Sharon’s Choice for Post Rejected by Court

Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday barred the appointment of an ex-secret agent, who once admitted killing two captured Palestinian bus hijackers in 1984, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s head of counter-terrorism.

The high court judges said in a written decision that Ehud Yatom, who retired from the Shin Bet domestic security service in 1996, should have refused an illegal order to kill prisoners.

“The norm of purity of arms on which he was educated in the Israel Defense Forces applies also in the General Security Services,” the ruling stated. “The killing of captured and bound men harms this value.”

The so-called Bus 300 affair began in April 1984 when four Palestinians hijacked a bus and threatened to kill its passengers. Israeli commandos carried out a rescue raid during which two of the hijackers and an Israeli passenger were killed.

The Shin Bet said at the time that the other two hijackers died of wounds sustained during an exchange of fire on the bus. But newspaper photographs showed them being taken unharmed from the scene.

That prompted an inquiry that led to the resignation of four Shin Bet officials. They and seven agents, including Yatom, later received presidential pardons.

In 1996, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published an interview with Yatom in which it quoted him as admitting to having crushed the prisoners’ skulls with a large stone.

Yatom later denied the comments attributed to him but the newspaper stood by its story.

Left-wing opposition leader Yossi Sarid, who petitioned the court against Yatom’s appointment, told Israel Radio: “The high court delivered an educational message of the greatest importance, that it is forbidden to obey an illegal order.”

Yatom condemned the ruling and said it would undermine the public’s faith in Israel’s highest legal institution.

Yatom said the killing of the two hijackers from the Gaza Strip occurred when “I was forced under mental pressure and great personal danger to save hostages.”