The citizen's obligation to know
Ze'ev Sternhal
Haaretz, November 28, 2003
The affair of the Israel Air Force attack on the
Nusseirat refugee camp in Gaza raises once more,
from a different point of view, the same question
of principle that emerged not long ago in the
episode in which the attorney general called for
the dismissal of the head of the police
Investigations Branch: What is the nature of the
public interest and who serves it better - someone
who exposes the truth about government actions, or
someone who helps whitewash the facts? Is the
public interest better served by someone who hides
behind an administrative hierarchy and clings to
dry regulations, or by someone who decides to act
in breach of the regulations and thereby ensures
that the public is informed about crucial facts?
It's worth reminding those who may have forgotten that the government is a trust owned by the ordinary citizen and that those who hold government positions are no more than trustees. Therefore, to know the facts is not only the right of the citizen, it is his duty and obligation, so that he will be able to carry out his role as owner of the trust. In a democracy that is worthy of the name, the citizen is active day in and day out: his role is not confined to casting his vote every few years. It follows that without the free flow of information, democracy is voided of most of its content.
State Prosecutor Edna Arbel and MK Yossi Sarid
(Meretz) were only doing their duty when they
defended the citizen's right to receive reliable information about subjects of supreme importance. When the head of the prosecution abnegates himself under pressure by aggressive office holders, the powerful and the owners of big capital, it is the responsibility of the person who holds the second most important position in the system, along with other officials, to put a stop to the debacle. Edna
Arbel and the district attorneys showed that they are loyal to their positions by filling the vacuum that was created by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein when he consciously ignored his duty to defend unconditionally the principle of equality before the law and public integrity. Arbel and her colleagues knew from long experience that if they did make their views public, the issues in question would be buried forever in the files of the Justice
Ministry.
Indeed, Rubinstein, in his clash with Arbel, hid
behind the principle of proper administration
and thus prevented her from appearing before a
Knesset committee to which, as is customary in
democracies, she was to have presented a report
to those who were elected to represent the
owners of the trust. When he finds it convenient, Rubinstein is s stickler for proper administration, even when it comes at the expense of the democratic structure of government. The result is that those who were elected as the overseers of the government did not hear what the state prosecutor had to say and were unable to question her. Again the citizen's obligation to know was infringed.
It's a pity, though, that the attorney general
did not invoke the grounds he is now invoking
to silence the state prosecutor when, some
three years ago, he decided to intervene in the
struggle for power. At that time, at the outset
of the election campaign that Ariel Sharon
finally won, Rubinstein wrote a "private letter" to the prime minister, Ehud Barak. His moralizing immediately found its way into the media and became a cornerstone of the Likud's election campaign.
In the recent Gaza episode, too, the public interest requires that we get to the bottom of the matter. It's not a question of the type of ammunition that was used, and not even the army's credibility. The question is whether the two watchdogs of the government and its officials - the parliament and the media - fulfilled the responsibility that devolves upon them. Thanks to last week's controversy, facts
were confirmed that had been known from other
sources, which the government had done all in
its power to conceal.
So we know today that there really were dozens
of Palestinian casualties. The circumstances of
this killing raise the serious suspicion that a
refugee camp was used as a testing ground for a
new weapons system. We can only hope that this
is not the case. The dramatic secrecy, even at
the highest levels of the army, that envelops the bloody events of October 19 in Nusseirat, only heightens the suspicions. At the same time, it's possible that this was more a case of stupidity than criminal intent.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the army, in
an effort to cover up the event, made use of
those who are supposed to be the citizen's
watchdogs - in this case, the military correspondents. It's true that not all of them
displayed the low level of Roni Daniel, the
Channel 2 military commentator. However, even
those who are trying to do their best not to
become the IDF's lapdogs didn't bother to make
the trip to Gaza to see for themselves. That
work was done for them by a Washington Post
correspondent who reported, in a CNN
investigative piece, that there were a large
number of civilian casualties, including people
who were standing at the entrance to their
homes or at the windows of apartment buildings.
Not much imagination was required to infer that
at the moment in question there were more than
flies and mosquitoes flying through the streets
of the refugee camp.
