The transparency of Mya Guarnieri

The article of Mya Guarnieri The killing of Zuhair al-Qaissi exposes Israel's attitude to its supreme court on CiF didn't attract my attention because of the name of the author, neither because of the contents. Ms Guarnieri has already appeared on this blog. There really isn't anything new or useful to add about her.

The contents, while being stale, require a reply, since they will be repeated again and again by the likes of the article's author. So - again and again:

• Ms Guarnieri doesn't have any new information on Zuhair al-Qaissi, the target of the IDF operation. She cannot disprove the IDF statement that implicated him in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, in being behind the murder of eight Israelis in the highway 12 shooting last year, in preparing another cross-border attack from Sinai, similar to the previous one.
• Ms Guarnieri claims that "Israel killed him on the basis of secret evidence – evidence that is not subject to legal or judicial review..." However, she doesn't know that there wasn't a legal review of the evidence, which is nowadays a part of the standard procedure before each targeted killing.

These two points effectively leave the article empty of meaningful content. Aside of citing Israel again and again for the past or present, real or imagined misdeeds, hardly related to the subject (at least as defined by the headline), there is nothing.

But of course, Ms Guarnieri has a few demands to make. The first one is a demand for "transparency":

But, without seeing the security forces' secret evidence, it's impossible to know if al-Qaissi was indeed planning an attack, and if the army was in line with the 2006 ruling. There's no transparency in this so-called democracy and, without transparency, there is no accountability to the state's highest court.

I am not sure I will be able to explain to Ms Guarnieri the slight contradiction between the word "secret" and the word "transparency". Maybe you could, dear reader?

The other demand is expressed in a roundabout way, by quoting an Adalah attorney:

From the perspective of human rights law," el-Ajou adds, "assassinations are not legitimate … They should only be carried out if there is a 'ticking bomb.' [Suspects] should be brought to trial.

Yeah. Pull the other one now. Of course it's the fault of Israeli judiciary and Israeli postal services that the late Zuhair al-Qaissi didn't receive the summons to appear in the Israeli court to discuss some of his er... misdemeanors, should we say? And of course, since the secret evidence is, at least by nature of being defined so, secret, it wasn't presented to Ms Guarnieri or Ms el-Ajou, so they can again disregard the IDF claim that the above mentioned late gentleman was a ticking bomb.

As for that inane "should be brought to trial" passage: I can only guess the consequences of sending into Gaza the number of troops required to bring out a single individual (in thousands), the number of innocent bystander casualties and the number of less innocent "colleagues" of Zuhair al-Qaissi IDF will have to pass on the way (both numbers in thousands)... But isn't this precisely what Ms Guarnieri and her ilk are pining for? Another opportunity to present us as butchers?

Too transparent, Ms Guarnieri.

P.S. It's interesting that the article has received much less of the usual anti-Israeli comments as such articles were used to. Does even the crowd of CiF regulars get tired of their own crapola?

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