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Brutalizing Palestinian Children

By Stephen Lendman | March 11th, 2010

As an isolated incident, it would be appalling and criminal. As a regular occurrence, it’s state-sponsored terrorism against defenseless children, subjected to barbarism by Israeli soldiers committing crimes against humanity to crush their will for wanting to live free on their own land – what Westerners take for granted; what Palestinians since 1948 haven’t had, and since 1967, under military occupation denying their very humanity.

Nora Barrows-Friedman does heroic reporting for Pacifica Radio’s KPFA Flashpoints Radio and as an activist/teacher/journalist in Occupied Palestine during regular visits. On March 8 on the Electronic Intifada, she wrote about Amir al-Mohteseb, a 10-year old Hebron child, arrested, detained, and savagely beaten after his 12-year old brother Hasan endured similar treatment a week earlier.

On March 7 at 2AM, “Israeli soldiers (broke) into (his) house, snatch(ed) Amir from his bed, threatened his parents with death by gunfire if they” interfered, took him down the stairwell, and brutally beat him causing internal abdomen bleeding, requiring overnight hospitalization. “In complete shock and distress, Amir would not open his mouth to speak for another day and a half.”

Before the incident, he told Barrows-Friedman he was playing in the street on his way with Hasan to see their aunt when:

“Two….soldiers stopped us and handcuffed us, (took) us to two separate jeeps, (took) me to the settlement and put me in a corner, (put) a dog next to me,” refused to let him use the bathroom, threatened to hold him forever, wouldn’t let him call his mother, blindfolded him, and held him until his father managed to get him late at night.

He was terrified, held for 10 hours, traumatized by the incident, and unable to sleep, “worried sick about his brother in jail and extremely afraid that the soldiers would come back” and do it again, which they did, and do repeatedly to hundreds of Palestinian youths, their siblings, parents and friends, guilty of being Palestinian on land Israel wants to make historic Palestine an ethnically pure Jewish state.

On March 9, Haaretz writer Nir Hassan headlined, “Israel using strong arm tactics against young Palestinian stone-throwers,” saying several Silwan, East Jerusalem youths “were arrested and taken from their home(s) in handcuffs in the middle of the night over the past few months, as part of a police crackdown on suspected stone-throwers….,” not militants, gunmen, murderers, or bomb throwers threatening civil society – alleged stone-throwers punishable by imprisonment up to 20 years under Military Order 378 if convicted.

Children 12 – 15 have been targeted, arrested, detained, and savagely beaten following complaints by Jewish settlers who usually take the law into their own hands using weapons they’re allowed to carry.

Parents intervening are threatened, often beaten, and at times detained and charged with interference. Some arrested children “had their remands extended by the court, and others were released on certain conditions. All the suspects against whom (authorities have dubious evidence) will be brought to trial” before military or Magistrate Court judges where due process and judicial fairness are denied, so their fate is pre-determined.

On February 17, B’Tselem highlighted the same story about Silwan, East Jerusalem youths seized from their beds in the middle of the night, handcuffed, taken to the Russian Compound police station and interrogated “on suspicion of stone throwing.” According to some, children aged 12 – 15 were threatened, detained, and beaten.

Muhammad Dweik, aged 12 said:

“Around 4:30 – 5:00 in the morning, I woke up from the sound of knocking at the door. Shabak (ISA) agents asked my father for (his son’s) ID card. My father told them that I don’t have” one. They refused his father’s request to let him bring him to the police station later that morning.

“They tied my hands behind my back and took me. The policemen put me into a Border Police jeep. A friend of mine was also inside it. A policeman who sat next to me kept kicking me in the leg all the way.”

Lu’ai a-Rajabi, aged 14, was also arrested and interrogated, denied he threw stones at settler houses, and was punched in the nose with his hands and legs cuffed. He was then hit in the face and head, ordered to confess, and, while he was sitting, three interrogators beat and kicked him “all over my body, and (swore) at me and Allah.”

They told him to sign a Hebrew document saying he wasn’t beaten. He refused and was beaten again. The next day, he was brought before a Magistrates Court judge who extended his detention for a week.

Others, as young as 12, told similar stories of arrests, detentions, interrogations, and beatings when they denied doing anything. One youth told B’Tselem he hasn’t been able to sleep, afraid he’ll again be arrested.

This treatment “contravenes the Youth Law, as amended in 2008 (Amendment No. 14),” under which suspected minors are entitled to consult a parent or relative prior to interrogation, and have an adult present while ongoing. “The Law also generally prohibits interrogating a minor at night and states (they) should not be arrested if the objective can be achieved in a less harmful way.”

Nonetheless, Israeli security forces violated their rights for being alleged stone-throwers, and all of them are Israeli residents. It’s virtually impossible for Israeli Jews to be subjected to similar treatment, either adults or youths. Palestinians get no such respect or safety under laws not protecting them or their rights.

As for Amir, after Barrows-Friedman’s interview, he “sent a message to American children,” saying:

“We are kids, just like you. We have the right to play, to move freely. I want to tell the world that there are so many kids inside the Israeli jails. We just want to have freedom of movement, the freedom to play,” and grow up like kids in America and the West. In Occupied Palestine, he’ll be lucky to survive, perhaps never his former self or living free from occupation and brutality.

Relevant International Law

Since September 2000, the beginning of the Second Intifada, over 2,500 Palestinian children (as young as 12 or younger) have been arrested, hundreds at any time imprisoned within Israel, treated the same as adults, kept with Israeli prisoners, stabbed or otherwise harmed as a result, subjected to sexual abuse, and denied family visits or other outside contacts.

Yet, numerous international laws, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Israeli law define a child as anyone under 18. So do UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty with provisions stating:

— imprisoning children should only be a “last resort and for the minimum period and should be limited to exceptional cases;”

— fundamental international law must be respected at all times with no exceptions;

— the welfare, special needs, best interests, and human rights of juveniles “shall be a primary consideration;” and

— they must be helped to return to society as soon as possible.

Yet, in violation of international law, Israel willfully and repeatedly arrests children randomly, at checkpoints, on streets, at play, and in the middle of the night at home, then subjects them to threats, cursing, beatings, detention, and imprisonment, often without informing their parents.

