Israel may pay for filmmaker's death

As Israel begins its investigation into the killing of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, there are reports that the government is preparing to pay millions of dollars to the family of another cameraman shot dead by an Israeli soldier in Gaza five years ago.

Haaretz newspaper reported today that Israel is considering paying $3.5 million to the family of James Miller, an award-winning British filmmaker who was killed in Gaza while working on a documentary.

Miller, then 34, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier while he and two of his colleagues were waving a white flag at night and trying to leave an area then under Israeli military siege.

The incident, like Shana's recent killing, was chillingly captured on film (below) and shown in the documentary "Death in Gaza."

The course of the Israeli investigation into Shana's killing is likely to follow that of the Israeli investigation into Miller's killing.

Then, as now, Israel's first response was to state that "cameramen who knowingly enter a combat zone endanger themselves."

Although the above footage shows that there was no firefight, the Israeli military at first stated that Miller and his team were caught in crossfire.

After nearly two years, Israel announced that it was closing the military investigation without indicting the soldier who fired the shot. The military said it could not legally determine that the shot fired by the soldier killed Miller.

Even so, Israel said it would discipline the soldier for violating the rules of engagement.

Miller's family then filed suit and a British inquest concluded in 2006 that Miller had been murdered.

British officials continued to press for Israel to take action and threatened to extradite the Israeli soldiers if no action was taken.

Now, after five years, Israel appears to be looking to resolve the matter by paying the family in exchange for an agreement by Britain not to pursue the matter.

Comments

[Edie]

Wow. If only the U.S. gov't had the same courage as the British gov't maybe we would've gotten a REAL investigation into the killing of Rachel Corrie and some justice.

[Israeli]

Can my family sue Palestinians if they bomb a bus and I'm killed or injured?

[Palestinian]

Can my family sue Israelis if they fire a flechette-filled tank shell and I'm killed or injured?

What about if my house has been demolished by an IDF D9 bulldozer to create a 'buffer zone'?

What about if my strawberry fields were crushed and my olive groves were uprooted and replanted in Maale Adumim or the Negev?

More to the point, what about if my family was driven from our home by Zionist gangs and I've been living in a squalid camp in Lebanon ever since? What about if I am the third generation to be in this situation?

What about if I'm detained in a faraway country because I am stateless and without papers?

Why did Israel get tens of billions of dollars in compensation for Jewish dispossession in Europe but my grandmother has been living penniless on UN cereal handouts in a refugee camp within walking distance of my family farm? We had chickens and olive trees and silver and beautiful jewels.. where is that now? Where is my bicycle that was in my yard the day the Zionists came to take my country?

[Susan]

Dear Israeli:

my sympathies lie mainly with the Palestinians. overwhelmingly so.
- an American-Canadian

[Anthony]

Palestinian, if your people weren't such cowards, perhaps you could put an army together to drive the Jews out of Israel and go back to your homes. And by the way, why haven't your people been able in all these years to turn the areas you occupy into the kind of productive country the Jews have turned their country into? Why do you have to depend on the US for the food you eat and on the Jews for the fuel to cook it? Why don't you get off your dead asses, quit complaining, and either drive them out of your homes and into the sea or make lives for yourselves and your children where you are? You get no sympathy here. Quit whining and do something besides killing innocent school children and Olympic athletes and others who have no warning and no chance to fight back. Do you want to know the difference between us and you? Your murderers have to be drugged, brainwashed, and promised 72 virgins to get up the nerve to commit murder. The passengers on Flight 93 and those on the flight that ugly shoe bomber tried to kill needed none of that. All they needed was a little American courage. The same kind of courage the 7 million Jews have shown every time your 100 million Arabs have attacked them.

[Kristie Mansfield]

wow. There is really no excuse for this kind of ignorance, since he managed to find such an excellent source for real undistorted truth here.

Anthony has a choice:
1) Blame and attack the victims, pretend that apartheid and ethnic cleansing isn't happening.
2) Get off his own "dead ass" and attempt any sort of altruistic action.

He knows what's happening and his acquiescence is rotting his soul.

Thank You for your work on this blog. For everything there is a season; someday the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials will take place and with people like you it will happen sooner than later.

[gmf]

Anthony - why did the Jews in Germany give up their possesions and walk into death camps?

You suggest the Palestinians drive the Isrealis into the sea, but if they suggest that - the world is outraged.

The Palestinians were driven off their productive land and herded into areas w/o resources. You expect these people to defeat the might of the US military in direct conflict?

Who do you think supplies Isreal?

Don't you uderstand that most ordinary people there want some type of peaceful solution?

[Duane]

Hamas and other Death radicals in Iran and elsewhere maintain the human beings in Gaza and the West Bank as intellectual fodder for their anti semitic wars.

The deaths of palestinians is a strategy of Hamas and other death radicals. Hamas murdered dozens of Fatah members in Gaza as proof of their deep human hatred. Hamas finds the suffering of Gazans highly useful and strategic for their political interests.