Israel’s fat man cannot be blamed for the attack on Gaza: Dutch courts The Hague News

The Netherlands Court of Appeal has upheld its decision to drop a civil lawsuit against Israel’s defense minister over his involvement in the deadly 2014 attack in Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and another former military official cannot be held responsible for a lawsuit filed by a Dutch Palestinian who lost six relatives in an airstrike in Gaza in 2014, the Dutch Court of Appeal has ruled.

Ismail Ziada’s mother, three brothers, a brother-in-law, a young niece and a friend were killed in an attack on Israel’s 2014 Gaza attack.

Universal jurisdiction allows countries to prosecute serious crimes, such as war crimes and torture, wherever they occur.

The case of Ziada was dismissed in January 2020 by a lower court in the Netherlands, which ruled that the principles of universal jurisdiction could be applied to individual criminal liability, but not in civil cases.

The lawsuit against Gantz and former Air Force commander Amir Eshel could not proceed because the men have “functional immunity from jurisdiction,” the Hague District Court then ruled.

The Hague Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the lower court had ruled that Gantz was right – he was a senior military man at the time of the attack – and that Eshel was immune because they were pursuing Israeli government policies.

“The courts in the Netherlands have no jurisdiction here to try the claim. The [lower] the court ruled correctly, ”the Hague Court of Appeal said.

“The high-ranking military has pursued the official policy of the state of Israel, and is giving a verdict on their actions.”

The court added that “he was not blind to the plaintiff’s suffering.”

The lower court also ruled that Ziada was free to prosecute Israeli men. At the 2019 hearings, Ziada denied that Israel’s access to justice is “as vicious as it is farcical.”

Israeli Defense Minister Gantz was the head of the Israeli Army General Staff last year at the time of the July 20, 2014 airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza.

At least 2,251 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 74 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed in the attack.