In facilities like Megiddo military prison, Hasharon (Telmond) prison, and others, children are held in inhumane conditions in overcrowded filthy cells. Some are kept in 1.5 square meter windowless solitary confinement under bright 24-hour light. None get enough or proper nutrition, medical care, clothing changes, sleep, or consideration for basic sanitation standards.

They’re subjected to harsh interrogations, including torture, abuse, and degrading treatment, hard enough on adults, but on children are traumatically life changing.

Most are accused of stone-throwing. In isolation, they’re pressured to confess, even if innocent, then sign a Hebrew document they can’t read or understand stating their guilt – to stop the pain that continues until they do for up to eight days after which they’re brought before a military or magistrate judge. Some are also coerced to be collaborators under threat of future arrests, imprisonment, and mistreatment, including against parents and siblings.

Israel remains unaccountable because world nations violate their obligations under Geneva’s Common Article 1 obliging:

“The High Contracting Parties (to) undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances;”

— the Lisbon Treaty obliging the 27-member EU states to affirm fundamental freedoms, peace, democracy, human rights and dignity, justice, equality, the rule of law, security, tolerance, solidarity, mutual respect among peoples, the rights of the child, strict adherence to the UN Charter and international law, and to prevent conflicts and combat social exclusion and discrimination; along with

— the indifference and complicity of Arab states.

Short of fundamental change, Palestinian men, women and children will continue to be victimized by state-sponsored terrorism, a condition no longer to be tolerated by nations claiming they’re civilized.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

March 11, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Homes and livelihoods gone in an instant

Eva Bartlett writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 11 March 2010

Israeli bulldozers destroyed three homes and 17 dunams of agricultural land in eastern Khan Younis on 18 February.


Radia Abu Sbaih, 47, lives with her sister and one niece on family land roughly 700 meters from the “green line” boundary between Israel and Gaza. Until 18 February 2010, they had nearly 600 olive, fruit, date and nut trees, an agricultural cistern, a water well, various vegetables and a house.

Theirs was one of three homes demolished by Israeli military bulldozers that day in al-Mossadar, eastern Gaza. Around 8am that morning, approximately five Israeli military bulldozers and upwards of 10 Israeli tanks, accompanied by more than 50 foot soldiers, invaded the farming region, according to locals.

“We were in our home when we heard the Israeli tanks and bulldozers approaching. We ran off immediately,” says Sbaih.

She walks over felled trees, past the bulldozed cistern, and to the ruins of their home.

“It’s all destroyed. Look, our clothes are buried,” she shouts, pulling at a sweater caught beneath the concrete block pile.

Household belongings are strewn on top of and beneath the pyramid of rubble. A gas range, several cooking pots, a plastic water bottle filled with olives, another with olive oil — both from their land and their destroyed olive trees — denote where the kitchen once stood.

Radia Abu Sbaih on her land after it was destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers.

“We were self-sufficient. Twenty people lived off this land. We had our own water source and we grew all our own vegetables: onions, spinach, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, radishes, beans …” Nothing, save a stray sprig of green onion, remains.

Beyond the lean-to sun shade, a donkey stands next to the crushed remnants of his cart.

“Now we have no electricity, no shelter, no water. I walk one hour both ways every day to bring jugs of water for drinking,” says Sbaih.

But for her, it is the loss of their trees that hits the hardest. In the hour or less it took the bulldozers to raze all their property and possessions, Radia Sbaih’s trees were cut to the ground and plowed into the valley. Haggard limbs studding the earth and thick ground-level stumps are all the evidence of the 10 dunams (a dunam is the equivalent of 1,000 square meters) of formerly thick growth.

“They were healthy trees, many over 50 years old. And so many fruit trees: guava, orange, lemon, pomegranate, date, almond, sugar cane, cactus fruit …” recalls Sbaih.

“This was our life, we grew up here, we put our sweat, love and everything we had into the land,” she says. “We watched the trees mature and cared for them as though they were family.”

Sbaih’s niece feeds trampled olive branches to kindle a smoky fire for tea. An Israeli warplane thunders over and Sbaih comments, “It’s normal, they’re always over us.” The roar is accompanied by the continual whine of Israeli “drones” (unmanned aerial vehicles) patrolling the skies.

“We actually didn’t have any problems during the war,” Sbaih says, recalling the winter 2008-2009 Israeli massacres on Gaza. “But now we are destroyed. If it rains, where will we go? We have no shelter, not even a tent.”

As the tea boils, the rain starts to fall.

Sbaih’s words and losses are echoed by the two other families half a kilometer south.

Moin Abu Said, 32, stands beside the fresh ruins of his home roughly 600 meters from the border. His father Ali, 63, sprawls on a blanket spread nearby on churned earth.

“I’ve got three children. When the bulldozers and tanks came, I was taking my son Nassim to school, around 7:30am. I heard the noise of the invasion even from the school.”

Abu Said returned to find the house that he had worked eight years to build completely flattened.

“We only lived in it one month,” he says in disbelief.

He points out the wreckage of a chicken barn, home to 1,000 chickens, the stubs of olive, date and lemon trees.

Like most in the border region, this is not the first time Abu Said’s land has been razed.

“Ten years ago they bulldozed everything, but we replanted. Now it’s all gone again.”

Aouni Abu Said, Moin’s brother, still has a home. Shot-up by Israeli machine-gun fire, the nearby one-level house somehow escaped the bulldozers. But his family was caught in the attack, terrified.

“My wife and kids were in kitchen when the Israelis began shooting at our house,” he says, pointing out the lattice of bullet holes in the kitchen windows and walls, children’s bedroom and nursery.

“The area was filled with Israeli tanks, bulldozers and soldiers from morning till around 4:30pm,” he says.

Closer to the border fence, but still 450 meters away, Abdel Hai Abu Said, 40, his wife and their six children sit with his father near the A-frame wreckage of their two-story home.

Two of Abdel Hani Abu Said’s children sit on the ruins of their home.


Five dunams of olive and date trees were mowed, along with 150 pigeons and a donkey.

“[The donkey] was in a concrete shelter when the bulldozers attacked,” he explains, pointing out the carcass in the treeless field.

