Minority Report | IDF arrests Palestinian prisoner released in Shalit swap

Today, January 31, 2012, reality made one giant leap into science fiction. Since we are talking about Israel, I almost said a Giant Leap Forward in the Communist sense, but this is not funny anymore. Israel is systematically destroying the Rule of Law. Today, this criminal state arrested a Palestinian prisoner released in the Shalit swap under horrific circumstances.

Dura, near Hebron, Occupied Palestine

Earlier today, the Golani Brigade of the IDF arrested Mamun Ismail Salame Stut, a Palestinian man who was released from Israeli prison in October as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal. He had been originally arrested in 2002, and indicted on attempted murder, membership in an unidentified organization, assembling bombs and providing asylum. An Israeli court sentenced him to 38 years in prison. The arrest took place in Dura, near Hebron, well within Occupied Palestine.

The Gilad Shalit swap took place in two phases. Gilad Shalit was released in October 2011 by Hamas, while Israel freed around 500 Palestinian prisoners. In the second phase, 550 additional Palestinian prisoners were released in December.

According to the IDF spokesperson, Stut was arrested for being a security threat.

The Real Crime

The real crime is accusing someone of “membership in an unidentified organization” and “being a security threat.” I read time and again the claims made by the State of Israel in court, and could understand only one thing: “This man is innocent.” He committed no crime.

No civil servant can claim to know the future, and deny liberty on this account. No civil servant can claim he doesn’t like a person, and deny liberty on this account. At the moment it did so, Israel stepped into the realm of institutional crime and science fiction.

Minority Report

“The Minority Report” is a 1956 science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, first published in Fantastic Universe. The story is about a society where murders are prevented through the efforts of three mutants—called “precogs”—who can see the future, in other words possess the power of precognition. The story explores the rule of law through a carefully designed paradox, when the chief of police intercepts a precognition message by one of the mutants that he is about to murder a man he has never met. Then, the chief of police begins a complex attempt to blame a police officer for this future crime.

The society described in the story is based on “Precrime,” a system that punishes people with imprisonment for murders they would have committed, had they not been prevented. In the introduction to the story Philip K. Dick writes: “punishment was never much of a deterrent and could scarcely have afforded comfort to a victim already dead.”

In other words, The Minority Report describes a police-state in which state agents may arrest someone based on their assumptions regarding a possible future. Eventually, the process is proved wrong—“precogs” can err in their judgment—and the system is scrapped. A Brave New World is born.

In its majestic equality…

In The Red Lily, Anatole France wrote in 1894: “In its majestic equality the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.” What would he have said about the then inexistent State of Israel?

Often, one can observe how the legal system of those countries defining themselves as “Western Democracies” operates and be left speechless. Today’s event is such an occasion. Israeli law enforcement agents operated on their “precognition” that Mr. Stut was about to commit a crime.

The least we can do, is to demand from the superhuman Israeli agents, to disclose their powers. How exactly do they achieve precognition? Are “precogs” being hidden by the Zionist state, while they predict crimes by Palestinians?

On the issue of crimes, Israel operates according to Criminal Law, also known as Penal Law, the law pertaining to crimes and punishment. The laws comprising this topic regulate the definition of offences found to have a sufficiently deleterious social impact and impose punishments on them. However, the law does not impose restrictions on society that physically prevents people from committing a crime in the first place.

By arresting Mr. Stut, the State of Israel has proved beyond all doubt that it rejects even its own Rule of Law and has become an outlaw country. At that very moment (and not for the first time), it lost its right to judge, to punish, and eventually to exist. States do not exist for committing crimes. Israel, Let the People Go!