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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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