Chief of Staff Under Fire for Reducing Sentence of Army Officer

A motion to dismiss Chief of Staff Gen. Raphael Eitan was submitted in the Knesset yesterday by Uri Avneri of the Sheli faction. He sent letters to all of his fellow MKs urging their support on grounds that Eitan had lied in his public statements justifying the reduction of the prison sentence imposed on an Israeli Army officer found guilty of murdering four Arab prisoners during the occupation of south Lebanon in the spring of 1978.

Avneri presented his motion along with what he claimed were the unpublished details of the case. He acted after two other MKs, David Glass and Shmuel Toledano, lodged a similar complaint against Eitan with Acting Premier Yigael Yadin. Glass, a member of the National Religious Party, is chairman of the Knesset’s legislation and law committee and Toledano, of the Shai faction, heads the state comptroller committee. Both said the Chief of Staff had distorted the facts of the case in a recently published interview with Yediot Achronot.

The public has had very little information on the case. The trial and various hearings were closed and military censorship has cloaked the affair in secrecy. The officer in question was never publicly identified. He was, however, sentenced by a military tribunal to 12 years imprisonment. An appeals court reduced the term to eight years. Subsequently, the Chief of Staff, who is empowered to review and commute military sentences, cut the sentence to two years.

This was done without the public’s knowledge. When news leaked out, many MKs and other Israelis were infuriated. The issue has already had a polarizing effect. About a month ago, 150 reserve officers signed a letter protesting the Chief of Staff’s action. Subsequently. 90 officers and soldiers in full uniform, entered the Knesset to denounce critics of Eitan, creating a brief uproar in the chamber.

BASIS FOR CLEMENCY

The Chief of Staff justified his clemency on grounds that the officer was alone and in a situation of extreme danger when he killed the prisoners. But many MKs recalled a similar instance in which the Chief of Staff reduced the sentence of a soldier who killed an Arab civilian, apparently because the killing occurred on the same spot where a terrorist had killed an Israeli soldier 24 hours before.

The Lebanese operation occurred before Eitan was elevated to Chief of Staff. His immediate predecessor Gen. (res.) Mordechai Gur, declined to discuss the case last night, saying he did not remember it. But he offered what appeared to be justification for the killing of the prisoners. He said there had been cases where Arabs pretended to be prisoners of war and then opened fire on their captors.

Gur said that during the Lebanese operation, an entire village pretended to surrender and then took arms from a secret cache and killed two Israeli soldiers. The army, he said, must be allowed to do its job. On the other hand, he added, prisoners of war must be protected.