[R-G] Leibowitz joins Barghouti defense

[ProletarianNews]

AP. 3 October 2002. Israeli Lawyer Defends Palestinians.

JERUSALEM -- Shamai Leibowitz is taking up where his grandfather, a
maverick Jewish scholar, left off -- joining the defense team of a
Palestinian leader charged with directing terror attacks against
Israelis, as a way of protesting Israel's occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza Strip.

Leibowitz, a lawyer, plans to be at the defense table Thursday in a Tel
Aviv court when Marwan Barghouti faces charges of murder, attempted
murder and terrorism. 

While the Israeli government casts Barghouti as a terrorist, Leibowitz
compares him to the biblical Moses, evoking the wrath of other Orthodox Jews.

His grandfather, world-renowned Torah scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz, was
one of the first Israelis to demand that Israel withdraw from the West
Bank and Gaza Strip after the territories were captured in the 1967
Middle East war.

He argued that dominating Palestinians corrupted Israel and gave rise to
a "Judeo-Nazi mentality in certain circles," a reference to World War II
Germany, responsible for the death of 6 million Jews. 

Barghouti will be making his third court appearance since Israeli forces
arrested him in Ramallah in April. 

Shamai Leibowitz is not the only high-profile member of Barghouti's
defense team. Gisele Halimi, a 75-year-old Tunisia-born Jewish lawyer
famed for defending Algerians fighting French rule, said last month she
would also represent Barghouti.

Leibowitz, 32, referred to biblical sources in explaining his decision
to help defend Barghouti.

"I see this as something which reminds me of the Book of Exodus, where
the Egyptians tried to beat into submission the Israelites, but Moses
fought against it. Marwan reminds me of Moses," Leibowitz told reporters Wednesday.

Leibowitz repeated his late grandfather's position that Israel's
occupation of Palestinian land corrupts Israel.

"It's against our own heritage, it's betraying our very own ideas upon
which this state was formed, to continue the harassment and the
infliction of suffering," he said. 

"I hear it and it makes me cringe. How can Jews behave like that?"

Leibowitz added the Israeli justice system was corrupt when it came to
putting Palestinians on trial, referring to an article written this year
by a former Israeli attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, that Israel
established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories.

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ProletarianNews
http://www.utopia2000.org

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