The methods used in investigations by the Israeli Police in the Samaria and Judea districts are designed to ensure failure. Yesh Din observes that “victims’ complaints and testimonies were recorded in Hebrew rather than Arabic, the language in which they were given; the police investigators rarely visited the crime scenes, and in the cases when they did arrive on site, defects were noted in documenting the events; in many cases testimony was not collected from key witnesses, including suspects and both Palestinian and Israeli eyewitnesses of the incident; live identification line-ups of Israeli civilian suspects were hardly ever carried out,” Yesh Din reports.
The Yesh Din findings are not an aberration. The group reports that when in 2006 it first examined the record of the Israeli Police in the Samaria and Judea districts it found that the rate of closure of files without any further action being taken was 90 percent. In other words, there has been no improvement in the 2 year interregnum.
One of the loudest claims of the pro-Israel lobby is that it is, as Kevin Rudd wrote on December 10 2004, “a vibrant, democratic state in a region where democracy remains far from the norm.”
But in genuine democracies law enforcement authorities do not discriminate on the basis of race. And Mr Rudd there can be no excuses for a nation that calls itself a democracy allowing so many serious criminal investigations to go into the ‘who cares, they are only Palestinians’ basket.
Source: Crikey.com
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Greg Barns is a barrister, author and former Liberal state and federal government adviser. He advised New South Wales Premier Nick Greiner, federal Finance Minister John Fahey and ran the 1999 Republic Referendum campaign with Malcolm Turnbull. He was chair of the Australian Republican Movement from 1999-2002. After being disendorsed as Liberal candidate for the Tasmanian seat of Denison, he joined the Democrats. He is the author of What’s Wrong with the Liberal Party? (2003) and Selling the Australian Government: Politics and Propaganda from Whitlam to Howard (2005). Greg lives in Hobart and is a weekly columnist with the Hobart Mercury.