Kufr Qaddoum: Israel fires at peaceful protest, man injured in head
July 14, 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On Friday, July 13, several protesters were injured when the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) fired tear-gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at the weekly peaceful demonstration in the Palestinian village of Kufr Qaddoum. One man was shot in the head by a tear-gas grenade and was taken to hospital. Two other men were badly injured by rubber-coated bullets.
A home adjacent to the demonstration was hit by tear-gas grenades and caught fire. One child, 2 men, and 4 women were injured by the fire and smoke. An ambulance arrived but was delayed for 30 minutes because of the IOF attacks on the village.
The IOF also employed use of the ‘skunk’ truck which pumps out a foul smelling water and released several sound bombs to terrorize the village. Although illegal, most of the tear-gas was fired at body-level rather than in an arch in the air. Often, 10-12 canisters were fired at a time.
The purpose of the weekly demonstration in Kufr Qaddoum focuses on the closure of the main road that connects the village with Nablus. The road, which passes alongside the nearby illegal settlement of Qedumim, was closed to Palestinian access. As a result, the journey to Nablus has increased from 15 minutes to 40 minutes. This has resulted in hardships because many residents travel daily to Nablus for work, studies, or health care.
On Thursday, June 12, the residents of Kufr Qaddoum celebrated the one year anniversary of their Friday demonstrations. During this year, 60 people have been arrested, 65 people have been shot and badly injured by tear-gas canisters, 200 olive trees have been burned, and the town has suffered systemically from nightly raids and harassment by the IOF.


I cannot always bear to read these stories of the Palestinian people–their suffering is too great. The least I can do is to be supportive of them in their darkest hour and hope and pray that they will be delivered one day soon. I know that there is a ray of light that penetrates their darkness. No nation, no matter how long it takes or how great it believes its powers to be can escape the consequences of its actions. The more we dehumanize another human being, it is our own selves that we do harm to. Decades of cruelty by Israel and its silent majority is transforming that nation into self-centered cruel human beings. The evil that they sent forth by their own hands will eventually turn upon them. They are creating a rising tide of inhumanity and that tide will turn one day.
The dark hour of the Africans lasted for five hundred years. For five hundred years African was exploited of its people and millions of them ended up in the Atlantic Ocean. Those who were brought to North American, the vast majority of them continue to struggle on a daily basis to live a live of freedom and dignity. Learn from the compassion of the Africans whose holocaust lasted for five hundred years. Their gas chamber was the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Africans, although the target of centuries of cruelty never retreated to create weapons of mass annihilation of mankind. Instead, they continue to love humanity and to call mankind to the brotherhood of man.
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