IDF policy requires a criminal investigation be launched immediately when military operations in the occupied Palestinian territories cause death. But a defective system essentially ensures that the investigation will not be conducted in a fair and impartial manner, enabling soldiers to continue to act with impunity. This article was first published in The Jerusalem Post and is reprinted with permission.

The death of 28-year-old Mustafa Tamimi of the village of Nabi Saleh last month raises questions about the Israeli military establishment’s investigative processes.

Tamimi was only the latest casualty of the IDF’s abundant use of tear gas to disperse Palestinian popular protest. Dozens of people have been seriously injured or killed in recent years, including Bassem Abu Rahma, who died in 2009 after being shot in the chest with a tear gas canister in the nearby village of Bil’in, and Abu Rahma’s sister Jawaher, who died one year ago this week after inhaling tear gas.

Because the tear gas canister killed Tamimi – rather than severely injuring and disabling him – the Israeli military has already launched an investigation. That is an improvement over the Bassem Abu Rahma case, when it took more than a year (and significant pressure from his family, neighbors and Israeli human rights organizations Yesh Din and B’Tselem, all of whom presented the then military advocate-general with a draft High Court of Justice petition) to get the military to investigate.

Today, IDF policy requires a criminal investigation to be launched immediately whenever military operations in the occupied Palestinian territories cause death (excluding armed exchanges). The policy was presumably introduced to boost the system’s compatibility with international legal standards.

But closer examination of Israeli military investigations, from before and after the policy change, reveals that the mere fact of investigation does not guarantee that it will be independent, impartial, professional, effective, prompt and open to public scrutiny.

In fact, Yesh Din’s recently published report, “Alleged Investigation,” reveals major failings in the investigations of the full spectrum of offenses allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians and their property – from looting and theft, to beatings and shootings, to causing death. So serious are these failings that only 6 percent of all cases in which a criminal investigation is opened lead to the indictment of suspected soldiers.

These failings stem directly from the lax investigative tools and methods employed by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (MPCID). For instance, the MPCID has no offices in the occupied Palestinian territories, so without NGOs and other agencies, Palestinians have little access to the military justice system. Fewer than 10% of complaints filed by Palestinians reach the MPCID without the intervention of outside agencies.

More significantly, few Military Police investigators speak or read Arabic, they rarely visit the scene of the crime, often neglect to question key witnesses, and hardly ever make use of conventional investigative tools beyond collecting testimonies (such as polygraph tests, line-ups, etc.).

What is more, Military Police investigations suffer from extreme delays, which necessarily damage the potential of the investigations to uncover the truth and lead to the prosecution and conviction of suspects. As a result, for instance, Bassem Abu Rahma’s death is still under investigation. His sister’s death and, for instance, the shooting of a 15-year-old in Hebron on his way home from school in 2008, an incident that caused permanent brain damage, go uninvestigated.

Since 2000, 39% of all complaints received by the MPCID were not investigated at all.

The result of a defective military investigations system is that Israeli soldiers act with virtual impunity, whether damaging personal property during nighttime searches, standing idly by while settlers harm Palestinians and their olive groves, or violating rules of engagement by shooting tear gas at close range directly at demonstrators like Tamimi and Abu Rahma. Meanwhile, the Israeli public sleeps well, believing that the bad apples are weeded out through an effective military justice system.

The Tamimi case presents Israel with an opportunity to make a clear choice. By appointing independent, professional investigators and dedicating the necessary resources Israel can establish itself as a nation that respects the rule of law. Alternatively, by dragging its feet and maintaining a system that is fraught with defects, the country will continue to flaunt international law and its responsibility to protect civilians under occupation and their property.

The Tamimi family and friends can only hope Israel chooses the former and conducts a prompt, thorough and effective investigation.

Emily Schaeffer is an attorney and a member of the legal team of Israeli NGO Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights, where she coordinates the organization’s “Accountability Project,” representing victims of crimes committed by soldiers and security personnel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

This is the promo for a series of films by other celebrities that will follow it.

