Ask and you shall receive – finally, an English translation of the Rachel Corrie judgment
18 October 2012
Last month I posted on the troubling case of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old protester killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003. In August, an Israeli court ruled that the Israeli Defence Ministry bore no responsibility in civil law for her death.
I complained that the reporting of the ruling had been poor, despite a reasonably good summary in English produced by the court. One of the main problems undoubtedly was the lack of an English translation of the 73-page Hebrew ruling. Until now, that is. Through the magic of the internet – and a huge amount of work – Irène Solomon, a legal advisor at Ofgem and reader of this blog, has translated the judgment from Hebrew into English. She has taken on this mammoth task for free in her personal capacity and has given me permission to publish her work online as a UKHRB exclusive.
You can download the translation here (PDF) and it is also reproduced after the break below. I should emphasise that this is not an official translation, but it does appear to me to be a very good effort indeed.
I am not going to analyse the judgment further but I would welcome any comments from those who have the chance to read it. It is interesting on a number of levels, including in comparison to UK law (see my post). It will also prove important background if the family’s intended appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court is heard – there is no longer an excuse for getting the facts wrong or misreporting them, as if there was before.
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Imagine an American visiting family or friends in Southern Israel and being killed by a Hamas rocket.
Now imagine her family suing Hamas in whatever courts have been set up in Gaza.
You can’t imagine the second bit, can you? It would not even be worth trying.
And therein lies the difference.
Kindly thank Ms Solomon for her labour of love in producing this unofficial translation of the judgment from Hebrew into English. It has given me some insight into the Israeli justice system which otherwise would not have been possible to garner.