Wer sagt das? Ein islamischer Hardliner? Nein, in diesem Fall ist es die beeidete Aussage eines Oberst des isralischen Ingenieurs-Korps im Prozess der Eltern Rachel Corries gegen den Staat Israel.
Sie klagen auf eine symbolische Summe des Schadensersatzes, wollen vor allem Aufklärung über das, was mit ihrer Tochter geschah und warum. Max Blumenthal berichtet über den Prozess, der notwendig wurde, weil weder die israelische noch die amerikanische Regierung sich zur Durchsetzung einer wirklichen Untersuchung durchringen konnten.
In the immediate wake of Corrie’s killing, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, then the chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, instructed Corrie’s parents to demand a „thorough, fair and transparent investigation“ from the Israeli government. Since then, the Israelis have stonewalled them, refusing to provide key details of their investigation, which was corrupted from the start by the investigators‘ apparent attempts to find evidence that a bulldozer did not in fact kill Rachel.
A 2003 bill introduced in the House International Relations Committee calling for a thorough Israeli investigation in Corrie’s killing and for American efforts to prevent such killings from happening again garnered 78 signatures in support (Rahm Emanuel was the only Jewish signer). However, Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of the Israel lobby’s closest allies in Congress, prevented the bill from getting out of the committee. President George W. Bush could have pressed for a full floor vote on the bill but he did nothing. The bill died as a result.
Having been obstructed by the Israelis‘ opaque investigation and betrayed by their own government (with notable exceptions like former Rep. Brian Baird), the Corries have been forced to take matters into their own hands. And so they have filed suit against the Israeli government for criminal negligence. Whether or not they will be able to secure the ruling they seek, Rachel Corrie’s family has already elicited a number of damning revelations about the Israeli army’s abuses in Gaza in 2003 and the machinations it has relied on to obscure evidence of its criminal conduct.
Ein gutes Beispiel für die Art, wie die Untersuchung seitens der Israelis geführt wurde, zeigt sich darin, dass ein völlig unerfahrener 20jähriger beauftragt wurde, der sich kaum traute, harte Frage zu stellen:
On the first day of hearings, the Corries‘ lawyers were able to confirm through testimony from „Oded,“ one of the investigators of Rachel Corrie’s killing, that Major General Doron Almog, then the head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command, had attempted to stop the military investigators from questioning the bulldozer operators who killed Rachel. When asked why he did not challenge Almog’s apparently illegal intervention, Oded stated that he was only 20-years-old at the time, with no college education and only a few months of training as an investigator. He was intimidated by the high-ranking officer who stormed into the room and menaced him and the other investigators.
Unglaublich ist es auch, dass ausgerechnet Hiss die Leiche Rachels obduzieren durfte. Das dürfte für ihre Eltern ein dauerhaftes Entsetzen sein:
Who is Dr. Hiss? The chief pathologist of Israel for a decade and a half, Hiss was implicated by a 2001 investigation by the Israeli Health Ministry of stealing body parts ranging from legs to testicles to ovaries from bodies without permission from family members then selling them to research institutes. Bodies plundered by Hiss included those of Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. He was finally removed from his post in 2004 when the body of a teenage boy killed in a traffic accident was discovered to have been thoroughly gnawed on by a rat in Hiss’s laboratory. In an interview with researcher Nancy Schepper-Hughes, Hiss admitted that he harvested organs if he was confident relatives would not discover that they were missing. He added that he often used glue to close eyelids to hide missing corneas.
When Craig and Cindy Corrie learned that Hiss would perform an autopsy on their daughter, they stipulated that they would only allow the doctor to go forward if an official from the American consulate was present throughout the entire procedure. An Israeli military police report stated that an American official did indeed witness the autopsy. However, when the Corries asked American diplomatic officials including former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzner if the report was true, they were informed that no American was present at all. The Israelis had lied to them, and apparently fixed their own report to deceive the American government.
On March 14, during the first round of hearings in the Corries‘ civil suit, Hiss admitted under oath that he had lied about the presence of an American official during the autopsy of Rachel Corrie. He also conceded to taking „samples“ from Corrie’s body for „histological testing“ without informing her family. Just which parts of Corrie’s body Hiss took remains unclear; despite Hiss’s claim that he „buried“ the samples, her family has not confirmed the whereabouts of her missing body parts.
Mein Beileid an die Familie Corrie und mein Dank dafür, dass sie auf diese Weise dafür sorgen, dass der Umgang mit Gegnern des Regimes deutlich gemacht wird. Bedauerlich, dass die Presse es vorzieht, den Fall weitgehend zu ignorieren.
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