In Poland and Germany they chanted ‘Death to the Jews’ - in Israel they
chant Death to the Arabs’ - but if
you compare this to the Nazis you are anti-Semitic!
What is shocking about
Israel is not the exceptional cases of
violence and murder, such as the firebombing
and burning alive of the Dawabshe’s five years ago. It was an attack that
left both parents and baby Ali dead and four year old Mohammed, with 60% burns.
Neither is the refusal
to compensate the surviving child, Mohammed, anything remarkable. Israel is a Jewish state and it is understandable
that non-Jews, even if they are victims of Jewish terrorism, should not be
entitled to such sums. The logic of Avigdor Lieberman, the Defence Minister at
the time, was that paying Mohammed compensation would have meant a transfer of
money from Jewish to non-Jewish hands.
Not even the burning
alive from the inside of 16 year old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who had petrol
poured down his throat, and the racist
decision of Israel’s High Court that the homes of his killers would not be
demolished, is difficult to understand. Of course Palestinian ‘terrorists’ have
their homes or those of their families destroyed as a matter of course.
The High Court’s rationale was that there is
no need to deter Jewish terrorists, because they are part of the family, unlike
Palestinian terrorists who definitely aren’t one of us. And if you demolish a
‘Jewish house’ then that is a loss to the whole Jewish community. In a Jewish
state such logic is impossible to defeat.
Another such case which is
beginning to wend its way through the Israeli court system is a case concerning
5 members of the Border Guards, the most brutal and racist of all Israeli
units. Gideon Levy and Alex Levac document
how these thugs and criminals have been charged with 14 incidents of armed robbery, aggravated
assault, abusing a helpless person, theft, destruction of evidence etc. These
animals, because there is no other word for it,
humiliated, kicked, beat bloody and robbed Palestinian
laborers who were trying to get to their jobs in Israel..... They went about it
day after day, in mid-July, when the Meitar checkpoint in the southern West
Bank, near Hebron, was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. ...Most of the
cases occurred in the middle of night, far from the eyes of others, during the
predawn “shift” when Palestinian laborers from the territories set out on their
long journey to work in Israel, to build its houses and pave its roads.
According to the charge sheet, the accused would order the workers they hunted
down and caught to empty their pockets and then confiscate their money. But to
enhance the experience they would make the workers lie on the ground and beat
them, kicking them all over, including on the head, punching them and
threatening them with their weapons. Then the officers are alleged to have
split the plundered money between them.
You must understand
that the Israeli state has not turned over a new leaf. There has not been a
change in policy regarding not prosecuting violent members of the army. These
animals were so proud of what they were doing that they filmed their own
actions to impress their girlfriends with their prowess. And no doubt their female
companions looked adoringly into the eyes of these brave heroes as they
consummated their relationships. In other words these animals convicted
themselves.
I should add that Israel
does not approve of corruption and theft by the military. Not because it has any principled objection
to stealing from Palestinians. After all
they have stolen most of their land, but because the right to steal Palestinian
property is that of the State alone If every soldier has the right to steal
then military discipline and order will break down as each soldier becomes an entrepreneur
in his own right.
No soldier was ever
prosecuted for war crimes in Gaza in 2014.
Murdering Palestinians, including children, is not a criminal offence. However those caught stealing Palestinian credit
cards were prosecuted because such behaviour is inimical to good order.
It was the same with
the Nazis. Himmler also had SS members shot for theft of Jewish property.
Killing Jews, of course, was no crime but individual theft of Jewish property
was theft of State property. Such actions were held to undermine the SS’s moral
order and had to be stamped out. See 'I
Waited for the Bullet That Would End This Nightmare': Palestinians Brutalized
by Israeli Cop Gang Speak Out
These are such horrific
incidents that even Netanyahu will denounce them as unacceptable. In the case
of the Dawabshes Shin Bet was even willing to torture the Jewish suspects in
order to gain confessions. Torture in the case of Palestinians is the norm and
goes unremarked but the torture of Jews? This was unacceptable to Zionist
opinion and the Israeli court ruled these confessions inadmissible.
Palestinian confessions
are never ruled inadmissible, however this too is different, because, as we all
know, Palestinians have difficulty telling the truth unless they are forced to
do so. The racist logic is impeccable and if you don’t understand it that is
probably because you are anti-Semitic!
What is truly shocking is
the routinised and normative racism in the Israeli state, both to Arab citizens
of Israel and Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is the acceptance of
such racism that is terrifying and which can only be explained by Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.
Below are a number of
articles documenting this racism. The first
article by Jonathan Ofir concerns the lynching of an Eritrean refugee, Haftom
Zarhum. Zarhum’s real crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His
second crime was even more unforgivable in the eyes of Beersheba’s District
Court.