One room of the house remains partially intact, ceiling corners sloped at 45 degree angles and walls punctured by bullet holes and cracks. The cramped, dust- and rubble-filled room serves as their shelter at night, despite the dangling clumps of concrete and the threat that the house might completely collapse.

A plastic bag keeps the surviving items of clothing protected, another the pieces of bread.

“We lived in this house for 11 years,” Said says. “Upstairs there were three bedrooms for my wife and our children. My father and aunt slept downstairs.”

Salem Abu Said, Abdel Hai’s father, was born 1943 in Beerseeba, before the 1948 ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine by the nascent Israeli military.

“First I was expelled from my land, and now our house is destroyed. Once again, I have to start all over.”

All the families report that the area was calm, without regular Israeli invasions, at the time of the invasion. They had a false sense of security and worked the land, lived off of it and planned their futures. In half a day this was all destroyed.

All images by Eva Bartlett.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

March 11, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Gaza war injured still lack prosthetics

IRIN – 10/03/2010
Imad Ghanem, 21, a cameraman for the Hamas-allied Al-Aqsa TV, lies on a bed
at Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, 9 July 2007. [MaanImages/Hatem Omar]

Gaza City – A half-finished two-story building in central Gaza City is one of the few places providing support to amputees, most of them civilian victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as they try and come to terms with their injuries.

Ten patients were waiting to see Dr Hazem Ash-Shawwa, the director of the Artificial Limb and Polio Centre, when IRIN visited. Mostly young, they had been caught in the violence of Israel’s 23-day assault on Gaza at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009, and were still learning to use their new prosthetic limbs.

“We have 250 new amputees following the Israeli war to add to the 5,000 cases we had before the war,” said Ash-Shawwa. “Some of the injured from the Gaza war are still having problems with their amputated limbs as they were not treated properly at the time due to the hectic situation; initial treatments focused on saving lives.”

A new upper floor extension to the center is under construction, reflecting the demand for its services, but a lack of funds has delayed work.

In the center’s ground-floor training room, 15-year-old Jamila Al-Habbash took a firm grip on the parallel bars and shuffled forward. She lost both her legs in a missile strike by an unmanned Israeli drone as she played on the roof of her home in eastern Gaza City; her sister and cousin were killed in the blast.

Mohamed Ziada, one of five specialists at the center, said Jamila was making good progress since her artificial legs were fitted in December, and may soon not need her crutches. He pointed out that treating teenagers was expensive as they quickly outgrow their prosthetics and need numerous re-fittings.

‘Worse than a nightmare’

Fifteen-year-old Ghassan Mattar also lost his legs when an Israeli missile hit his home in eastern Gaza City on 5 January 2009, an incident documented by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). “I still can’t believe I’ve lost my legs. It’s worse than a nightmare,” he told IRIN.

The only rehabilitation hospital with the capacity to treat amputee patients effectively is the Al-Wafaa Rehabilitation Centre in northern Gaza. Ghassan should have been sent there directly but the hospital was hit by artillery fire during Israel’s Gaza incursion, and its wards were evacuated, according to PCHR.

Ghassan was able to leave Gaza for Egypt and received six months of treatment at the Palestine Hospital in Cairo. However, back in Gaza he found his artificial legs were giving him problems as they did not fit properly so he visited the artificial limb center and got a better fitting pair.

A below-the-knee prosthetic costs about US $800 at the center. An above-the-knee limb is twice as much, and an arm costs $1,200. Although seemingly expensive, Ziada told IRIN it was a fraction of the cost charged in other countries.

Imports interrupted

The problem facing the center is that a blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel since June 2007 has interrupted imports of both prosthetic limbs – mainly from Germany – and the raw materials with which to make them.

“We use hundreds of different parts, plastics and materials to make prosthetic arms and legs. Without even just one of the materials, the limb cannot be made,” Ziada said.

It takes about 30 hours to manufacture a limb when all the parts are available. “The Red Cross helps the centre to mediate between us and the Israelis to let materials cross, which takes about three months,” Ziada added.

Prosthetics specialists from other countries who had tried to come and train Gazan doctors had been denied entry into Gaza, according to Ziada. “We need at least another five specialists because of the large number of amputees from the Gaza war.”

The center is assisted by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and NGOs Handicap International and Islamic Relief.

Israel says the aim of its 27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009 incursion was to destroy the military infrastructure of Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, and to prevent the firing of rockets into Israel. According to the PCHR, 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the conflict.

This item comes to you via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The views expressed are the author’s alone.

March 11, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Japan reveals secret nuclear pact with US

Press TV – March 9, 2010

Japanese people have been protesting against US military bases in Japan for years

Japan has verified the existence of a secret nuclear pact with the United States that allows US forces to bring nuclear weapons into the country.

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said on Tuesday that a panel of experts confirmed the existence of the pact after examining thousands of documents over a period of months.

From the 1960s, Japan has allowed the United States to deploy nuclear weapons on the southern island of Okinawa, the panel said. Japan’s previous governments had always denied the existence of such secret agreements.

However, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government, which came to power six months ago, has adopted less US-friendly policies.

Yet Hatoyama says he believes the nuclear deterrence is necessary to maintain regional security.

In its calls for total nuclear disarmament, Japan has always emphasized its status as the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons.

March 10, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

Ahmadinejad calls US bluff on counter-terrorism

Press TV –  March 10 2010

Iran’s president says the US must explain what its troops are doing in Afghanistan, as catching terrorists only requires intelligence work not military deployments.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the comment in a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Wednesday morning.

The Iranian president was responding to a question about the recent arrest of Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi.

“Rigi is supported by the same people [and] governments, who have ill intentions for the government of Afghanistan and the Iranian nation. Rigi was a terrorist, who along with his associates killed more than 140 people,” said Ahmadinejad.

“Was Iran able to stop him? Yes, we arrested Rigi. Of course that was achieved with the cooperation of the Afghan and Pakistani intelligence services… but [in that process] Iran killed no innocent people,” he added.

“Is this not an example of the right way to fight terrorism? Why those who claim to be eager to fight terrorism are unsuccessful? Well the answer is that they themselves started terrorism and they want to fight it now. But they can’t.”

Ahmadinejad said that fighting terrorism is not possible with military surge, adding that terrorism can only be fought with intelligence cooperation.

