A few days ago, on May 14th, Ms. Ayelet Shaked, who has no training in the law, took office as the new Minister of Justice in Israel, after having been appointed to this high post by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 6th.
Among other things, the Ministry of Justice’s responsibilities include legal advice and legislation, the Office of the State Attorney, Civilian Legal Aid, and the Public Defender. The Minister of Justice has considerable discretionary authority, especially because, unlike most nations, Israel has no written constitution. (Orthodox Jews wanted it to be the Torah, so instead there is no constitution at all.)
On 1 July 2014, Ms. Shaked posted an article to facebook, with the following in it, arguing why all Palestinians, including all who live in Israel (she made no distinction as to where a “Palestinian” lives), are members of “the Palestinian people” and that “the Palestinian people” are enemies of the State of Israel, and must therefore be destroyed. In her own words (as Bing autotranslated and accepted by her):
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[She concurs with, and then she expands upon, the statement by a former Netanyahu official, that] ‘The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we need to fight back.’ … This is a war between the two Nations. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. … All the Palestinian people is the enemy. All war is between two peoples. … It is impossible not to harm the citizens of the enemy. … The war has to be correct in principle, not just politically, [like] what America did in Afghanistan, including bombs of populated localities, including the creation of refugees of hundreds of thousands of people who fled the fighting. … Enemy soldiers are hiding within the population, and only because of the [public’s] support they can fight. … All the enemy fighters and bleeding in the head. It’s also the mothers of the martyrs, that send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They need to follow them [to die], there’s nothing in it. They need to go [be destroyed], and the physical House [in] which they raised the snake. Other small snakes grow more [if the whole family isn’t destroyed]. … The two houses [both generations] need to [be] bomb[ed] from the air, to destroy and to kill. And we have to explain that from now on every home of a martyr [will be destroyed]. There is nothing right and probably not even that useful [achieved by not bombing]. Each bomber should have known he was taking with him both his parents and his home and neighbors. All UM Jihad hero that sends her son to hell needs to know that she’s going with him. Along with the House and all that. The list cannot be focused. That’s war.
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Subsequently, in interviews after her facebook posting became controversial, she has denied that she meant that every Palestinian is at war against Israel. However, instead of her defending what she had written at that facebook posting, she simply removed it altogether. Fortunately, however, I had directly copied the original before it was removed; and all of that original Hebrew, plus a translation that she provided there along with it, which was an auto-translation by Bing, and which is especially valuable here since there can be no prejudices in an autotranslation. Her accepted translation will be followed by one provided anonymously at a different website, that of GWU law professor Jonathan Turley, and which is a bit clearer at a few points. But first here, the above highlights from the autotranslation have already been given, since this sequence of highlights presents the core of her argument. That was done in order to facilitate the reader’s quicker comprehension of the full versions, which might otherwise appear to be so mush-headed as to seem shocking for the sheer stupidity of her essay. It was almost incoherent. (Some people refer to her as “Israel’s Sarah Palin.”) But she has risen to be Israel’s equivalent of America’s Attorney General. And Israel is ‘America’s ally.’ (Polls do show that Americans overwhelmingly support Israel’s Jews against Palestinians.)
Here, then, is her complete statement, first as it was posted to facebook, in Hebrew (subsequently withdrawn by her because of its having become the focus of controversy); and, then, as it was autotranslated by Bing and accepted by her; and, then, finally, as translated by some anonymous person at the site of GWU professor Jonathan Turley. The passages that were just given, above, of excerpts, are among the portions from the autotranslation that I have highlighted below by boldfacing.
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