Israel is being targeted for its violations of international law and failure to meet standards of equality, non-discrimination and human rights in the occupied territories as well as within Israel. There are many countries that violate the same or similar norms, and should the oppressed populations in those countries call for the international community to impose BDS on the governments controlling them, then much of the same Israeli and international community that has decided to heed the Palestinian call for BDS against Israel would follow their lead as well.

Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of misconceptions about the Palestinian BDS call. The aim of the call is to target the Israeli government and entities that operate on its behalf or with its support. So, for instance, if enough people around the world spread the truth about the beauty products corporation Ahava’s unlawful practices, then perhaps Ahava will be forced to end its operations in a settlement in occupied territory and stop plundering natural resources from that territory — all of which are done in contravention of international law and with the financial, legal and logistical support of the Israeli government. If enough major investors divest from corporations like Caterpillar for its provision of D9 bulldozers that raze homes and injure civilians, or Motorola for its provision of security and surveillance equipment and services that are key in maintaining the oppressive occupation, or the dozens of banks that provide loans for settlement construction, then perhaps these corporations will call on the Israeli government to change its practices in order to preserve their profits. If enough academics are called out for their affiliation with Israeli universities that are major players in research and development for the security industry and military activities in the West Bank, Gaza and beyond, then perhaps they will call on their universities to “divest” their time and energy from the occupation and “invest” more in healthy debate about how to promote peace, justice and human rights both within Israel and under occupation. The potential damage to profits, to images, and to feelings is real, but it is intended to be short-term — and moreover, it is incomparable to the damage that has been done and continues to be done to those who suffer from Israel’s policies and practices. In other words, “a small price to pay.” And much to gain. For everyone involved.

And in fact, it’s already happening. More and more corporations (including Veolia, Caterpillar and Africa-Israel) have withdrawn businesses involved in violating international law in the occupied territories, and artists and authors (including the Pixies, Elvis Costello, Annie Lennox, Sarah Shulman, Gil Scott-Heron, and Naomi Klein) have expressed their solidarity with the Palestinian BDS call by not performing in Israel for profit until Israel upholds international law.

In the meantime, these grassroots campaigns are an excellent means of raising awareness about the reality on the ground for Arab, Palestinian and Bedouin communities within Israel (against whom Israeli law discriminates in over 30 laws and numerous policies, nevermind the overt cultural exclusion they experience) and in the occupied territories, where rights to land, movement, family unification, education and protection from violence and property destruction (to name but a few) are regularly violated. No one wants to see the Pixies, Elvis Costello and the Alvin Ailey dance company perform in her home city more than I do. But when they cancel their performances — or are simply asked to — questions about why (and even anger and resentment toward the artists and the BDS call) spur essential discussions about Israel’s unjust actions.

But unfortunately, even BDS supporters often confuse the issues, boycotting anything and anyone associated with Israel. These kinds of sweeping boycotts are often counterproductive and spoil the very simple, strong message of the BDS movement, which calls for Israel to observe international law. For instance, the Israeli baker in downtown NYC should not be boycotted just because his country of origin is Israel (unless the bakery is somehow Israeli government supported, which seems quite unlikely). The Jewish klezmer band in Toronto should not be boycotted simply because its members may (or may not) be Zionists, unless the performance is sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Culture. The Israeli filmmaker whose film is featured in a Portland Israeli-Palestinian film festival should not be asked to withdraw from the festival if his film was funded by non-Israeli official sources.

Just because Israel and the Zionist movement have long encouraged every Jew and Israeli across the globe to stand with Israel no matter what it does, and to want a state that unapologetically grants preference and privilege to Jews at the expense of others, does not mean that every Jew and Israeli worldwide follows suit. And boycotting people based on their origin is a form of the same kind of unjust discrimination that the BDS movement seeks to end.

At the same time, just because a person supports BDS and aspires for major change in Israel does not mean that said person cannot love a million and a half aspects about the life, culture, landscape and even politics of Israel today and historically. Nor does it mean that Israelis need to boycott themselves (something that is neither possible nor part of the Palestinian call). The only thing that is black and white in the BDS movement is that the call will remain in effect until Israel — with a lot of help from its friends — ceases to violate international humanitarian and human rights law.

