Israel has a checkered record when it comes to official commissions of inquiry. Some have done fine, impartial and profession work, such as the Bejski Commission after the bank share debacles of the early 1980s, the commission in the ?70s that investigated the debacles at the start of the Yom Kippur War, or even the Shamgar Commission report on the Rabin assassination. (Yes, I know the Chamish cult thinks that was a grand cover-up, and doubtless also think the Warren Commission was one, but they have never produced any evidence that Shamgar intentionally overlooked or hid anything he found.) Others have been set up for dubious and cheap headline-seeking reasons (the Yemenite children "kidnaping" commission) or for outright purposes of political persecution (the Kahan commission that "charged" Ariel Sharon with indirect responsibility for the Sabra and Shatilla massacre).



The Orr Commission Report into the deaths of 13 Israeli Arab rioters in September 2000 has just been submitted and is the talk of the town this week. Like most of the other commissions of inquiry, it was headed by a Supreme Court Justice. Its report, at first glance, looks "balanced", dividing its assignment of blame between the Labor Party leadership and the Arab fascist politicians and leaders inflaming the mobs.



But there is more to it than that, and the Orr Commission represents some unique dangers and threats to Israeli society.



As background to all this, let us recall what actually happened in the fall of 2000. After Ehud Barak presented Yasser Arafat with Israel's program for self-annihilation at Camp David II, which Arafat rejected because it destroyed Israel too slowly, Arafat ordered his hordes to attack the Jews and murder them everywhere. Those riots began around Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. While they have since been labeled the "al-Aqsa Intifada", they were at first called the High Holiday Pogroms in these corners.



Making a mockery of the "peace process", and the Oslo Accords they had already signed, the PLO openly declared war on the Jews and ordered murder and mayhem everywhere. It was at this point that Israel's own Arabs and their leaders decided the time was ripe to show their solidarity with the enemies of their country and to take to the streets, joining the pogroms, demonstrating their opposition to Israel's existence, and attacking the Jews.



And pogroms these were, in all ways. Jews were attacked and beaten everywhere. The entire Galilee and other parts of Israel became scenes reminiscent of the late 1940s, where Arab gangs blocked roads, laid siege to Jewish towns, beat Jewish families randomly, grabbing random passing Jews out of their cars, stoning every Jew they could find, murdering at least two Jews inside Israel. These were not Palestinians living across the Green Line, but second- and third-generation Israeli Arabs, with their European standards of living, health and education levels, and their Scandinavian-style social welfare benefits. They were egged on by the Arab fascist Knesset members, openly calling for violence and murder, protected by their parliamentary immunity and the dual Israeli legal system that never prosecutes Arabs or leftists calling for violence, only right-wing Jews.



Throughout the country, small teams of Israeli police were confronted by hordes of thousands of violent Arabs, throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at them, and sometimes shooting guns. Armchair commentators today insist that the police should have exercised infinite tolerance and patience at the time, but such people have never been confronted by a mob of thousands of screaming violent pogromchiks. Police anywhere would respond to such provocation by mowing down the rioters, which is not only what the Allied troops did with rioting Iraqis, but what the Swedish police did with the "anti-globalization" hooligans - people who were not Islamofascist jihadniks, but pampered middle-class preppies.



While also using riot control gas and rubber "bullets", the Israeli police in several cases felt their lives were in danger and fired on their attackers. In all, thirteen Arabs were killed by police fire. Most were rioters, some may have been bystanders.



Whether or not the police over-reacted, as the Orr Commission insists, the killings effectively stopped the "intifada" of Israeli Arabs cold. In some places, especially in Nazareth, Jewish hooligans also started beating Arabs, and that also chilled the Arab hordes. I have argued for 15 years that if a couple of dozen Palestinians had been killed when they launched the intifada in Gaza in the late 1980s, there would have been no subsequent intifada, and the violence would have ended many years ago. Israel would be an oasis of tranquility today. Thousands of lives would have been spared.



At the time of the pogroms, few in Israel suggested that the police had been out of line in suppressing the rioters with force, especially among those Jews who had been hiding in their basements in the Galilee, fearing imminent lynching. The police chiefs in charge insisted they had tried other less-lethal means first, and ordered the live fire by snipers only after one Jewish woman had been lynched to death, and there was a clear and present danger of more lynchings. (One of the more amusing moments was when Arabs threatened to lynch the members of a small commune of vegetarian pacifist New Age Jews, who called in the cops to save their candy behinds.) Galilee Jews declared boycotts of local Arab storekeepers who had spoken out in favor of the violence and lynching.



The police commissioner/minister at the time was Shlomo Ben-Ami, one of the vintage Oslo lemmings, a Moroccan-born professor of law who had been on the Labor Party Left long before Oslo. He had been present at Camp David, urging ever greater displays of appeasement from Barak.