Ahmadinejad was also asked about the significance of the simultaneous visit of US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Afghanistan, to which he responded by asking the American official about the objectives of his trip.

“My question to Mr. Gates is what is he doing here? Your country is 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) away from the Middle East…Are you here to capture terrorists? Well if so it is clear what you must do, but if you are here to do something else, admit to it.”

March 10, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israeli Defense Ministry goes on trial for Corrie death

By Mya Guarnieri – Ma’an – 09/03/2010

Jerusalem – On Wednesday, the Israeli Defense Ministry will go on trial as a court hears a case filed by the parents of an American woman run down by an Israeli military bulldozer in Gaza, in March 2003.

A civil suit seeks to hold Israeli forces responsible for the death of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old activist who was crushed to death as she protested a Palestinian home from demolition in the Gaza Strip.

“We claim that her assassination was intentional,” or, at the very least, that the army is guilty of “huge negligence,” Hussein Abu Hussein, the attorney who filed the petition on behalf of Corrie’s parents, commented.

Abu Hussein cites the state’s acknowledgment of the fact that Corrie and other members of the International Solidarity Movement—a Palestinian-led peace organization that advocates non-violent means of resistance to the Israeli occupation—were demonstrating in the area for several hours before Corrie was struck by the bulldozer. He also points out that Corrie was wearing a fluorescent orange vest to increase her visibility.

At the time of her death, the Israeli military response was that the driver of the machine did not see Corrie.

“If you see people, you should stop and think of all the needed steps not to harm [them]. Instead of stopping the D9, which weighs 64 tons, they continued. And due to that, [Corrie] was killed,” Abu Hussein said.

Four of Corrie’s fellow activists who witnessed her death were initially denied entry into Israel where they were asked to testify at the trial, but US pressure reportedly changed the Israeli position. A US citizen and three UK nationals will now be able to speak at the trial, which is expected to last two weeks.

Israel will not issue an entry permit to Dr Ahmed Abu Nakira, the Gazan physician who saw Corrie after she was injured and declared her dead. The state rejected the request for his entry on the grounds that there is no coordination between Israel and Gaza, due to the Israeli blockade that began after Hamas rose to power in 2007.

“It’s an obstacle to justice,” Abu Hussein said. “On the one side, [Israel] won’t give permission [for Dr Abu Nakira] to come; on the other they won’t allow him to testify by video-conference, which is used daily by courts everywhere in the modern world.”

Speaking shortly after Corrie’s death, an Israeli military representative called the incident a “regrettable accident.” An internal investigation conducted by the Israeli army later absolved the soldier operating the bulldozer of any wrongdoing.

The report, released in April 2003, claimed that Corrie was not killed by the “engineering vehicle” but “was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved.” The army accused Corrie and the other activists present of behaving in an “illegal, irresponsible, and dangerous” manner.

Abu Hussein says that the army’s investigation lacked transparency. The civil suit, which was filed in 2005, is the only way to hold the state accountable for Corrie’s death, he says.

While it is exceedingly rare for the Defense Ministry to take direct responsibility in such cases, the state has made financial reparations to a handful of families like the Corries. Just two months after Rachel’s death, British journalist and filmmaker James Miller, 34, was shot to death by an Israeli soldier. After an army investigation found no wrongdoing, the UK warned it would extradite the soldiers involved. Last year, Israel settled out of court with Miller’s family for approximately 1.5 million pounds (2.25 million US dollars).

“The family is not seeking money. They’re seeking acknowledgment of responsibility by the state,” Abu Hussein says. If the Corries do receive compensation from Israel, they intend to donate the sum to “the matter Rachel was struggling for—for peace.”

The Corries’ suit “underscores that Israel doesn’t prosecute” soldiers accused of wrongdoing and that the state behaves as though it is “exempt from accountability,” Abu Hussein said.

“In the cases brought by Palestinians against the IDF [Israeli forces], more than 90 percent are denied,” he says, pointing to a culture of immunity that has been criticized human rights groups.

From 2000 to 2009, the Israeli NGO Yesh Din monitored almost 2000 Israeli military investigations into incidents in which a Palestinian or international claimed the army was guilty of a criminal offense, including unlawful shooting that led to injury or death. Indictments were filed in only six percent of these cases. Many of the soldiers who were prosecuted cut deals with the court that reduced the severity of both the charges and punishments.

“When we look at the number of cases, and we look at the fact that only six percent yield indictments, it is safe to assume that a soldier in the field today will know that he can get away with pretty much anything,” Yesh Din’s research director Lior Yavne remarked.

A representative for the Corries emphasized that the family hopes the upcoming trial will bring attention to ongoing human rights abuses perpetrated by the Israeli army in the occupied Palestinian territories. “The issue is Palestine and human rights defenders,” the liaison says. “They want to highlight Gaza in light of [the UN-commissioned] Goldstone [report] and Operation Cast Lead.”

Mya Guarnieri is a regular contributor to The National (Abu Dhabi), The Huffington Post, and The Jerusalem Post.

March 9, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Settlers destroy natural spring used by Palestinians for farming near Salfit

International Solidarity Movement | 8 March 2010

A group of Israeli settlers today destroyed a spring by the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan in the Salfit district. The settlers poured sand and cement into the spring, guarded by five armed members of the Israeli military.

Palestinians from the village were forced to watch helplessly as events unfolded, prevented by the soldiers from moving close to the spring or from filming what was happening. International Solidarity Movement volunteers were able to secretly film for a short time before the soldiers noticed, and made both Palestinians and Internationals leave, saying that the area was now designated as a Closed Military Zone.

Last Friday, a large group of both Palestinians and internationals spent the day clearing the area around the spring to make it more accessible from the village. This followed previous attacks from settlers on nearby springs and farmland, during which a child suffered serious head wounds, from which he is still recovering in hospital, and an elderly man had his arm and leg broken.

Locals intend to continue their attempts to keep the spring open, and to turn the area around it into a park for the use of the village.

Under international law, the settlement next to Qarawat Bani Hassan is illegal, as are all other settlements in the occupied West Bank.