This confusion must be straightened out in order for the simple and strong message of BDS to be heard and for its goals to be reached sooner than later. In that same spirit, just as debate and critique surrounding Israel are healthy and important (and do not equate anti-Semitism), I would encourage anyone who wants to see positive change in the region but is critical or skeptical or dubious regarding the BDS movement not to shun it or feel alienated by it — but to engage in the debate around it.

There’s more than one way to advocate for justice and equality in Israel/Palestine, and BDS is only one strategy. But of the many possibilities, wouldn’t we all prefer those, like BDS, that are non-violent, bottom-up, of the people and for the people, and that have a simple and just goal? After all, aren’t critics of the Palestinian cause constantly asking where the non-violent movement is? Well, here is just one example of where you can find it (among others, such as the Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee whose work is often mentioned on this blog). And so I would just ask those who oppose BDS, but truly believe in justice and equality over profits and oppression: what are they afraid of — or what they are defending?

While Israel and its supporters become wildly hysterical over calls by Jews and non-Jews alike to boycott, divest and impose sanctions on Israel for its continued and well-documented human rights abuses, rampant discrimination even within its borders, and alleged commission of war crimes in Gaza and elsewhere — calling these calls anti-Semitic, Israel and its supporters have a long-standing history of boycotting Palestinian and Arab institutions, products, and even individuals (e.g. Gazans, as Levy explains). Meanwhile, while those boycotts include the withholding of humanitarian aid and by doing so harm millions of Palestinians in a very tangible and physical way, the BDS calls against Israel (the boycott of the boycotter) and those who invest in it are purposefully non-violent and hold the potential to harm Israelis and investors in the occupation only economically.

Levy explains:

Most people here are appalled at the notion that anybody beyond Israel’s borders would think to boycott their country, products or universities. Boycotts, after all, are viewed in Israel as illegitimate. Anyone who calls for such a step is perceived as an anti-Semite and Israel-hater who is undermining the state’s very right to exist. In Israel itself, those who call for a boycott are branded as traitors and heretics. The notion that a boycott, limited as it may be, is likely to convince Israel to change its ways – and for its own benefit – is not tolerated here.

It would be possible to identify with these intolerant reactions were it not for the fact that Israel itself is one of the world’s prolific boycotters. Not only does it boycott, it preaches to others, at times even forces others, to follow in tow. Israel has imposed a cultural, academic, political, economic and military boycott on the territories. At the same time, almost no one here utters a dissenting word questioning the legitimacy of these boycotts. Yet the thought of boycotting the boycotter? Now that’s inconceivable.

The most brutal, naked boycott is, of course, the siege on Gaza and the boycott of Hamas. At Israel’s behest, nearly all Western countries signed onto the boycott with inexplicable alacrity. This is not just a siege that has left Gaza in a state of shortage for three years. Nor is it just a complete (and foolish ) boycott of Hamas, save for the discussions over abducted soldier Gilad Shalit. It’s a series of cultural, academic, humanitarian and economic boycotts. Israel threatens nearly every diplomat who seeks to enter Gaza to see firsthand the unbearable sights.

In addition, Israel bars entry to anyone who wishes to lend humanitarian aid. We should note that the boycott isn’t just against Hamas, but against all Gaza, everyone who lives there. The convoy of ships that will soon sail from Europe to try to break the siege will carry thousands of tons of construction material, prefab houses and medicine. Israel has announced that it plans to stop the vessels. A boycott is a boycott.

Doctors, professors, artists, jurists, intellectuals, economists, engineers – none of them are permitted to enter Gaza. This is a complete boycott that bears the tag “Made in Israel.” Those who speak about immoral and ineffective boycotts do so without batting an eye when it comes to Gaza.

Israel is also urging the world to boycott Iran.

Anyone who is suspected of supporting the Palestinians or expressing concern for their lot is boycotted and expelled. This group includes a clown who came to organize a conference; a peace activist who was due to appear at a symposium; and scientists, artists and intellectuals who arouse suspicions that they back the Palestinian cause. This is a cultural and academic boycott on all counts, the type of boycott that we reject when it is used against us.

Yet the anti-boycott country’s list of boycotted parties does not end there. Even a Jewish-American organization like J Street, which defines itself as pro-Israel, has felt the long arm of the Israeli boycott. It is permissible to boycott J Street because it champions peace, but we can’t tolerate a boycott of products made in settlements that were built on usurped land.

