adam@npois.UUCP (Adam V. Reed) (07/05/85)
Mark Horton writes: > Israel is holding several hundred Shiites. > However, this has been virtually ignored by the media I've seen. What media? I listen to WQXR (the New York Times station from NYC) and to several foreign stations including CBC, BBC and Kol Israel. Each of them has mentioned the Shiite prisoners at Atlit several times. So have the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Jerusalem Post. I don't have time for other media, but I doubt everyone else has been ignoring them. > Lebanon claims these > are innocent people who were randomly rounded up as Israel withdrew > from Lebanon. All the Shiite prisoners currently in Atlit have been acknowledged as members by Amal, the main Shiite armed force in Lebanon. Since the Israelis consider Amal a criminal organization, and since membership in criminal organizations is a crime under international common law, members of Amal are not, under Israeli jurisdiction, "innocent people". > If this is true, it's a pretty serious violation of > international law and should get lots of negative publicity for > Israel. The only persons protected under the Geneva Conventions (I assume this is what the reference to international law is about) are civilians, defined as persons not belonging to any armed force, and prisoners of war, defined as captive members of an armed force that obeys the laws and customs of war. As members of an armed force that does not obey the laws and customs of war, Amal fighters are not protected. The precedent for this goes back to the Nuremberg Tribunal, which ruled that members of the SS were not protected either as civilians or as prisoners of war. > What does Israel say its reason was for taking these prisoners? To prevent them from attacking Israeli forces and border areas. Since Israel, unlike the United States, does not suspend Habeas Corpus in time of war, any prisoner in an Israeli jail may petition for release, placing the burden of showing grounds for his continued confinement on the authorities holding him. According to the Jerusalem Post, an unknown number of Shiite prisoners previously released from Atlit were let go under Israeli court orders. > What do third parties say? Are these people as innocent as the > Americans on the TWA plane? Are they terrorists? Military? Amal has been responsible for the massacres of several thousand Lebanese Christians and, more recently, at least 400 Palestinian refugees. Whether this makes them terrorists depends on your definition. > And why is this being swept under the rug? Get thee a good shortwave radio. Or read a paper that reports something besides the scores of the Columbus, Ohio, Little League. Adam Reed npois!adam