March 9, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Japanese city rejects hosting US base

Press TV – March 8, 2010

Relocation of US troops from Futenma Marine airfield in Okinawa’s Ginowan to the smaller town of Nago faces opposition by the Nago assembly.

The assembly on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution of protest against the ruling coalition’s People’s New Party (PNP).

The PNP plans to present an alternative to a 2006 US-Japan deal to relocate Futenma from the crowded city of Ginowan on Okinawa to the coastal area of Nago.

The PNP program “will result in only moving the noise and dangers of Futemma to Nago,” according to the assembly’s resolution.

It “will destroy the living and educational environments (for local residents) and is simply impermissible,” it added.

Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama had earlier announced that it would decide on the agreement by May.

Accidents and crimes committed by US service personnel near Okinawa’s residential areas have turned the local population against the presence of the American forces there.

Washington has nearly 50,000 troops based in Japan, more than half of whom are in Okinawa.

March 9, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

Does Israel hope to spark a new wave of suicide bombing?

By Stuart Littlewood | 9 March 2010

Here in the civilized West we hate suicide bombers with a passion.

We’re taught that the proper way to blow fellow humans to smithereens is to do it from 40,000 feet.

Or failing that, send Apache helicopter gunships at street level firing their laser-guided missiles and 30mm cannon.

Or failing that, turn loose our main battle tanks to shred and vaporize the “enemy”, reduce their homes to rubble with depleted uranium (DU) shells and spread birth defects for generations to come.

Nowadays we don’t even have to leave home to do it. We can train our really brainy chaps to steer armed drones to the target from the comfort of an armchair.

B-52s, F-16s, Apaches, drones and tanks – that’s the ticket. Awesome hardware gives any murky mission a moral superiority that gets nods of approval from the governing élite in the drawing rooms of London and Washington.

What is not acceptable is delivering the high explosive in person, all the way to the target, and looking your enemy in the eye as you push the detonator. That simply isn’t cricket.

“There can be no justification, under any circumstances, for taking innocent lives through terrorism.” Those were the very words used by Liberal Democrat Party leader Charles Kennedy in 2004, when he sacked British MP Jenny Tonge from her front-bench spokes job for suggesting she might consider becoming a suicide bomber herself if she had to live through the situation the Palestinians were in.

Statistics from Israel’s B’Tselem make the Palestinians’ situation clear. Between 2000 and the start of Israel’s “Cast Lead” blitzkrieg on Gaza in December 2008, the Israelis’ vast standing army, equipped with the most advanced weaponry American money can buy, killed 4,790 Palestinian civilians in their homeland. Of these, 952 were children.

Yes, 952 young Palestinian lives horribly snuffed out and their parents desolated…

In response Palestinians, with their garden-shed weapons, killed 490 Israeli civilians, including 84 children. In this vicious game of murder the Israelis were leading the Palestinians by 11 to 1.

Those were the “circumstances” in which Kennedy sacked Jenny Tonge.

Terrorism most foul

During the Cast Lead onslaught – the foulest act of state terrorism for decades – Israel slaughtered at least 350 more children, and Gaza has been under daily attack ever since. So the “most moral army in the world” must have blown to bits, shredded, incinerated or smashed with snipers’ bullets at least 1,400 youngsters in the last nine and a half years. The numbers left maimed and crippled don’t bear thinking about.

In their study, Palestinian Suicide Bombers: A Statistical Analysis, Sean Yom and Basel Saleh found that many Palestinian suicide attackers had been on the receiving end of violent encounters with the Israeli military, resulting in injury to themselves, or arrest, or a close family member being killed.

From October 2000 to March 2004, over 2,800 Palestinian fatalities and 25,600 non-lethal injuries were inflicted by the Israeli armed forces. Revenge, often fuelled by deteriorating economic prospects and the imposition of harsh policies, provided recruiters with a ready supply of volunteers. Persuading individuals not to support or participate in violence would necessarily involve “improving the structural health of Palestinian society”.

Fat chance of that. Israeli policy is to grind the Palestinians into poverty and helplessness, to take away everything they own and let them rot in a Zionist-prepared hell. Far from allowing the health of Palestinian society to improve, they tighten the screw of oppression further. In the period covered in the study they deliberately destroyed some 4,700 Palestinian homes while continuing their normal programme of slaughter, dispossession, abduction and all the other atrocities they are famed for.

Since 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Israel has demolished in total 24,145 homes in the occupied territories, including 4,247 (a UN figure) destroyed during Operation Cast Lead. Palestinians tend to have large families. Consider how many homeless have been created.

Professor Robert Pape’s comprehensive analysis, Dying to Win, based on his work for the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, advances the idea that suicide terrorism exerts coercive power “to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland… The bottom line, then, is that suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation”

Occupation includes control of territory, as in Gaza, not necessarily military occupation.

And of course, when it comes to Israel, we’re not talking about a democracy but a vile ethnocracy.

Religion has little to do with it. Pape dismisses the often-repeated view that Islam is the root of the problem. “Rather, the taproot is American military policy.” And the notion that Islamic fundamentalism is bent on world domination is “pure fantasy”.

Many suicide bombers are simply motivated by the desire for revenge. According to one researcher, harsh state repression “should not be perceived only as a reaction to suicide bombing” but “often precedes and is a major cause of suicide bombing.”

One Saturday night in 2001 Saeed Hotari blew himself up at the entrance to a disco in Tel Aviv, killing 21 teenagers and injuring 132. Hotari was one of nine children from a poor Palestinian family living in Jordan and had been in the West Bank for two years hoping to find a better life. He left a message saying: “If we don’t fight, we will suffer. If we do fight, we will suffer, but so will they.”

The disco bombing was cited by the Israeli government as one of the reasons for building the Apartheid Wall.

In 2003 a female Palestinian lawyer, Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat, aged 29, killed 21 civilians at Maxim restaurant in Haifa. She acted to avenge the killing of her brother and a cousin (some sources say her fiancé) by Israeli security forces.

Surgeon Abdel Aziz Rantissi, co-founder of Hamas, warned: “Israelis will have no stability and no security until the occupation ends. Suicide bombers are Israel’s future.” Rantissi was assassinated in 2004 in a helicopter attack on his car. A mother and her five year-old daughter were killed in the attack and four other bystanders wounded.

