Former Premier Yitzhak Rabin and other Knesset members representing both the Labor Alignment and the Likud coalition had high praise today for the report by Gen. (Res.) Meir Zorea which found that security personnel had bludgeoned to death two terrorists captured after hijacking a bus last April 12.
The report, the result of an investigation ordered by Defense Minister Moshe Arens, was made public in part today. Rabin said Zorea and his aides “took their job very seriously. They did not try to hide the terrible reality. They exposed everything that happened without fear or any attempt to whitewash the situation.”
The former Premier, who was once Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Force, stressed that the killing of captured Palestinian terrorists was not typical of the behavior of Israeli fighting men. The IDF, he said, has maintained throughout the years a standard of conduct which set it apart from the surrounding Arab countries. “I believe that this moral value… must be retained by us at all costs.”
Rabin’s comments were endorsed by many coalition MKs. Only speakers of the ultra-nationalist Tehiya Party refused to comment on Zorea’s findings. Labor MK Yossi Sarid said the Zorea committee was a “credit to the IDF and to Israeli society.”
Meanwhile, Felicia Langer, the lawyer representing the families of the two slain terrorists, said today that they would demand compensation. She praised the press for playing the role of “the national conscience” in this instance. Otherwise, the entire matter would have been concealed, she claimed.
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