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IDF Still Using Banned Weapon Against Civilian Protestors
Military court hearing reveals that the army continues to use the Ruger 10/22 rifle to break up protests, defying a ban by the military advocate general.
The Israel Defense Forces continues using the Ruger 10/22 rifle to disperse protests even though it has been prohibited by the military advocate general, a hearing at a military court revealed last week. A brigade's former operations officer told the court he wasn't even aware of the prohibition.
Protesters wave Palestinian flags at an Israeli border police post during a protest in the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah, in this February 19, 2010 file photo. (REUTERS/Darren Whiteside/Files)
Last Wednesday, the Judea Military Court convened for the sentencing hearing of protest organizer Abdullah Abu-Rahma from Bil'in, convicted last month of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. The state submitted an expert opinion by Maj. Igor Moiseev, who served as the Binyamin Brigade's operations officer for two years.
The opinion details the cost of ammunition fired in Bil'in and Nial'in from August 2008 to December 2009; it notes that the army used Ruger bullets that cost a total of NIS 1.3 million. Moiseev described the Ruger as a nonlethal weapon.
When Abu-Rahma's attorney Gabi Laski inquired if Moiseev knew that the military advocate general had ruled that Ruger rifles are not to be used to disperse protests because they are potentially lethal, Moiseev said he was not aware of such an instruction. The state objected to the question.
In 2001, the military advocate general at the time, Maj. Gen. (res. ) Menachem Finkelstein, prohibited the use of Ruger bullets as nonlethal ammunition.
Nevertheless, the IDF reverted to using the Ruger against protesters in 2009, killing a teenager in Hebron in February and a protester in Nial'in in June. Human rights group B'Tselem asked the military advocate general to make clear that the weapon was not meant for crowd control.
In July, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit wrote that "the Ruger is not defined by the IDF as a means for riot control. The rules for using these means in Judea and Samaria are strict and parallel to the rules of engagement for live fire. If the media or organizations were told anything else regarding the definition, this was an error or misunderstanding."
He wrote that "recently, the rules were stressed once again to the relevant operations officers in Central Command. The command in fact expects to hold a review headed by a senior commander, examining the lessons drawn from using such means in recent months."
The IDF Spokesman's Office said in a statement yesterday that rules for firing 0.22 ammunition are part of the general rules of engagement, "and as such are classified and naturally cannot be elaborated on. In general, it can be noted that the rules applying to 0.22 ammunition are strict and are parallel, in general, to rules applying to ordinary live ammunition.
"The operations officer's testimony was given at a sentencing hearing of someone convicted of incitement and organizing and participating in violent riots in the village of Bil'in. The quote used is partial and does not reflect all comments by the officer on the means used by the IDF to disperse such riots. The IDF takes care to act in accordance with the rules of engagement."
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Show AllWhat is there left to say about Israel's ongoing human rights abuses and crimes against humanity? With our U.S. government strongly complicit in these crimes, what can we do?
We can Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel. Those who say that Israel is not worried by BDS should take a look at what is happening in tiny Port Townsend, WA, pop. 9,000, where the Food Coop board of directors is about to vote on removing products of Israel from their shelves. The Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest (in San Francisco!) has sent vice consul Gideon Lustig all the way to Port Townsend this weekend.
Lustig is not only going to make a public speech on why the tiny P.T. Food Coop should not boycott Israeli products, but he has also managed to convince the president of the coop board of directors to hold a secret and private meeting of the board with him, in violation of coop policies.
Just as the people of the world joined in BDS against apartheid South Africa when all President Reagan and the rest of the world leaders would do was prattle on about "constructive engagement," the international peoples' movement to boycott South Africa resulted in the end of apartheid.
"Peace talks" are today's equivalent of "constructive engagement: " smokescreens behind which the terror continues. But the BDS Israel movement is burgeoning around the world, and is starting to grow even in the U.S.
The Olympia, WA, Food Coop was the first food coop nationwide to boycott Israeli products. The Davis, CA Food Coop voted not to boycott. And now the Sacramento, CA,
Food Coop, like the Port Townsend Food Coop, is examining the issue and will vote.