How much can a person take before snapping?

Arrest, detention without due process, constant humiliation, homelessness, unemployment and other family suffering at the hands of the Israeli army are not the only spur. Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed “the Engineer” and regarded as the father of suicide bombing, became Hamas’s chief bomb maker and for several years topped Israel’s most wanted list. From a relatively well-off family, he gained a BSc in electrical engineering at Birzeit University and planned to study for a Master’s degree in Jordan but the Israeli authorities wouldn’t allow him to.

Thwarted in his life’s ambition Ayyash joined Hamas. “Don’t get sore, get even” might have been his motto. He used household chemicals to manufacture an explosive brew called Mother of Satan. His devices were used in a number of “massacres” and he quickly achieved hero status, narrowly escaping capture many times. It is claimed he was responsible for the deaths of around 90 Israelis, a high price for the occupier to pay for robbing this youngster of his rights to travel and study – rights we in the West take for granted.

Eventually in 1996 Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, eliminated Ayyash by persuading a relative to give him a rigged mobile phone that exploded when he used it. Some 100,000 people are said to have turned up at the funeral. Forty more Israelis were then killed in retaliatory bombings.

Yet Israelis still revel in targeting Palestinian students. Five years ago they forcibly removed four Birzeit University students from their studies in the West Bank and unlawfully sent them back to the Gaza Strip. All four were due to graduate by the end of that academic year.

There was an outcry from around the world and the Israeli military agreed to let them return to Birzeit, but only on condition that they signed a guarantee to permanently move back to the Gaza Strip after completing their studies. This revealed for all to see Israel’s plan to separate the West Bank from the Gaza Strip, even though the two areas are internationally recognized as one integral territory. Under international law everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence within a single territory. Ten years ago around 350 Gaza students were studying at Birzeit, but today there are almost none and the racist regime blocks Gaza students from reaching the eight Palestinian universities in the West Bank.

It was no surprise to learn last Christmas that Berlanty Azzam, a fourth year Business Administration student from Gaza studying at Bethlehem University, was suddenly “deported” by the Israeli military back to Gaza. Berlanty, a Christian girl, had lived in the West Bank since 2005 and resisted all temptation to visit her family home in Gaza in case she was prevented from returning to Bethlehem.

The 21-year-old was only a few weeks from graduating when she was arrested after attending a job interview in Ramallah. In a deliberate attempt to rob her of her degree “the most moral army in the world” blindfolded and handcuffed her, loaded her into a jeep, drove her to Gaza and dumped her in the darkness late at night.

In the case of another university honours student in her final year, Israeli soldiers frequently rampaged through the Bethlehem refugee camp where she lived, ransacking homes and arbitrarily arresting residents. They took away her family one by one. First her 14-year-old cousin and best friend was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she sat outside her family home during a curfew.

Next the Israelis arrested her eldest brother, a 22-year-old artist, and imprisoned him for four years. Then they came back for her 18-year-old brother. Then they came again to take her youngest brother – the “baby” of the family – just 16. These were the heartbreaking circumstances (Mr Kennedy please note) under which this student was studying for her degree.

Luckily, she had the guidance of caring university teaching staff to keep her on the straight and narrow. The “most moral army in the world” may have robbed her brothers of an education, but she was determined to complete hers.

Although Palestinians take their education seriously, not all students cruelly obstructed by the Israelis react as Yahya Ayyash did. However, there must be a limit to how much injustice and frustration a young person can take before he/she snaps.

Modern suicide bombing appears to have started in 1980 in the Iran-Iraq war when an Iranian youngster exploded himself against an Iraqi tank, but it was Hezbollah’s devastating attacks two years later in Lebanon which attracted world attention. US forces and the Israeli invader were soon expelled. The technique was then exported throughout the Middle East and beyond.

The threat of suicide bombing has receded in the Holy Land while Israeli military atrocities escalate. The regime’s leaders, seeing the Israel brand image plummet, are now pulling every dirty trick imaginable – even to the point of trying to annex sacred Islamic heritage sites – in a frantic bid to provoke a third initifada (uprising) and cast themselves once again as the victims of terror. Something has to give. Many Palestinians will snap, and no-one will be surprised to see another Ayyash emerge.

Here in the West few of us can fully comprehend what turns a bright, intelligent person into a suicide bomber. But then, we don’t have a jackboot on our throat. We don’t have our front door battered down in the middle of the night by military thugs, our family abducted, our home bulldozed and our land confiscated.

The moral to the story is surely this. You mess with other people’s rights and freedoms, and trample on their dreams, at your peril.

March 8, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

French protest import of Israeli settlement goods

Press TV – March 8, 2010

Thousands of French protesters have rallied against the import of Israeli goods produced in Palestinian territories.

Monday’s demonstration comes less then a month after the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that Israeli goods made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank cannot be considered Israeli.

This means that those products cannot benefit from a trade deal giving Israel preferential access to EU markets.

The protesters, who came from all over France, symbolically gathered in the streets of the Mediterranean port of Sete — a hub for the biggest Israeli food exporter, Agrexco.

Over fifty percent of the company, selling over 300,000 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables to Europe, is owned by the Israeli regime.

“The EU and Israel have agreed that Israel will get preferential import taxes on one condition, the goods should not come from occupied territories. But we know Agrexco grows its products in the occupied areas and is still benefiting from tax deductions,” Tannich Coupe Sud de France General Secretary said.

“This is a campaign of stigmatization. It’s not an illusion that the economy will be demolished, it’s the image of Israel that we are trying to attack,” Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan who also took part in the event told Press TV.

France is one of Israel’s top ten economic partners, a fact that has disappointed many of the French.

Israeli companies based around the illegal West Bank settlements manufacture a host of products including confectionery, wine, cosmetics and computer equipment.

Palestinians have long argued that since the settlements are not part of Israel, the goods made there should not receive trade privileges.

Pro-Palestinian campaigners have also regularly protested that European supermarkets stock goods with Israeli labels on farm products from the West Bank.

March 8, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Is Europe Planning Seal of Approval for Israeli Settlers?

