Yamit and other communities. Begin closed all the cases for the sake of national unity.

Instead, Olmert's government has declared "war" on the young protesters and will be prosecuting 146 of them.



ISRAEL PREPARES FOR MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TRIALS
Israeljustice.com
Date added: 6/19/2007

JERUSALEM [IsraelJustice.com] -- Israel has prepared for the trials of nearly 150 people, most of them minors, charged with resisting the military expulsion of 16,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank in 2005.
The government has prepared virtually identical indictments for the 146 defendants alleged to have resisted the Israeli eviction and demolition of Kfar Darom, one of 16 Jewish communities destroyed in the Gaza Strip.
"I thought it was over," Knesset member Yitzhak Levy of the National Religious Party said. "Now they are beginning to get dates for trials. This is very serious; most of these indictments are political."
All of the defendants, some of them as young as 12 at the time, were charged with assault, with a maximum sentence of seven years. Protesters deemed to have thrown liquids, food or sprayed foam towards the eviction forces were charged with aggravated assault, punishable by up to 20 years in jail. For the complete article, click here.

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