You Can Fool Some People, Sometimes...

But You Can't Fool All the People All the Time...

The shooting of the youth, Muhammad Hani al-Kasba, 17, has received unusual attention because Israeli news media outlets have reported that the officer who shot Mr. Kasba, Col. Yisrael Shomer, leads a brigade that oversees a central district in the West Bank.

“It sends a message to all other soldiers in the region: ‘This is how one should behave,’ ” said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem.

The Israeli news media reported that Colonel Shomer had been questioned on Sunday.

Video from a security camera provided by Mr. Kasba’s family to B’Tselem shows the teenager hurling a rock at a vehicle’s window and then running away. Three soldiers then leave the vehicle, with two of them pursuing Mr. Kasba and the third soldier standing near the vehicle. Seconds later, they return to the vehicle and drive away.

The video, along with accounts by Palestinian witnesses and photographs of Mr. Kasba’s body that were provided to B’Tselem, indicate that he was not risking the soldiers’ lives when he was shot and killed, Ms. Michaeli said. In a video distributed on social media networks that purports to show Mr. Kasba after he was shot, he is seen lying on the ground with blood pooling around his face, neck and upper shoulders, as people yell for medical help.

Ms. Michaeli said that he had been shot twice in the upper back and once on the side of his face, which she said indicated that he had been running away when he was shot. The witnesses’ statements and the video also suggested, she said, that the soldiers left Mr. Kasba without offering any medical treatment. He was taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Ramallah, where he was pronounced dead.

So now we see the light (What you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (Yeah, yeah, yeah!)

So you better:
Get up, stand up! (In the morning! Git it up!)
Stand up for your rights! (Stand up for our rights!)
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! (Don't give it up, don't give it up!)
Get up, stand up! (Get up, stand up!)
Stand up for your rights! (Get up, stand up!)
Get up, stand up! ( ... )
Don't give up the fight! (Get up, stand up!)
Get up, stand up! ( ... )
Stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! [fadeout]

The episode has loomed large since the Palestinians joined the International Criminal Court.

The court will have to decide whether Israel can fairly investigate itself before it opens its own criminal investigation into Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza last summer, as well as investigating suspected violations in the West Bank, as the Palestinians have requested.
...
Ms. Michaeli, the rights group’s spokeswoman, cast doubt on the ability of the military to impartially investigate the shooting of Mr. Kasba. She said it appeared that investigators had not yet interviewed any witnesses, nor had they returned to the scene or requested an autopsy. She said B’Tselem had provided the military with the video footage of the episode.

She said some of the problems with military investigations were the result of incompetence, but that others reflected the reality of life in the West Bank, where Palestinians have been hostile, and sometimes violent, with military investigators, who are perceived as part of an occupying army.

“It raises great concern as to whether the following criminal investigation can actually lead to meaningful justice and accountability,” she said.

B’Tselem and other human rights groups have noted that Israeli military investigations into accusations of crimes committed against Palestinians in the West Bank rarely lead to prosecutions.

“When you look at the broader picture, we find that the system functions — this is terrible to say — the system works as a whitewash mechanism," Ms. Michaeli said.