Israel in OECD: Israel Set to Join Club of Richest Nations

By Jonathan Cook| March 8, 2010

An exclusive club of the world’s most developed countries is poised to admit Israel as a member even though, a confidential internal document indicates, doing so will amount to endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories.

Israel has been told that its accession to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is all but assured when the 30 member states meet in May.

But a draft OECD report concedes that Israel has breached one of the organization’s key requirements on providing accurate and transparent data on its economic activity.

The information supplied by Israel, the report notes, includes not only the economic activity of its citizens inside its recognized borders but also Jewish settlers who live in the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan in violation of international law.

Israel’s accession to the OECD on such terms threatens to severely embarrass many of the organization’s member states, especially those in the European Union that are publicly committed to avoiding collusion with the occupation.

The OECD report proposes that these legal difficulties may be circumvented by asking Israel to produce new statistics within a year of its accession excluding the settler population — even though, an OECD official has admitted, Israel would have the power to veto such a demand after it becomes a member.

“The OECD seems to be so determined to get Israel through its door that it is prepared to cover up the crimes of the occupation,” said Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist.

Israel has been lobbying for nearly 20 years to be admitted to the OECD, founded in 1961 for wealthy industrialized democracies to meet and coordinate economic and social policies.  It includes the United States and most of Europe.

“The financial privileges are relatively modest, but there is great prestige to being accepted,” Mr. Hever said.  “Israel has worked so hard to gain admission because it believes accession will confer international legitimacy on its occupation.”

Several countries with a lower development level than Israel have already been accepted, including Turkey, Mexico, and the Czech Republic.

Israel’s past rejections, it is widely assumed, were because many states were uncomfortable about admitting Israel while it was occupying the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank and the Syrian-owned Golan Heights.

However, Israel was formally invited to begin discussions about membership in 2007 after intense lobbying by Stanley Fischer, the governor of the Bank of Israel.  Membership is expected to bring financial stability to Israel’s economy, attract investment, and reduce the country’s risk premium.

The OECD’s secretary general, Angel Gurria, visited in January, after a review of Israel’s economy, and suggested that admission this year was a certainty.

However, a leaked draft report by the OECD’s committee on statistics, produced last month after the review, shows there are major problems with the data presented by Israel.

According to its rules, the OECD takes account of economic activity outside a candidate state’s recognized borders in very limited circumstances, such as remittances from migrant workers.

But given that this status does not apply to the illegal settlers living in the occupied territories, the OECD committee argues that either the settlers be excluded from the data or everyone living in the territories — including Palestinians — should be factored in.

“Israel has been caught out because it has always refused, even in its own internal data, to differentiate between Israel and the occupied territories,” Mr. Hever said.  Both East Jerusalem and the Golan have been annexed by Israel in violation of international law.

Poverty Rates: Israel and OECD
Trends in Poverty and Employment

“The OECD is treating Israel as though it has seven million citizens when, in reality, it has 11 million subjects, of whom four million are Palestinians living under occupation,” Mr. Hever said.  “If they were included in the figures submitted to the OECD, Israel would have to be refused accession because of the enormous disparities in wealth.”

Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, noted recently that there was a 20:1 ratio in the difference in gross domestic product per capita between an Israeli and a Palestinian living in Gaza.

But rather than conclude that Israel has failed to meet the organization’s entry criteria, the committee proposes a workaround: Israel can be accepted to the organization and given a year to submit new data excluding the settlers.

Tim Davis, an OECD official with the statistics committee in Paris, said he could not comment on the report because its contents were confidential but agreed that there was nothing to stop Israel reneging on such a commitment in the future.  “In a case like that, nothing could be done in practice.  We work on the basis of co-operation, not pressure.”

Israel is reported to have failed other entry conditions, including on corruption and copyright violations.

The OECD has required member states to crack down on corrupt practices since it approved a convention against bribery in 1997.  Israel, however, was ranked in 32nd place in a major index on corruption last year, with much of it relating to the country’s $6 billion arms industry.

European and US defense firms have threatened to derail Israel’s OECD bid if it does not clean up its act.

Israel is also believed to be violating intellectual property rights, again in breach of OECD rules.  US and Swiss firms have accused Israel of failing to regulate the international marketing of drugs produced by its largest pharmaceuticals company, Teva.

Israel’s bid for OECD membership has been opposed by the leaders of its Arab minority, one-fifth of the population.  Last month the Higher Follow-Up Committee, the minority’s main political body, petitioned the OECD to reject Israel.

It has pointed out that half of Israel’s Arab citizens are living below the poverty line, a rate three times higher than among Israeli Jews, and that on average Arab citizens earn salaries that are one-third less than Jews.  Mohammed Zeidan, head of the committee, blamed the disparities in wealth on what he called Israel’s “racist and discriminatory polices.”

Another OECD report, published in January, showed that, even on the basis of Israel’s figures excluding the Palestinians, Israel would still have the widest social gaps of any member state if it were accepted.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.

March 8, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Twilight zone / Unanswered questions

By Gideon Levy | Haaretz | March 4, 2010

Musa Abu Hashhash could not hold back his tears. We have worked with this devoted field worker from B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, for years. Never before had we seen him cry. But this week he broke down and wept after a visit to the widow of Fayez Faraj, his aged, broken-hearted mother, and his 10 distraught orphans, aged 2 to 18.

Fayez Faraj was the last person who might have been expected to attack Israel Defense Forces soldiers. He had a permit to enter and sleep over in Israel, which few Palestinians are given – and then only after a thorough security check. He had worked for 15 years for Kriza, a footwear company in Tel Aviv, crafting soles for the women’s shoes. Aged 41, he spoke Hebrew fluently, hung out in Tel Aviv, had Israeli friends, was well-off economically and lived in a relatively spacious stone home.

No one in Hebron believes that Faraj attacked the soldiers. One of his Tel Aviv employers, who asked to remain anonymous, also refuses to believe it. A., the Israeli, spoke to Faraj by phone three hours before he was killed, an ordinary business conversation.

“I don’t believe he went to stab a soldier,” A. told Haaretz this week. “I have worked with him for 15 years. I know he was a good guy. Someone who loved life. He wasn’t embittered. I can’t understand how he got into a situation where soldiers killed him. It’s a kind of fate, a screwed-up fate. It’s true that he was slightly depressed lately, because he was in a financial crisis, but the whole story is puzzling, very puzzling.”

