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December
20, 2002, 9:30 a.m. By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz |
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December 12, 2002, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Tzvi Gurfinkel ruled
that the Israeli judicial system has jurisdiction to try Fatah leader
Marwan Barghouti for crimes including murder, aiding and abetting murder,
attempted murder, criminal conspiracy, and serving as an active member
of a terrorist organization. Attorneys for the defense maintained that
Israel does not have that right because Barghouti is a "freedom fighter"
and because of provisions in the Oslo accords.
The Tel Aviv court rejected the defense arguments, saying that terrorist activities are not freedom fighting and that the Oslo accords can no longer tie Israel's hands due to the ongoing aggressions carried out against Israelis under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. Marwan Barghouti was head of Fatah's local armed militias, known as the Tanzim and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, until his April 15 arrest at the height of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield counterterrorism campaign. Fatah, it should be noted, is headed by PA leader Yasser Arafat, who, Barghouti has admitted, personally approved every financial outlay of the organization.
Each time his trial has resumed, Barghouti has turned his public appearances into a media circus. While he piously shoots out slogans adopted by the Israeli Left — with equal fluency in Hebrew, English, and Arabic — Marwan Barghouti's charge sheet paints a picture of a blood-drenched arch-terrorist. According to the indictment, Barghouti "led, managed, paid for, and activated terrorist activities against Israeli targets, using leading terrorist activists." Among the dozens of terrorist attacks he oversaw were the following: the murder of six Jews during a Bat Mitzvah celebration in Hadera; a shooting spree on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, which killed two; another such attack in Tel Aviv, which killed three; the murder of a Greek Orthodox monk on the road to Maaleh Adumim; the murder of a policewoman in Nvei Yaakov; and the murder of a coffee company owner and philanthropist in Atarot.
Indeed, Barghouti has never denied his involvement in terrorism. Quite the contrary. On March 3, 2002, he issued a statement claiming Fatah was responsible for a devastating shooting attack between Ofrah and Shilo that claimed ten lives. He was also proud of his role in starting and directing the current terrorist onslaught against Israel. As he boasted to the London-based al-Hayat newspaper on September 29, 2001, "I knew that the end of the month of September [2000] would be the last opportunity before the explosion, but when Sharon arrived at the al-Aqsa mosque it was the [most-suitable] moment for the outbreak of the Intifada. . . . The meaning of this: setting fire to the entire region, and specifically [due to the fact] that the issue of Al Aqsa inflames and ignites the sensibilities of the masses. . . . I saw within the situation an historic opportunity to ignite the conflict. . . ."
Nor was 2000 the start of Barghouti's career as a fomenter of terrorism. Contrary to his claims that he is a supporter of peace with Israel, in a March 1997 address to the PA Legislative Council, the Fatah leader expressed his condolences to the family of the suicide bomber who murdered three women at the Apropos Cafe in Tel Aviv that year. He was interrupted by thunderous applause from PA officials. In response, even far-Left Knesset member Ran Cohen (Meretz) called upon his colleagues to cut off all contacts with Barghouti.
Incredibly, the charges filed against Marwan Barghouti do not include offenses carrying the death penalty. It is even widely assumed that the attorney general opted to prosecute Barghouti in civil (rather than military) court specifically to avoid the possibility of a death penalty for the Fatah terrorist. Once convicted of his crimes, he is likely to face life in prison, where he may become a pawn in the attempts to negotiate the freedom of kidnapped Israeli Elchanan Tannenbaum, supposedly held by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
While Marwan Barghouti is not a citizen of the state of Israel, recent revelations of terrorist cells (some of which include in their ranks Israeli Arabs) have raised the question of the death penalty in cases of treason. While such a punishment does appear in the Israeli penal code, it is unlikely to be applied. When Arabs holding Israeli citizenship were charged in early October with the murder of no fewer than 35 people in the Cafe Moment, Hebrew University, and Rishon LeTzion terrorist attacks, along with an attempted mega-attack against an Israeli fuel depot, prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
Knesset Law Committee Chairman Michael Eitan (Likud), speaking with Arutz Sheva radio, explained that "a terrorist who has been caught and is in our hands . . . [whom] we put to death will become a hero, and will cause others to want to take his place . . . [E]ach death sentence we pass will take a long while, and invite world pressure, etc. We must fight them on the battlefield." Eitan failed to explain why exactly a terrorist executed by an Israeli court inflames Arab passions more than a terrorist eliminated in an Apache helicopter attack on his car.
The United States, by contrast, was quite willing to let a terrorist become a hero, so long as he was a dead one. On November 14, 2002, the state of Virginia put Aimal Khan Kasi to death by lethal injection. Kasi was the Pakistani national who went on a shooting rampage in front of CIA headquarters in 1993, killing two people and injuring three others. His motivation, he said, was America's "interference" in Muslim states. Not only were American authorities umoved by arguments against the execution that Kas would attain hero status in Pakistan (2,000 Pakistanis turned out for eulogies honoring the "martyr"), they were equally undeterred by threats of retaliation against U.S. interests and citizens. Justice was served; Kasi had to pay the ultimate penalty for his terrorist murders.
The sensitivity with which the Israeli justice system treats human life — unlike, we may note, all of its neighbors — is shown by the lone execution carried out by an Israeli court: the hanging of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann on May 30, 1962. He was punished pursuant to the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law 5710-1950.
Section 1(a) of that law provides:
A person who has committed one of the following offences — (1) during the period of the Nazi regime in a hostile country, carried out an act constituting a crime against the Jewish People; (2) during the period of the Nazi regime, carried out an act constituting a crime against humanity, in a hostile country; (3) during the period of the Second World War, carried out an act constituting a war crime, in a hostile country — is liable to the death penalty.
After almost 700 deaths at the hands of terrorists since September 2000, perhaps the Knesset needs to update the above law, drop the qualifier "during the period of the Nazi regime," and begin imposing the death penalty on those modern killers, such as Marwan Barghouti, who have committed thousands of "crimes against the Jewish people."
— Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is opinion editor at www.IsraelNationalNews.com.