US/World News

Netanyahu to Kerry: Declare Israel doesn’t commit extrajudicial killings

(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Friday reportedly asked John Kerry to publicly state that Israel does not carry out extrajudicial killings after a group of U.S. lawmakers asked the secretary of state to investigate such claims. Meanwhile, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the lead lawmaker making the request, rebuked Netanyahu for his initial response to the revelation of the letter, saying the Israeli leader misunderstood the relevant law, which requires defunding military units underwritten by U.S. government funds should they be found in violation of U.S. human rights norms. Netanyahu said in a statement March 30 that the February letter by Leahy and 10 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives calling for an investigation of alleged human rights abuses by his nation’s military should instead be directed at Palestinian inciters. “Israel’s soldiers and police officers defend themselves and innocent civilians with the highest moral standards against bloodthirsty terrorists who come to murder them,” said the statement. “Where is the concern for the human rights of the many Israelis who’ve been murdered and maimed by these savage terrorists? … This letter should have been addressed instead to those who incite youngsters to commit cruel acts of terrorism.”

Leahy, responding March 31 to Netanyahu, said there was no parallel because the United States does not fund Hamas and other terrorist groups targeting Israel. Leahy also said the law underpinning the letter’s request, which he authored and is named after him, targets specific military units, not entire countries, and only when it is established that the government in question has not adequately investigated the alleged abuses.

First reported by Politico, the February letter from the lawmaker to Kerry cites Amnesty International reports alleging the “extrajudicial killings” of at least four Palestinians, men and women. Among those named are Fadi Alloun, who stabbed a 15-year-old Jewish teen in Jerusalem and was shot and killed during the chase to apprehend him; Saad Al-Atrash, who was shot and killed as he tried to stab a soldier in the West Bank city of Hebron, and Hadeel Hashlamoum, a Palestinian woman who was shot to death after arriving at a Hebron checkpoint with a knife. The letter also asks Kerry to investigate similar allegations in Egypt.

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