As long as the Israelis don’t pay any price, there won’t be a change.

This is a legitimate, moral position. It is no less legitimate or moral than those who claim that a boycott is an immoral, ineffective tool while exercising that same option against others. So you oppose a boycott against Israel? Then let’s first do away with all the boycotts we have imposed ourselves.”

Emily gives a summary of Bil'in's legal actions under a poster of Bassem Abu Rahma, killed at a demo one year ago, April 17.

By Emily Schaeffer

Some of us have become so used to West Bank demonstrations meaning major Israeli army presence, and, typically, the use of weapons, that we have forgotten what demonstrations in a democracy look like. We’ve forgotten that a protest against oppressive working conditions in downtown New York City, or against oppressive abortion policies in Fredericton, Canada, or against wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in cities including London, Sydney, Paris, San Francisco and Toronto — means police presence only when the protests become so large that they overcrowd public spaces and need direction, when they damage city property, or (get this) when the protesters themselves might be at risk from onlookers with opposing views.

And so we attend demonstration after demonstration — from Bil’in to Al-Ma’asara to Hebron to Nabi Salah, and more — and we are enraged time and time again by the unjustified, disproportionate, immoral response of the army and border police.

But we hardly ever ask ourselves: why are they even here?

Ambulance evacuates Eymad Rezqa, hit in the head with a tear gas canister and is still in hospital.

What would happen if the army didn’t show up one Friday in Bil’in, for instance? If the army hadn’t shown up on Friday, April 23, at the 5th Annual Conference Demonstration, then Eymad Rezqa (also spelled Imad Rizka, dedicated Palestinian-Israeli activist) would not have been shot in the head with a tear gas canister and rushed to surgery; 2 Italian demonstrators, one Israeli activist, 2 Bil’in residents, a Palestinian woman from Bethlehem and a Palestinian journalist would not have been lightly injured by direct shots or shrapnel of tear gas and shock grenade canisters, and as it is rumored from a new type of weapon; 3 Israelis, one Mexican citizen, and one Palestinian would not have been arrested and detained for nearly 12 hours, released on the condition that they post bail and stay out of Bil’in and Ni’lin for 15 days; hundreds would not have suffered from the horrible feeling of tear gas inhalation (which studies show may damage reproductive organs, among other risks); and several pre-teens and teens might not have risked being caught by army cameras today only to be arrested out of their beds tomorrow and called in for interrogation for stone-throwing, likely to be given months of jail time for an offense that in most countries would bring a fine or perhaps a few weeks’ community service.

Masses of tear gas and shock grenades cover the demonstrators by the wall in Bi'lin.

The army has repeatedly claimed that their use of dispersal tactics (that have proven lethal) against the demonstrators is based on 3 main factors: 1) the demonstrations in and of themselves are illegal, as according to Israeli military orders a gathering of more than 10 people with a political or ideological purpose is an illegal assembly (and as of the latest military order it is illegal for Israelis to be within 200 meters of the wall); 2) they are responding to the dangerous stone-throwing by demonstrators, and in fact several soldiers and border police have been injured by these stones; and, 3) they are protecting the wall.

So technically when 10 Palestinians sit in a courtyard and discuss over tea the fact that they couldn’t access their fields yesterday they are committing an illegal act and should be tear gassed and/or arrested. Why does this sound logical to any thinking person? But let’s bring it to the more common example — the demonstration. Popular protest exists all over the world. Occupation is a scenario that logically leads to protest, and in fact under international law it is fully justified. Now Israel can compare itself to plenty of brutal occupations and dictatorships and perhaps still come out on top; but that’s not what Israel proclaims itself to be. Rather, Israel claims to be a democracy with the most moral army and occupation in the world. Under that paradigm, how can we reconcile the suppression of popular protest? Moreover, how can we justify it for 43 years and counting?

As for stone-throwing, we can all have mixed feelings about it, and for some it is the one contradiction to our repeated claims of a nonviolent movement. Still, if the army weren’t there, what reason would there be to throw stones? And if stones were thrown — because sometimes kids, everywhere in the world, pick up stones and throw them — who would they harm?

