MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Israel is setting up a military tribunal to prosecute hundreds of Palestinians in connection with the Hamas-led attacks of October 7. If convicted, they could face the death penalty. Some civil rights groups in Israel are warning the tribunal could amount to show trials and mass executions. NPR's Daniel Estrin is on the line from Tel Aviv to talk about this. Good morning, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So why a special tribunal? What's Israel trying to achieve here?
ESTRIN: Well, it's an unprecedented number of defendants we're talking about and an unprecedented crime. It was the deadliest day in Israeli history. Israel says nearly 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage. And thousands of Palestinians stormed into southern Israel from Gaza on that day, October 7, 2023. Many were killed that day, but a few hundred were captured. And throughout the Gaza war, Israeli officials avoided prosecuting them because they said it could hurt the efforts to free the Israeli hostages. Well, now the living hostages are all free. And last night, the Israeli Parliament passed a law to set up this special tribunal to prosecute these suspects with a maximum sentence of the death penalty.
MARTIN: Given the hundreds of people who will be put on trial, what will this tribunal look like?
ESTRIN: It's going to be a huge undertaking, Michel. It's only estimated to be set up next year because they're establishing a whole new military court in Jerusalem. They're going to be appointing new judges. One of the big ideas behind this is to allow the public to attend or watch the trials. One Israeli lawmaker who led this initiative called it the modern Eichmann trials, which is a reference to the famous Israeli trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. Holocaust survivors testified in that trial, and it was seen as the first real public reckoning of the crimes of the Holocaust. And so here, these Palestinian defendants will be charged with virtually the same charges Eichmann faced - crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and even the crime of genocide.
MARTIN: I understand that you are hearing concerns about these trials. What are they?
ESTRIN: Well, there's a debate among Israeli civil rights advocates about this. Some say that a tribunal is better than holding Palestinians indefinitely without charge. Other civil rights advocates are alarmed. First, there is a problem of evidence because, in the chaos of October 7, a lot of evidence was simply not collected. So this tribunal will allow judges' discretion to prosecute based on lower standards of evidence. I spoke about this with Sari Bashi. She runs an Israeli human rights group called the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.
SARI BASHI: Those suspected of participating in the October 7 attacks against Israeli civilians should be held accountable for their actions if convicted. But the victims of the October 7 attacks and the survivors deserve justice, not show trials and mass executions based on confessions extracted through torture. That's not justice, that's vengeance.
ESTRIN: And then there's another problem, Michel, which is it's really unclear who's going to be representing these defendants. Will Palestinian lawyers agree to represent them? Hamas says the new Israeli law setting up this tribunal, they consider it to be null and void, and there are advocates who say that there is a disparity here. No Israeli officials or Israeli soldiers are being arrested and brought before any court for crimes in the Gaza war.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Daniel, thank you.
ESTRIN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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