Death of an Eritrean ‘Infiltrator’
I covered this terrible
story at the time in Death
of an Eritrean ‘Infiltrator’. On October 15 an Israeli Arab opened fire in Beersheva’s
bus station killing one soldier and wounding 11 others. Haftom was not even Palestinian
but his dark skin was enough. He was, quite understandably, mistaken for the Palestinian
attacker and shot 8 times. Although
incapacitated the blood thirsty mob were not satisfied. The video I posted at the
time is almost impossible to watch. It involves benches being thrown at his
head and a savage beating to satisfy the blood lust of his attackers.
Ynet
reported that medics trying to evacuate Zarhum “ran into objection from the
crowds at the scene, who blocked their way and called out ‘Death to
Arabs,”Arabs out!’ and ‘Am Israel Chai’ (‘The people of Israel still live’).”
Two of the civilian
attackers agreed to a plea deal. One received 4 months in prison and the other
got 100 days of community service and 8 months probation. But the two security
officers who were involved in the beatings quite understandably efused to
accept a plea deal. The Israeli court agreed with them and they were acquitted.
As you might expect Jewish
Judge Aharon Mishnayot, a former military judge, was not unsympathetic to the
security guards. He said he was “certain
that the defendants were convinced that the deceased was one of several
terrorists”. As is well known, if you kill someone because you believe they
are a terrorist then it stands to reason that you should be acquitted if you
kill them under a mistaken belief.
It was the time of the ‘knife
Intifada’ when nerves were on edge. The attacks had “created an atmosphere of fear and panic in the public”. Judge
Mishnayot refused to
“ignore the connection of the event to the frequent
terror events that had occurred in the state in those days, before the event at
hand and the implications that this may have on the state of awareness of the
involved”.
The fact that Haftom had
already been incapacitated made no impression on the learned judge. That the
actions of the mob were purely vengeful made no difference either.
Alma
Bilbash noted a comparative case when in 2005 an Israeli soldier, Eden Nathan Zada,
opened fire on a bus at the Palestinian-Israeli village of Shefa-Amr, killing
four and wounding twelve. After having been restrained and handcuffed, he was
beaten to death by the crowd. In this case it was the actual terrorist who was
beaten to death.
That did not stop the State putting his attackers on trial and six Israeli
Arabs were convicted of attempted manslaughter and aggravated battery. 3 were
sentenced to 2 years prison, the others to 20, 18 and 11 months prison. But of
course there is no comparison because the attackers in Beersheba were Jewish whereas
in Shefa-Amr those who killed Zada were Arabs. Israel is a Jewish state and one
should not therefore judge the actions of Arabs and Jews in the same way.
The Murder of Ahmad
Manasra
Two articles by Gideon Levy and Hagar Shezof in Ha'aretz concern an Israeli
soldier who shot and killed one Palestinian and injured another. The details are as simple as they are
shocking.
The soldier fatally shot 23-year-old Ahmad
Manasra who was killed while helping another Palestinian who had also been
shot and seriously wounded by the same soldier. The soldier was charged with
negligently causing death but was not charged with wounding the other man.
A car accident occurred in
March 2019, when a Palestinian, Alaa Raida, was driving with his wife and two
daughters. Another car crashed into them near the village of al-Khader, then
fled the scene. When Raida got out of his car and waved his hands at the
fleeing car, the soldier shot him, wounding him. Ahmad Manasra, who happened to
be passing in a car, got out and was about to help Ahmad when he was shot. The
pretext was that stones were being thrown. Since the soldier was in an armed
pillbox he was clearly in no danger even if that had been true.
However the military authorities reached
a plea deal. The military prosecutor proposed a sentence of three months’ community
service in lieu of prison for an Israeli soldier accused of negligently
shooting an innocent Palestinian to death.
Of course if it had been the other way round then
there would have been screaming headlines about Palestinians with ‘blood on their hands’ who deserve life.
The idea that a Palestinian guilty of killing an Israeli soldier would receive
community service is risible. This after
all is Israel and Israel is a Jewish state.
Israeli
youth shout ‘death to the Arabs’ as cleaners hide in a wooden building – the Police
arrest both attackers and victims!
Two articles below concern the situation at a beach on
the Sea of Galilee, a favourite destination for Israeli holiday makers. Naturally it is left to Israeli Palestinians
to clean up.
One of the cleaners described how they brought a group
of Hitler, sorry Hilltop youth,
“a
garbage bag, and one of the girls in the group said that she doesn’t need the
bag. ‘The Hasbani Stream is mine, Be’er
Sheva is mine and so is Hebron. The whole country is mine and you are the ones
who have to clean it,’ she said."
You may tut tut but this girl is right. She should be congratulated on
her knowledge of Jewish religious law, at least as taught by Israel’s neo-Nazi rabbis.
According
to Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, who on his death had
the largest
attendance at his funeral (over 1 million) of anyone in Israel:
“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they
have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel,”
“Why are gentiles needed? he asked. They will work, they will plow, they will
reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat,” he said to some laughter.
