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January 11th, 2018 
Awake Goy Thanks, Yumna. I just finished reading an excellent and comprehensive article by Joshua Leifer over at +972:
“‘There is no justice in Israel — it’s always postponed’
The Nawara family expected to hear the sentence of the Israeli soldier who killed their son, Nadeem. Instead, they were forced to sit quietly while the soldier’s lawyer argued that it was not his client but Nadeem who was guilty of a crime. …
The Beitunia shootings have also become a prime example of how, even when faced with overwhelming evidence, many Israelis, and especially those who are professional defenders of the state and its policies, refuse to believe that Israeli forces can do any wrong.
As part of the sentencing proceedings, Ben Deri’s lawyer, Zion Amir called several character-witnesses to testify on Deri’s behalf and persuade the judge to grant him a lenient sentence. Amir, a well-known criminal defense lawyer, has made his career defending right-wing extremists and some of Israel’s most unsavory characters: former President Moshe Katzav, convicted of rape; the Jewish youths who burned the Dawabshe family to death in the West Bank village of Duma; and the Israelis who killed Haftom Zarhum, an Eritrean asylum seeker, in a lynching following a terrorist attack at the Be’er Sheva central bus station in October 2015. Amir has worked with the Honenu legal group, which represented the three Israelis who burned to death 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir in 2014.
Three of the five witnesses that Amir called to the stand had been Deri’s commanding officers; the fourth was an army human-resources officer whom knew Deri well, while the fifth was a high-ranking police munitions expert. None of them seemed to understand that by signing the plea bargain, Deri had admitted to killing Nadeem, nor that the charge of negligent manslaughter was two-fold: not only had he fired a live round instead of a rubber-coated bullet, but he had fired at someone who did not present an immediate danger.
The army officers spoke about the shooting as if it were theoretical. “I don’t believe this event occurred,” one of Ben’s commanding officers said. “Ben was the most moral soldier in the unit,” another claimed, adding, “I didn’t believe the things that were reported.” “If one of my children would grow up to be like Ben, I would praise God,” the third commanding officer said. “He did his job, he fired a rubber bullet. I put him on the front, and I would do it again,” the third officer concluded. The judge intervened to remind them that Ben Deri had, in fact, admitted to causing Nadeem’s death. For a moment, even Zion Amir looked embarrassed.
Then the high-ranking munitions expert took the stand. “There’s no such thing as a scene that’s free from danger,” responding to Amir’s prompts to describe the situation from the soldier’s point of view. “From our perspective, anyone at the scene [of a protest] presents a threat.” It is rare to hear the Israeli military’s view of Palestinian protesters so clearly and nonchalantly articulated.
Blaming the victim
As the hearing dragged to a close, the prosecution presented its recommendations quickly: a strong sentence, including jail time, not simply for the crime but to deter future negligence. The lead prosecutor, a tall woman with jet-black hair, pointed out that the defense witnesses and Deri himself had shown little remorse or willingness to take responsibility for the killing.
When it was time for the defense’s closing arguments, however, Amir put on a show. Draped in the billowy black robe that Israeli lawyers wear in court, and with white hair that descended to his collar, Amir assumed the role of a kind of cartoon villain. He had already demanded that the judge order veteran Haaretz journalist Amira Hass to sit in the back of the room because her typing disturbed him, and continued to throw threatening looks in Hass’s direction throughout the trial. Now, he demanded that the judge force Assali, who was translating for Nadeem’s father, to move seats or leave the courtroom. People talking behind his back made him feel threatened, Amir said.
His closing remarks were long-winded. He claimed to “express the cry of soldiers who defend their homeland.” He stressed, “We are in a war for our lives here, I’m not exaggerating.” He asked that the text of the court proceedings be edited so that Avner Gvaryahu, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, could not use them against Israel at the United Nations. He threatened to withdraw the plea bargain. He asked the judge for a light sentence and to rule out jail time, calling the prosecution’s recommendation “a call for punishment that cries out to the heavens in its injustice.” He demanded the judge accept new material that would strengthen the case against Deri having to serve any time — even community service.
Halfway through Amir’s remarks, he switched from defending his client to, perversely, casting blame on Nadeem. The teenager’s face was covered by a keffiyeh when he was killed — why, Amir asked, “perhaps because he wanted to a commit a crime?” “Something in the deceased’s behavior was meant to threaten,” Amir charged. He claimed Nadeem had thrown stones, adding that stone throwing is a crime punishable by a mandatory minimum. “No one should call a 17 year old who goes to a protest to throw stones a good boy,” Amir declaimed. It was as if Nadeem was being tried for getting killed. …”
much more @ https://972mag.com/there-is-no-justice-in-israel-its-always-postponed/132320/
Source Article from http://mondoweiss.net/2018/01/israeli-teenage-protest/
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