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Adalah’s Newsletter is a monthly publication issued in Arabic, Hebrew
and English. It highlights Adalah’s main activities, provides analysis
of human rights issues, and links to new reports. Suggestions, articles
and commentaries from our readers are welcome.
View
previous volumes
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| Opening Remarks |
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| In
September 2005, the Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, and the State
Attorney at the time, Eran Shendar, held a press conference at which
they announced their strong support of the report of Mahash (the Police
Investigations Unit) to close all of the investigatory files and not to
file indictments against those responsible for the deaths of thirteen
Arab young men and the injury of hundreds of others in October 2000.
Shortly afterwards Mazuz announced that he had issued instructions to a
team within his office to conduct another review of Mahash’s report. At
that time Adalah warned that this team was not neutral and that there
was a conflict of interest as it was placed under the authority
of Shendar,
who was the head of Mahash during October 2000 and is responsible for
the failure to investigate the killings together with Elyakim
Rubinstein, formerly the Attorney General, and Edna Arbel, the State
Prosecutor at the time. They gave the orders to adopt a strict policy
of arrests and detention against Arab demonstrators and they refrained
from issuing orders to “Mahash” to investigate the killings and the
opening of fire on demonstrators. Today Rubinstein and Arbel are
Supreme Court justices. The conflict of interest in the team appointed
by Mazuz has prevented the victims’ families from appealing to a
neutral, independent judicial body. It therefore came as no surprise
that Mazuz has done his utmost to defend the law enforcement
authorities’ failures and Mahash’s conception, according to which
police were granted free rein in October 2000 to open fire as if they
were confronting an enemy on a battlefield. Contrary to the Or
Commission’s report, which criticized the way in which the police dealt
with Arab citizens in Israel, Mazuz sanctioned the use of snipers and
live fire against Arab demonstrators by not filing one indictment
against police. We have no trust in a person who treats us with
hostility and racism and incites against us. We shall continue our
struggle in the local and international arenas. Our struggle is a long
one, but we shall persevere in it with the victims’ families, our
people and with every person with a conscience until justice is done. |
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| Nakba 60
Anniversary |
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| A slide show of the Wadi al-Salib
neighborhood in Haifa, destroyed in the Nakba |
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