Israel’s High Court of Justice has ruled that an Arab member of the commission investigating the massacre of Muslim worshipers in Hebron may remain on the panel, despite what the court called his lack of wisdom in making remarks on the subject to the media.
Two Israeli lawyers had submitted a petition to the court requesting that Judge Abdel Rahman Zouabi be removed from the Shamgar Commission, which was formed after the Feb. 25 killings of at least 29 Palestinians by an Israeli settler at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
The lawyers had said Zouabi was clearly prejudiced against the settlers, basing their claim on a published interview with Zouabi in which he was quoted as saying he had always “known that the settlers were the cruel party in the territories.”
Zouabi claimed that the published interview did not reflect his point of view.
The most severe criticism of Zouabi came from High Court Justice Aharon Barak, who pointed to the impropriety of judges granting media interviews on issues with which they were dealing professionally.
But the court nonetheless found nothing in Zouabi’s conduct that should disqualify him from continuing to serve on the panel. Before it will hand down its findings, the Shamgar panel is reviewing the evidence it heard in the weeks following the Hebron massacre.
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