Stop Press: Spain to investigate top Israelis for crimes against humanity

Note: Crocwatch has translated excerpts from the Spanish judge’s judicial decree; you can read these by going to the previous post, ‘Spanish judge’s account of alleged Israeli crimes against humanity‘.

Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli minister for national infrastructure, but also a former Minister of Defence, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Communications and Minister of Housing & Construction, may be tried for ‘crimes against humanity’ by Spain’s Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles of the Spanish High Court (Audiencia Nacional) in Madrid. The news, published today by El Pais and other Spanish media, will be welcomed by all those who believe that the time has come to bring the Israeli government to book for its alleged war crimes against Palestinians and against the UN. Ben-Eliezer and the rest of the Israelis who are being investigated will join the likes of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and Argentina’s Rafael Videla (known as the ‘dapper’ state terrorist), both of whom were also pursued by the Spanish courts for the brutality of their regimes.

According to El Pais, Judge Andreu will investigate Ben-Eliezer and six other military (see below) for presumed crimes against humanity. The men are believed to have organised the bombing in 2002 of a densely populated area of Gaza in order to assassinate the Hamas leader, Salah Shehadeh. The attack, which was carried out with a one-ton bomb dropped by an U.S.-built F16, killed Shehadeh and also 14 other civilians, amongst them Shehadeh’s wife and 9 children. 50 other civilians had to be hospitalised. Ben-Eliezer was the Israeli Defence Minister at the time of the assassination.

After the attack took place, it was almost universally condemned (beyond Israel) because it involved the targeting of the Hamas leader in a very densely populated area of Gaza City. Crocwatch believes that the Israeli government not only authorised the operation, but must have known that the use of such a massive bomb on a house in Gaza City was bound to cause many civilian deaths. A case can be made that this assassination was a kind of prelude to the military action that has recently killed hundreds and hundreds of civilians in Gaza. Presumably some or all of the current members of the Israeli government and military will now also face investigation in Spain for any other war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians, and against the UN.

According to El Pais, the other Israelis who will be investigated are: Dan Halutz, the commander of the Israeli Air Force at the time of the attack; Doron Almog, the general in charge of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) Southern Command; Giora Eiland, the president of the National Security Agency and national security assessor; Michael Herzog, the military attaché of the Minister of Defence; Moshe Ya’alon, the Chief of Staff of the IDF; and Abraham Dichter, the director of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security services.

Postscript: According to the Wikipedia entry on Salah Shehadeh, at the time former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, himself described by many as the ‘Butcher of Beirut’, initially praised the assassination as ‘one of our greatest successes’. Two years later, Sharon was visited by the current director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, in a mission to develop better relations with Israel. Thompson recently blocked attempts by UK aid agencies to broadcast a humanitarian appeal for the people of Gaza.

Update, 18:22 GMT. El Pais is suggesting that the Israeli government is going to do ‘all that it can’ to stop the investigation from going forward. Readers may wish to click the link to the excellent post published by desertpeace.wordpress.com, titled ‘Spain: Don’t succumb to Israeli pressure‘

~ by crocwatch on 29 January 2009.