Battling for the wrong cause

In law-abiding countries, even terrorists like Natan-Zada, even assassins like Yigal Amir, even Palestinian suicide bombers are entitled to a fair trial. Israeli courts do not impose the death penalty on a father who murders his baby daughter or a person who murders an elderly woman out of greed. Israeli citizens, especially those who belong to a weak minority group, would not want to live in a country where might makes right. Instead of spewing pandering, populist rhetoric, the Arab MKs should be explaining to their people why the Shfaram file must not be closed under any circumstances.

Those who rightly demand that Arabs and Jews be treated equally in all matters of civil rights and opportunities cannot ask that Jews and Arabs be treated differently when it comes to the supremely important principle of equality before the law. Today, these lynch suspects are let off the hook because Jewish terrorism is a sensitive matter in the Arab sector; tomorrow, Arab citizens who want to board a plane in Kiryat Shmona are discriminated against because Arab terrorism is a sensitive matter in the Jewish sector.

MK Mohammed Barakeh, chairman of the Hadash party and a resident of Shfaram, claims that the suspects in the killing were acting in self-defense. The police officers who killed demonstrators in the October 2000 riots also say their lives were in danger. Would Barakeh agree that along with calling off the investigation of the lynch, the case would also be closed for good on the shooting deaths of these 13 Arab protesters?

If there is any substance in the Shfaram suspects' claim of self-defense, the proper place to determine that is a court of law. With these seven young people on trial, there will be even more incentive to investigate who gave this troubled soldier a gun, and to penalize the officers who were so quick on the trigger back in October 2000.