A U.S. Federal Court in New York has dismissed a law suit against Israel's Public Security Minister regarding his responsibility for incidental deaths in a July 2002 attack against an arch-terrorist.
The widely-circulated Associated Press report on the story, by Larry Neumeister, neglected to mention that the Israel Air Force attack in question targeted one of Israel's worst enemies in recent memory, Salah Shehada, who oversaw hundreds of attacks against Israelis.
The AP story says only that the Israel Air Force bombing "killed 15 people in an apartment building in Gaza City." Towards the end of the article, it states that unspecified damages were sought for what the lawsuit "called a 'targeted assassination' in which the Israeli Air Force dropped a 2,205-pound bomb on an apartment building in the Palestinian Territory." The lawsuit claims that Dichter committed war crimes in developing the targeted-attack system.
No mention was made in the AP article of the dozens of murders organized by Shehada, nor of the Kassam rockets he ordered fired into Israel before being targeted, nor of the attacks he was planning at the time of his death.
U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III threw out the suit against Avi Dichter - currently Israel's Public Security Minister, and head of the General Security Service at the time of the bombing in July 2002. Pauley explained that he could not ignore the impact of the suit "on the Middle East's delicate diplomacy," in keeping with State Department concerns. He also said Israel's government had claimed Dichter should be considered legally immune because he was acting as a government official.
Shehada, at the time of his death, was slated to succeed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as head of the Hamas terrorist organization. He was behind the murder of Israeli soldiers as far back as the late 1980's, the first year of Kassam rockets fired at Sderot and environs, the attacks in Atzmona (5 students murdered), the IDF "Africa" outpost (4 soldiers), the Matza restaurant in Haifa (15 civilians), Sbarros (15), the Dolphinarium attack (21), and many more. He was active not only in Gaza, but also reorganized and rebuilt Hamas forces in Samaria.
President Moshe Katzav said at the time of the attack that Shehada had caused not only Jewish deaths, but also those of the Arab children who were hit in the IDF attack. "Shehada maliciously chose to locate himself in a crowded residential area," Katzav said. "[It] shows how criminal Palestinian terrorists, in order to protect themselves, are using the lives of innocent women and children, intentionally making them into helpless human hostages." The President also said that Israel had no choice but to "attack the person who was directly responsible for the murders of dozens of innocent Israelis."
Just days before his death, Shehada was in the midst of planning to send a truck loaded with 600 kilograms of explosives to musical celebrations in Gush Katif.
Shehada had been released from Israeli prison two years before he was killed, after signing a promise not to engage in terrorism.