Summing up for a legal lynching

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
14 July '10

Remember Judge Bathurst Norman, who summed up for the jury that went on to acquit the seven defendants who had attacked a Brighton factory that sold armaments to Israel by commenting that

‘you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time’.

Well, Jonathan Hoffman has obtained the 87-page transcript of that summing up – and it’s far, far more extraordinary and appalling even than the remark above suggested. Here is a flavour of what he has posted up from it on the Cifwatch blog, with his own gloss (the judge’s comments are set here in bold type):

Democracy would not exist unless there were reporters and members of the public who were prepared to stand up for what they believe to be right, and sometimes, as in the case of the suffragettes, even to go to prison for their beliefs. As Edmund Burke says: “For injustice to flourish, all that is needed is for good men to do nothing.” Indeed, people like Mr Osmond [Christopher Osmond, the leader of the seven who admitted causing £187,000 of damage to the EDO factory] who put themselves in harm’s way to protect others may, in fact – there may be much to be admired about people like that. Perhaps if he had done it in this country in the last war he would probably have received a George Medal.

... Page 67: He [Osmond] knew of the Philadelphi corridor, the corridor made around the boundaries of Gaza by the illegal demolition of Palestinian homes by the Israeli army, during which Rachel Corrie, one of the International Solidarity Volunteers bravely stood in front of a bulldozer which was being driven by an Israeli soldier and was effectively murdered when he drove the bulldozer over her in 2003.

Now for the truth. Corrie was not “murdered”. The IDF investigation concluded that the driver of the bulldozer could not see her and that her death was an unfortunate accident. The IDF Judge Advocate’s Office concluded:

(Read full story)

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