A. is not the only one who’s puzzled. It’s strange that the soldiers fired no fewer than seven bullets into Fayez from short range, three into his leg, three into his stomach and one into his left hand, in three volleys; that they went on shooting him after he lay on the ground, blood streaming from his leg, in which a major artery was hit; and that they pulled him – still alive – out of a Palestinian ambulance, and transferred him into an army Jeep and then into an Israeli Magen David Adom ambulance. And above all, there is the question of whether Faraj attacked the soldiers with a knife, as the IDF claims, or whether we should believe the testimony of a young woman who watched the incident from the roof of her house and says the soldiers took the knife from their Jeep in order to incriminate Faraj.

These are all serious, unsettling questions. A Military Police investigation is under way.

The Israeli media barely reported the killing of a Palestinian civilian by IDF soldiers in the heart of Hebron exactly three weeks ago today. A dead Palestinian is a non-story. This week we visited the meager home of his brother Samir, a policeman in the Palestinian Authority, a few dozen meters from the family workshop and from the site of the killing. There we heard about Fayez’s last day and about the circumstances of his death.

At about 12:30 P.M. that Friday, Fayez visited his brother and asked Samir to help out in the workshop. Samir said he was expecting guests and would come to work after they left. Fayez went on to their mother’s home, had lunch there and hurried to the workshop at the corner of the street below Samir’s house.

At about 4 P.M., Samir heard gunshots from the street and rushed down to see what had happened. He encountered a group of soldiers who threatened him with their rifles and ordered him to move off. He tried to approach from a different lane, but again soldiers stopped him. In the meantime, he heard that a wounded man was lying on the road, bleeding.

Samir phoned Tarek Watan, whose barbershop is opposite the scene of the incident, and learned that the wounded man was his brother Fayez. Watan told Samir that the soldiers were continuing to shoot Fayez every time he tried to lift his head. In the meantime, more IDF troops rushed to the scene in Jeeps and fired tear-gas and stun grenades to disperse the crowd that had gathered. Samir shouted to the soldiers that he wanted to see his brother, but to no avail.

A few minutes later, a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance arrived and Samir saw Fayez being placed in it, still alive. As the ambulance started to pull away, soldiers ordered the driver to stop. The Palestinian paramedic Eid Abu Munshar stated in his testimony to two B’Tselem field workers who arrived on the scene, that the soldiers entered the ambulance and pulled the IV from Fayez’s arm. He said Fayez was suffering from a massive loss of blood and time was critical.

Aliya Hospital lies a few hundred meters from the scene of the incident, and the paramedic wanted to rush Fayez there. But an IDF officer who arrived at the scene ordered him taken out of the ambulance, the paramedic said. The dying Fayez, with seven bullets in his body, was transferred to an IDF jeep and then placed in an intensive care ambulance of Magen David Adom. According to Palestinian testimony, the ambulance waited there for half an hour. At 5:25 P.M., the Red Crescent received a call from the District Coordination and Liaison Office: Fayez had died in the ambulance; they should send a vehicle to pick up the body at the checkpoint at the northern entrance to Hebron.

What actually happened on the street corner between Tarek’s barbershop and Fayez’s footwear workshop? According to the testimonies compiled by Samir and B’Tselem field workers, the following sequence of events emerges: While Fayez was walking from his mother’s house to the workshop, he ran into a group of men celebrating the engagement ceremony of a neighborhood girl. He stopped to congratulate them just as a group of six soldiers walked by. (The IDF sometimes enters the neighborhood, even though it is in area H1, which is supposedly under Palestinian control.) About half an hour earlier, some people had thrown stones at these soldiers in a different neighborhood, and local residents testified that they seemed tense. The soldiers were coming up one of the lanes and people warned Fayez about them. But Fayez, who was considered a proud man who also spoke Hebrew and interacted with Israelis, replied, “So what if there are soldiers?”

One witness reported that shouts were suddenly heard from up the lane. He saw one of the soldiers slip and fall, apparently because of the steepness of the street. Immediately afterward he saw the soldier get up and shoot Fayez in the leg. Maybe Fayez attacked him, or maybe the soldier thought Fayez had attacked him. He heard Fayez curse the soldiers after being wounded and saw him get up. The soldiers then shot him again. People who had gathered on the street shouted to Fayez not to move, because the soldiers might shoot him again – and they indeed shot him a third time, according to the testimonies.

After Fayez was taken away, Samir asked an officer what had happened. The officer, known as “Captain Moshe,” said his brother had tried to stab one of the soldiers, and showed him a knife. Samir told the officer that this made no sense – if Fayez had wanted to stab an Israeli he could have done so in Tel Aviv. Moreover, he had not taken a knife from the house. The officer told Samir that Fayez was in serious condition and had been taken to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Shortly afterward, an officer who identified himself as “Captain Rafi,” possibly from the Military Police investigations unit, arrived, and asked Samir about his brother’s mental state. Samir told him that “Fayez’s intelligence is bigger than both of ours” and that he had never had mental problems. Together, they questioned the eyewitnesses at the site, all of whom said they had seen no knife in Fayez’s hand. A young woman of 19, Bian Julani, who was on the roof of her home when the incident occurred, told Samir – and, he says, also Captain Rafi – that she saw the soldiers shoot Fayez three times. She also claimed that she saw a soldier wearing gloves take a knife out of the army jeep.

In the meantime, the soldiers confiscated the camera of Abu Hashhash, who arrived on the scene, and returned it to him with all the photos deleted. “As a police officer,” says Samir, “I can tell you that in any event, six soldiers could have subdued Fayez without killing him. It was murder in cold blood.”

Soldiers tore down the posters hung in Fayez’s memory on walls at the scene of the incident. At the entrance to his home, located in another part of the city, a large parrot whistles – Fayez bought it in Tel Aviv. Ten children wander about the house, and their grandmother, Maisar, bursts into tears. “Will someone with 10 children go with a knife?” she asks, and the question echoes through the room. Ibtisam, the widow, is due to give birth any day now. She is carrying a boy. His name will be Fayez, of course.

No comment from the IDF Spokesman was received by press time.

March 6, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

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