The violence ended after the shooting of the 13 as quickly as it had started. While the Israeli Arab fascist politicians screamed for vengeance and demanded an accounting for the deaths, the bulk of Israelis considered the pogrom leaders and their followers to be those who should be held accountable, those with the blood on their hands.



Little developed until election time rolled nigh. Ehud Barak had a brainstorm. He would try to get himself re-elected when Binyamin Netanyahu could not run as head of the Likud, forcing the Likud to campaign under the less-popular (at the time) Ariel Sharon. Barak believed leftist jargon about how Israelis hated Sharon for the 1982 Lebanon incursion and figured he himself was a shoo-in. But his strategy involved getting Israel's Arabs to vote for him. That way, even if the Jews voted against him, he could stay in office.



But the Arabs were still angry because of the use of the police to quell the pogroms: how dare the Jews fight back? Barak was under pressure from his party to issue an apology to those Arabs and set up a commission of inquiry into the High Holiday Pogrom events. He dragged his feet on the apology, knowing how that would affect the Jewish voters in the Galilee, who had been under siege from the pogromchiks. Just before polling, he did issue an apology, which had little affect on Arab voters. Some wags at the time suggested that Barak would be on more solid ground and better his chances if he issued an apology to the Israeli public for the police killing only 13 of the pogromchiks.



And Barak also set up a commission of inquiry. Barak figured that the commission would tongue-lash the cops, but leave the Labor politicians out of things. After all, commissions of inquiry were normally Labor Party devices to persecute Likudniks, like the Kahan commission on Sabra and Shatilla. Aside from Justice Orr, the commission included an Arab judge and the Laborite, left-leaning professor and ex-diplomat Shimon Shamir. No doubt Barak figured this composition would nudge the commission leftwards, ensuring it did not attack him and his party doves.



Instead, the Orr Commission blasted Barak and Ben-Ami in its report. The ultra-dove leftists of the Labor Party found that their creation had turned upon them, like in some late-night horror movie. Barak and Ben-Ami found themselves Sabraed-and-Shatillaed.



The Orr Commission did indeed conclude that the police had over-reacted in quelling the rioters, recalling the Kahan commission's conclusions that reasonable people should have known up front what would happen if the Lebanese Phalangists entered Sabra and Shatilla in 1982, and never mind that no reasonable people at the time foresaw what would happen. The commission fingered several police chiefs and recommended sanctions and firings, including a couple who had a record of previously speaking out candidly about the security dangers coming from Israeli Arab radicalization. Almagor, the organization of families of Jewish victims of Arab terror, has come out in condemnation of the Orr Commission and demands that the same police chiefs be awarded medals of commendation.



The Orr Commission is yet another of those deluded attempts by Israel to try to gain some public relations brownie points through self-prosecution, self-investigation, self-abasement, and self-criticism. Israeli politicians think the world will gallop over and congratulate Israel for airing its dirty laundry and using democratic tools to fix what is broken in its own house.



Stop laughing.



The Orr Commission will convince the Jew-baiting media of the world of the pureness of Israel's intentions and alert conscience about as effectively as the Kahan commission did.



What is much more frightening is that the Orr Report can be taken as the latest escalation of the Oslo Camp against Israel's ability to defend itself. The Beilinized Osloids have already largely disarmed Israel, stripping away military budgets and arms procurements. They have handcuffed the military and prohibited it from responding to provocations from the Hizbollah and the PLO. They have ordered Israeli troops to cower when attacked by Arab street urchins throwing rocks and Molotovs. And now, they are attacking the police. Sharon's Minister of Justice is the loud-mouthed Judaism-hating Tommy Lapid from Shinui, and he has indicated he plans to try to prosecute the police chiefs. (As it turns out, nothing in the Orr Commission Report can be submitted as evidence, meaning that a trial would necessitate years of taxpayer-financed investigation and preparation.)



I do not rule out the possibility that Israeli police may sometimes behave with brutality (such as when arresting right-wing "settlers"), and may sometimes be trigger-happy. While I am reluctant to second-guess the Orr Commission conclusions regarding specific cases of trigger happiness, I am also reluctant to second-guess decisions from the front lines by cops and soldiers under attack by masses of fascist, violent pogromchiks. Israel has far too much crowd-control restraint and passivity and far too little suppression of Arab violence with massive force. Israeli restraint is the petrol that fuels Arab violence.



Even if misguided, the police shootings of the 13 effectively stopped the pogroms cold. It did not end all Israeli Arab belligerence, of course, and growing numbers of radicalized Israeli Arabs are joining the ranks of the suicide bombers and other terrorist murderers. More Oslo "success". After implementation of the Road Map, the dimensions of this phenomenon will grow to those of Gaza and Jenin themselves.



[The following is an old news report from the time of the start of the Orr Commission hearings, putting some things into perspective: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=9254]