Those who maintain that BDS Israel is a waste of time should consider that there is now a whole generation of South Africans that has never known apartheid. And consider whether Israel would waste time and money sending its diplomatic corps to a rural food coop in Port Townsend if the effort to BDS is such a useless tactic.
It is not irrelevant that when the rest of the world was boycotting the racist apartheid South Africa, it is documented that, Israel, which professes nuclear ambiguity, was providing South Africa with technology and equipment to build its own nuclear weapons.
Israel with a clandestine nuclear weapons stock is a proven nuclear weapons proliferator, in defiance of IAEA regulation, and the US sending them military and financial aid is in contradiction of US law. But the US government is above its own laws and as such is a fascist tyranny, while Israel is a rouge state in every sense and a far greater threat to global peace than Iran or any other ME country may ever be.
One of the big accomplishments of the IAEA was the voluntary de-weaponization of South Africa’s nuclear program under the new regime.
Let us use our choices to promote regime change where it is needed. We can keep up the pressure, BDS the rouge apartheid colonialist war criminal state of Israel.
A reminder that the US defends Israel's defiance of IAEA but is working to bring Syria to the Security Council for Syria's failure to come clean about its nuclear research to the IAEA. Guess which one has the bomb?
Here is a link that gives the bar code numbers for every nation. Israel is 729, so if you have the patience to look at the barcode on suspected products, if the first three numbers are 729, it is from Israel. Put it back on the shelf.
http://www.adams1.com/upccode.html
Sometimes, great things have little beginnings.
Thanks, great info.
Avigdor Lieberman: "Peace talks must reassess Israeli-Arabs' right to citizenship"
And this is another story today that US M$M ignores as the story would not flatter the image that Israel tries to project of itself.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/lieberman-peace-talks-must-reassess-israeli-arabs-right-to-citizenship-1.314596
Israel is a rogue terrorist state and any propaganda otherwise should be dismissed.
Just so everybody knows, here's the weapon that they're talking about:
http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f65/ruger-10-22-customization-1083571/
It's a firearm. It shoots bullets. They're no different from the bullets that are used in an assault rifle; they're just fired with less force. Not enough force to penetrate light armor, but plenty of force to penetrate clothing and flesh. Enough force to penetrate your skull if you are hit squarely in the head at close range.
The ruger 10/22 is a popular weapon for hunting and killing small game and varmits. You can kill a deer or a man with it, but even at close range it lacks "stopping power." That is to say, a target hit in the chest or abdoment is not likely to drop in its tracks: It's more likely to run away and die somewhere else.
Your link is disingenuous. 10/22s also look like this:
http://www.ruger.com/products/1022Compact/models.html
Picking a highly customized version is talking about a Prius and showing a picture of a formula one car.. yeah.. they're both cars.....
A 10/22 is simply a 22 rifle like any one of a hundred others, except it is very successful and popular. Calling it a non-lethal weapon is laughable. While it doesn't have the punch of even the smallest of hunting rifles or assault rifles, it is damned dangerous when pointed at a person. However calling it a "banned weapon" is banal and just as laughable.
Yeah, The ones I showed clearly were part of the costume and kit of over-grown boys who like to run around in the woods and play soldier. I don't know what the 10/22s look like that are carried by _real_ IDF soldiers, but I'll bet you two things; I'll bet they don't have fancy, oil-rubbed wooden stocks like the one you showed, and I'll bet they have more than five rounds in the magazine.
I was hoping for a picture that showed a visible magazine. A simple plastic stock would have been a bonus, but I went with the first page I found that showed mags, even though the styling was somewhat over-the-top.
We shouldn't be talking about the pictures though. It's not the wicked-looking lines or the dark color of a military style stock that kill. It's the bullets. Dressing the same rifle up to look like a hunter's weapon doesn't make it any more or less dangerous, or any more or less humane than the militarized version.
I always used to laugh bitterly at the way Schumer and Feinstein picked the dozen scariest looking pictures they could find in a gun catalog, and then crafted the assault weapon ban almost entirely based on the _appearance_ of the weapons they chose. Now I guess I'm guilty of the same thing (except, at least, I didn't write any uselessly restrictive laws.)