A lawyer for the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority told a jury in an opening statement Tuesday that the groups are not to blame for seven terror attacks in Israel from 2001 to 2004.Given that these attacks were happily claimed by Fatah terrorists on the payroll of the PLO, this argument is going to be demolished easily.
Attorney Mark Rochon said the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers and gunmen "acting on their own angry, crazy reasons" and that the organizations are victims of guilt by association.
The $1 billion lawsuit was filed in 2004 over attacks in or near Jerusalem that killed 33 people and wounded hundreds more, including scores of U.S. citizens.
Shurat HaDin's head, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner , predicted in December that the PLO would mount this defense:
When asked what possible defense could be offered against such a charge, Darshan-Leitner predicted that the PA will attempt to spin the Second Intifada as a series of "lone wolf" attacks outside their realm of control.In 2008, the PLO - trying to avoid this trial - argued that the terror attacks were acts of war, not terrorism - the exact opposite of the current claim! If they are acts of war that means that they were centrally controlled and managed by the Palestinian Authority government at the time.
"The PLO's defense would be that it could not control the attacks, the perpetrators of the different attacks, that they were sporadic events which the PLO had no control over [and] did not encourage in any way, and basically that even attacks carried out by Palestinian policemen or Palestinian security officials were wrong and not authorized by the Palestinian Authority," she explained.
"It's a very weak defense, because we have thousands of [pieces of] evidence - documents - that prove otherwise, prove that the Palestinian Authority not only controlled the attacks, but wanted to initiate the attacks and set up a policy to carry out attacks, wanted to direct their officials [and] their commanders to perpetrate attacks against Israelis, and incited to carry out attacks."
"I think the Palestinian Authority's argument will not hold," she concluded.
The judge threw out that claim:
I wonder if the PLO's previous arguments are admissible as evidence in the current trial.
[District Judge George] Daniels rejected the PLO's argument that two machine-gun attacks and five bombings were acts of war. The Jerusalem-area incidents killed 33 people and wounded hundreds, including scores of U.S. citizens.
Daniels said the attacks targeted public places - not military or government personnel or interests. Two bombings were on downtown streets; others occurred at a crowded bus stop, a cafeteria at the Hebrew University and a passenger-filled civilian bus.
"The use of bombs in these circumstances indicates an intent to cause far-reaching devastation upon the masses," the Manhattan judge said," with a merciless capability of indiscriminately killing and maiming untold numbers in heavily populated civilian areas.
"Such attacks upon non-combative civilians, who were allegedly simply going about their everyday lives, do not constitute acts of war," he said.
Daniels also said the violence meets the legal definition of international terrorism.
At any rate, this means that according to the PLO's own statements, they are guilty of war crimes by targeting civilians.