Now we come to the wall. Protecting state property — or military property. The army claims to the New York Times that if it didn’t show up, the fence/wall would be destroyed.

Rioters hurl rocks, Molotov cocktails and burning tires at defense forces and the security fence,’ the military said in a statement when asked why it had taken to arresting village leaders in the middle of the night. ‘Since the beginning of 2008, about 170 members of the defense forces have been injured in these villages,’ it added, including three soldiers who were so badly hurt they could no longer serve in the army. It also said that at Bilin itself, some $60,000 worth of damage had been done to the barrier in the past year and a half.”

Let’s put aside the fact that in Bil’in this wall is not only illegal under international law (because it illegally annexes occupied territory and what is more, for illegal settlements), but it is also illegal according to the High Court’s September 2007 ruling. Regardless, what the army is saying is that Palestinian lives (and those of their Israeli and international supporters) are worth risking in order to protect a set of metal objects (illegally placed there).

Now, one can imagine that the police would break up a group of people vandalizing or otherwise damaging a city hall, a museum building, a set of train tracks, or even private property in most democratic nations. But would they fire high velocity tear gas canisters directly at those people? Would they shoot rubber bullets? Live ammunition? Is this a proportionate — and dare I say — moral response?

Abdullah Abu Rahma answered the Israeli Army in that same New York Times article.

They want to destroy our movement because it is nonviolent,” he said. He added that some villagers might have tried, out of frustration, to cut through the fence since the court had ordered it moved and nothing had happened. But that is not the essence of the popular movement that he has helped lead.

‘We need our land,’ he told his visitors. ‘It is how we make our living. Our message to the world is that this wall is destroying our lives, and the occupation wants to kill our struggle.”

And now I will ask a different question. What would the demonstrators do if the army didn’t show up? One can imagine that at least the first few times the demonstration would have as much vigor and passion as any other day. Flags would be waved, chants chanted, brilliant and creative references would be made, and the media would capture them. But would demonstrators feel that their audience was missing? Would the media continue to show up week after week for a bloodless story in a culture of media sensationalism? Would the same frustration behind the stone-throwing be channeled somewhere we could support less?

Luma, Abdullah Abu Rahma's daughter, distributes posters in solidarity with father in jail for participation in Bil'in's non-violent movement.

Or would the demonstrations grow in numbers? Would their messages and tactics become more creative and attention-drawing? Would leaders currently jailed for organizing nonviolent resistance be free to start and expand new political and social movements? Would villages no longer terrorized by night arrest raids have the freedom to focus on their daily lives and on resisting the rest of the oppressive occupation policies? Is this perhaps the real reason why the army shows up?

There are those who come to demonstrations once or twice and conclude that both sides need each other in order to feel at the end of the day that power and persistence were demonstrated. But I dare say that the nonviolent resistance does not need the army; rather, the army needs to violently respond to the nonviolent resistance in order to attempt to contain it, in order to report back home (a few dozen km away) and to the world that Palestinians must be violently reproached, in order to experiment with new weapons for the world’s weapons industry, and in order to use enough weapons to maintain the same budget demands from Israel and its foreign aid suppliers year after year.

The good news is that the Palestinian nonviolent resistance apparently cannot be contained, even in the face of such extreme violence. But it is taking its toll. And I only hope that we can all shake out of what has become a normal scenario for us, and re-sensitize ourselves to this completely abnormal, illogical and unjustified military response to popular protest, in order to bring this reality to Israelis and to the world.

Women in solidarity: Luma (Abduallah's daughter), MEP (former VP) Luisa Morgantini, wife of Adib (another Bil'in prisoner), friend.

When I was a little girl, I sent my allowance to the Jewish National Fund to plant trees in Israel in the name of family members. I was told and passed on stories about an underdog that after centuries of persecution had finally found refuge in its birthplace only to face a group of greedy, violent people that had homes on two continents but insisted on denying my people this tiny strip of land. More anti-Semitism, I thought.

