Bus 300 - Back to Haunt the GSS
By Charles Lenchner

“I killed the two terrorists,” said GSS officer Ehud Yatom in an interview published in Yediot Ahronot. He was referring to the Bus 300 incident, where terrorists captured alive after hijacking a bus were killed by the GSS. The affair exploded after journalists published photographs of the terrorists alive, contradicting the government’s version that they were all killed in the storming of the bus.

What actually happened, revealed publicly for the first time by retiring GSS officer Ehud Yatom, is that the GSS Chief Avraham Shalom gave the order to kill the terrorists. later, when the public became aware that the government had lied in it’s version, a number of senior GSS officers fabricated evidence to show that current defense minister Yitzhak Mordecai was responsible. Finally, after other GSS officers decided to reveal the truth, the government (then headed by Yitzhak Shamir) asked the President to pardon everyone involved, even before an inquiry or trial could be held. (It was current Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman who advised the government that a pardon could be granted before a trial.) In all, eleven officers were guilty enough to receive presidential pardons. Some of them were subsequently elevated in rank, including the man who killed the terrorists, Ehud Yatom.

What does this affair show about Israeli society?

First of all, that our press is free and critical, willing and able to expose government crimes, not only when it is in the perceived public interest, but even when the public, the government, the security services, and most political parties would have preferred to hide the truth. And secondly, that most echelons of Israeli society are capable of seeing ‘necessary’ exceptions to the rule of law in a variety of situations.

Why is it that the government then saw a contradiction between fighting terrorism and upholding the law? What are our security services fighting for, which definition of service to society and the state exists such that is excludes upholding the rule of law? And finally, after a number of military and governmental ranks failed to uphold and enforce the rule of law, where was the president, the final check of our judicial system?

Israel is a state that does not see itself like other countries. The phrase ‘a state belonging to its citizens’ is perceived as an extremist Israeli-Palestinian or leftist slogan, and not a reality of the modern democratic state.

The Zionist idea, as well as the Israeli Declaration of Independence, claims that Israel is the state of the entire Jewish people. The Jews however are not a legal entity. In any case, none of the musings above constitute a reply to the following observation: no part of Israeli society is strong enough to enforce the rule of law, when public opinion, the security services, and the government conspire to give legitimacy to illegal acts.

This corrupt aspect of the Israeli reality has been seen as tolerable when it’s victims are terrorists, Palestinians and Arabs. What is intolerable is that Israeli public opinion does not see the erosion of the rule of law as a harm done to the body politic. It reveals the poverty of our democracy, and contains a danger than gets worse the more divided our nation is politically.

As evidence, we can look at the recent decision not to charge Israeli soldiers who shot two residents of Eastern Jerusalem on their way to work in the early morning.

The two were suspected of being terrorists, and were shot on sight. No one disputes that they were innocent victimless. Instead of victimless crimes, we have crimes with no perpetrators.

During the Intifada, an Israeli soldier dressed as an Arab was shot numerous times in the back, and then again in the head at point blank range, before the error was discovered. Public perception was that the mistake lies in the identity of the victim - not in the idea that extra-judicial executions of possibly innocent bystanders are blatantly illegal.

Again, no one was charged with a crime, despite the protests of the soldier’s family, torn between a desire for justice for their dead son, and a sympathy with the methods of their son’s military unit.

Police violence against citizens, both guilty and innocent is also rampant, with practically no officers being charged or disciplined.

Most recently a member of a drug ring caught smuggling currency was beaten after confessing his crime. The airport security officers were stunned by the behavior of the police officer who arrived on the scene, and stopped the beating. Asked why he was beating the suspect, the officer (after removing his watch and rolling up his sleeve) explained that this was the only way he knew to get suspects to talk. That the suspect had confessed and was cooperating did not dent his internal logic.

Could this be Israel’s institutional logic as well? Is this what the High Court has in mind when it permits ‘physical pressure’ on suspects? Is this what the police have in mind when file after file of police brutality is closed for ‘lack of evidence’ or ‘lack of public interest?’

Until Israelis identify with the concept of the rule of law, law enacted by the Knesset (as opposed to divine, halachic law), Israeli democracy is in danger. Israeli citizens, Jewish and Arab, civilians and soldiers on duty, are personally in danger, as they can be assaulted or killed without notice, and without punishment for those guilty. It shows how the cult of security justifications harms our society, how the hatred and fear of our enemies becomes a weapon with which we harm ourselves.

The freedom with which Ehud Yetom discusses his crimes, the fact that our Justice Minister is on record supporting the GSS officers who murdered and falsified evidence, signals that we are not moving forward as a society, but backward.