Breaking the Silence Releases Video 'Corroborating' Claims That Their Spokesman Beat Palestinian di Yaniv Kubovich
Breaking
the Silence released video footage Monday showing the aftermath of an
arrest in which the organization’s spokesman claims to have beaten a
Palestinian.
It
was the most recent attempt by the group to disprove assertions by the
authorities that the assault never happened in a tangled story that has
confounded the country in which a human rights activist claims personal
wrongdoing and right-wing governmet officials and the police say it did
not happen and have used the episode to question the honesty of the
organization as a whole.
Dean Issacharoff, spokesman of Breaking the Silence,
an activist group of Israeli military veterans who oppose the
occupation, had testified that when he was an officer in the Nahal
infantry brigade, he assaulted a Palestinian man in Hebron after the man
was arrested for throwing stones at soldiers in February 2014.
The
footage shows Issacharoff leading a handcuffed Palestinian who had been
arrested for throwing stones. It doesn’t show the arrest itself or the
violence Issacharoff claims to have used, but it does show the
Palestinian with facial injuries.
Breaking the Silence obtained the footage from another organization, B’Tselem, which filmed the man’s arrest.
But police announced last week that they had closed the case because the Palestinian whom Dean Issacharoff allegedly assaulted denied that any assault ever occurred. But
Issacharoff had claimed that they interviewed the wrong Palestinian.
The video clip was released in an effort to prove that claim.
The
footage shows that a deputy company commander who has backed
Issacharoff’s story was indeed present. But according to sources in
Breaking
the Silence, none of the soldiers in the company who denied that an
assault occurred and claimed that Issacharoff invented the story can be
seen in the clip.
Moreover,
the sources said, the footage shows that the company commander police
questioned, who also denied Issacharoff’s story, is a different company
commander than the one who was present at the scene.
Breaking
the Silence collects and publishes testimony from soldiers about
alleged crimes which they or their comrades committed in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip. Normally, all such testimony is anonymous, which has
led many Israelis to question its credibility and accuse the
organization of conducting smear campaigns. But in an unusual move,
Issacharoff declared publicly in April that he had personally assaulted a
Palestinian during his army service in Hebron.
After
footage of his statement was publicized by Reservists on Duty, a group
that opposes Breaking the Silence, numerous organizations and officials,
including Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Defense Minister Avigdor
Lieberman, demanded a criminal investigation. State Prosecutor Shai
Nitzan then ordered police to open one.
But after the prosecution announced last week that it was closing the case because
no assault ever happened, Issacharoff accused both police and
prosecution of whitewashing his crime for political reasons.
On
Monday, the prosecution said that based on Issacharoff’s own
description of the event, together with that of his company commander,
police had concluded that he must be referring to the arrest of Hassan
Julani in February 2014. Julani told the police that he had resisted
arrest, but that the soldiers used no force beyond that necessary to
subdue him, and that contrary to Issacharoff’s description, he was not
left bleeding and never lost consciousness.
The
prosecution is unfamiliar with the new footage, its statement
continued, but “if anyone believes that a crime of violence was
committed on a different date, he has the option of bringing his
allegations before the relevant authorities.”
Separately,
in a letter sent Monday to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel
responding to that organization’s criticism of how the case was handled,
Deputy
State Prosecutor Nurit Litman said Issacharoff’s claim that Julani was
the wrong Palestinian “doesn’t fit with the evidence, or with the
information that he himself gave during his interrogation.” Julani, she
continued, was identified primarily based on Issacharof’s own
statements, and “the claim that there was another incident which
ostensibly fits the many details he gave in his interrogation is a
belated claim which doesn’t fit the evidence in the case.”
She
also rejected the charges of politicization leveled by both Breaking
the Silence and B’Tselem. Both the decision to open the investigation
and the decision to close it were purely professional judgments made on
the basis of the evidence, Litman wrote.
B’Tselem
said Monday that the police and prosecution have what they called “a
long tradition of negligent investigations” in the territories. “Now
it’s been revealed that they conducted another negligent investigation –
this time as a tool of the justice minister, but for exactly the same
purpose: whitewashing in the service of the occupation.”
Avner
Gvaryahu, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, said that
when the prosecution, “on the basis of an embarrassing and negligent
investigation, decides that Dean Issacharoff is a liar, that ought to
frighten every citizen of the country who cares about democracy.”
“The
fact that the truth came to light only because Breaking the Silence
managed, in four days, to conduct the investigation the law enforcement
agencies failed to conduct in half a year — after dedicating themselves
to a political agenda — is horrifying,” he said.
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