It took only a few months of living in Israel as an undergraduate student in the late 1990s to discover the lies – or at least key missing information – from my childhood. When I dug further, I also found out how much these rewritings of history and of the present had taken the world captive and rendered some of the most politically and economically powerful world nations Israel’s great enablers. As long as relations with Israel are normalized, its actions go unchecked, and no one really asks about the details, about “Who Profits?”. After all, support for Israel is sold to the general public as a means of supporting the only democracy in the Middle East.

But this is not a democracy; it is a nation and a nation’s people spoiled (in both senses of the word) by a separate and unequal domestic regime and an occupation that has become a 43 year-old violent apartheid. And while we Israelis accept restraints even on our own freedoms, we reap the benefits of this regime every day. Thanks to the multi-billion dollar version of my childhood tree-planting – foreign aid, military investments, and the telecommunications industry, among others – our economy stood strong while much of the world faced a recession. Ingenious inventions like the separation wall and bypass roads have meant that not only do we barely think about violent attacks within Israel but we don’t even have to see our neighbors who no longer can work or shop or socialize in our cities and towns. And we hardly worry about sending our children to the army now that they can fight remote-control wars that we only have to think about if we choose to open the paper or watch the news.

I recently met a young, hip Tel Aviv couple on the street and told them about Bil’in, and they simply had no idea that there even were occupied territories. In fact, they were fairly certain that there were just Arabs who were occupying Jewish land. And why would they know differently? At the height of Bil’in’s popularity, as it celebrates 5 years of non-violent resistance, watches the wall begin to move and return major portions of land lost, and finally has earned the support of activists, politicians, authors and every day professionals around the world, the short Israeli news broadcasts of the demonstration last Friday highlighted only the shaking down of the current (illegal) wall and the savvy army that was there to stop the protesters, once again, in a “violent clash.” The fact that these “riotous” Palestinians were joined, once again, by hundreds of Israelis and internationals – the very fact that Israelis most want to ignore, but must hear – went virtually unmentioned.

And if Israelis do take notice of the truth, we feel justified. The Zionist project has been consistent in telling the world that all Jews are a part of Israel, and then when opposition to Israel’s policies conflates Jews with Israel they use anti-Semitism as justification for maintaining them. We are raised to believe that only we can understand ourselves, only we can free ourselves and only we will keep ourselves safe.

And so the natural reaction to BDS is that it is another attempt to isolate and persecute Jews. It is a very convenient, self-protective strategy that renders all criticism of Israel tainted, and BDS one of its harshest forms. But this attitude cannot continue. And as support for BDS grows, it will not continue.

As more and more people come to realize that BDS is simply a non-violent, creative, temporary tool for highlighting what is really happening within Israel and in the territories it occupies and colonizes with settlements, Israelis will have to start looking inside and ask if maybe all these citizens from countries that they fantasize about emulating (from the US to the UK to Europe) don’t have a point.

The Palestinian call for BDS is not a campaign to bring Israel to its end, but rather a campaign to force Israel to uphold its commitments under international law and the moral and legal standards of a real democracy. It does not claim that Israel is the only country perpetuating these types of violations and crimes, but it is calling Israel’s bluff – if you purport to adhere to the standards of a healthy western democracy, then you cannot benefit from the justification that your circumstances warrant an exemption, or that in your neighboring countries far worse atrocities take place. And its message is that once you become what you preach, normalized relations will resume.

The Palestinian call for BDS is the call of intelligent, non-violent advocates for human rights, social justice, and self-determination that realize that as long as “business as usual” continues with Israel, Israelis will live in a worldwide-sponsored denial of a truth that contradicts even the most basic morals of Judaism and much of the ideals upon which Israel was supposedly founded. And more importantly, the Palestinian people will suffer decades more of displacement, harassment, economic deprivation, and the annihilation of a culture no less rich and established in this same tiny piece of land. The harm that BDS may cause to the Israeli economy – and by extension to the Palestinian economy, as well – will be small and short-term in comparison to the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians (and on Israeli democracy) for decades.

BDS is the start of a conversation that takes place in reality. BDS is a chance to force negotiations for a just solution that are balanced and honest. BDS is the beginning of an Israeli awakening to what the last century has brought, an acceptance of responsibility by the world of funders, investors and consumers that help make much of it possible, and a chance to create a place that Jews, Palestinians and world citizens alike can support. So let’s wake up and start talking.