FIVE months after an arson attack in a Palestinian village killed three members of the Dawabsheh family, including the parents and an 18-month-old baby, two suspects were indicted by an Israeli court on January 3rd. A 21-year-old Jewish extremist was accused of setting the house alight and a minor was accused of having assisted him. Israel’s Shin Bet security service was certain from the start that the murderers came from a group of fanatical young settlers living on austere “hilltop” outposts in the West Bank. That it took such a long investigation, as well as 40 days of questioning during which the suspects were subjected to “special measures”—the euphemism used by Israel’s legal system for physical coercion or torture—is a sign of how difficult it is for Israelis to come to grips with anti-Arab racism within their society. “Special measures” are routinely used against Palestinian terror suspects; their employment against Israeli-Jewish detainees is unprecedented.
The suspects belong to a small group of young settlers committed to replacing the democratic Israeli state with a “Jewish kingdom”. Their actions have been...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1S8QaIE
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