As you can see Ovadia Yosef was quite justly renowned for his wisdom. I
should add, as the son of an Orthodox Rabbi myself, that the Jewish religion
should no more be blamed for Ovadia Yosef’s Nazi-like racism than the Christian
religion should be blamed for anti-Semitism or Islam for ISIS. There is nothing
inherently racist in any religion. But when religions are tied to a state and
that religion is used to demarcate the boundaries between inhabitants then that
state will inevitably be racist. Religion provides the excuse, the rationale
but it doesn’t create the kind of societies that employ this racism.
According to Bassam Zoabi, the work supervisor, the cleaners hid in a
prefab structure, with some 200 people gathering around. He said people threw
stones at the structure and yelled “death
to Arabs,”
[a favourite chant in Israel] and that pepper spray was used.
The police
denied that the cleaners complained. Indeed once the Police arrived the Arab
cleaners expressed their gratitude to the Jewish Hitler youth for having thrown
stones at them. It was clearly a peace
gesture.
It was not surprising in the circumstances that the Israeli Police
arrested 5 people – 2 of the stone throwers and 3 of the cleaners. I know some
people may cavil at this but it is quite fair.
The Police refused to discriminate. They treated all parties as
equal. This is even more fair when you
think that the cleaners imposed themselves on Israel’s Hitler Youth by suggesting
that they might consider cleaning up their own mess. These children understood that in a Jewish state
they were entitled to make a mess and that non-Jews, instead of complaining,
should clean up and be quiet.
The final article is self-explanatory. It involves Cameroonian
philosopher Achille Mbembe, a renowned intellectual who was invited to a culture
festival in Germany. Germany has not
been immune from Black Lives Matter and the accompanying debate on racism. But Germany’s
leaders are also signed up to Zionism.
Mbembe’s ‘crime’ is supporting BDS.
Naturally Felix Klein, Germany’s federal commissioner for the fight
against antisemitism, demanded the revocation of Mbembe’s invitation to
participate in the festival, on the grounds that the philosopher had denied the distinctive
status of the Holocaust and had supported BDS. Indeed, Mbembe has
frequently likened the colonial occupation of Palestine to the apartheid regime
in South Africa.
Such terrible crimes as Mbembe’s demand no less than Nazi style banning
and persecution. All in the name of
fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ of course.
Germany’s ruling class has sought to expiate their guilt over the Holocaust
by the simple expedient of transferring it onto the shoulders of the Palestinians.
The German ruling class was never deNazified.
Its first post-war Chancellor Konrad Adeneur had as his Chief
of Staff, Hans Globke, who was instrumental in drafting the Nuremberg Laws.
Globke was the second most powerful person in post-war Germany.
Globke had been responsible for the bright idea of giving every German Jew
a name – Israel for males and Sara for females. This helped with
identification. Globke, although a civil servant in the Nazi Ministry of
Interior, was responsible for the murder of 20,000 Jews in Thessaloniki. When Eichmann
contacted
the Interior Ministry and asked for Globke's permission to kill them he
received it.
However Globke was protected by powerful interests and Israel, under Ben
Gurion had reached an agreement with Adeneur not to rake up the past history of
Germany’s leaders and top civil servants in exchange for reparations and arms
supplies. The Holocaust provided Israel with many lucrative advantages and in
exchange Israel agreed not to divide the Western alliance by raking up charges
of Nazi complicity.
Instead it was the Arabs and their supporters who became the new Nazis. So
although Achille Mbembe is idolised in German universities for his theories of
post-colonialism he had trespassed on what is a fundamental principle. Do not
criticise Israel lest you open a can of worms. Germany’s guilty conscience over
the Holocaust is lubricated by arms to Israel and defamatory accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’
against anyone who doesn’t toe the line.
This is what is termed the new McCarthyism.
Tony Greenstein
Yesterday, an unbelievable verdict came down at the
Beersheba District Court in Israel:
Two Israeli security officers were acquitted in a case
involving the lynching of Haftom Zarhum, an Eritrean refugee, although they
were filmed beating him and repeatedly dropping a bench on his head. The judge
cited “reasonable doubt”.
The bloodthirsty mob lynching in October 2015 was part
of a string of “mistaken
identity” incidents in Israel. A terror attack had in fact taken place
earlier at the Beersheba central bus station; a man from an unrecognized
Bedouin village in the Negev opened fire, killing a soldier and wounding 11
others.
Zarhum was a passerby, who was mistaken for the
shooter by a security guard because he was dark skinned. A police spokesman in
the wake of the incident said that it was “not
clear if [Zarhum] is involved with the event or if he was shot due to his
exterior appearance.”
Zarhum was shot 8 times. Though he had been
incapacitated, the mob continued to beat him heavily, shouting “terrorist!”, “Kill him!”, “break his head,
son of a bitch!”. The two officers were in that mob. The Times
of Israel notes:
“The indictment said that in
the aftermath of the attack, [combat soldier Yaakov] Shimba kicked Zarhum in the
head and upper body with force. It said [Prison Services officer Ronen] Cohen
threw a bench onto him, and after another man removed the bench he took it and
again dropped it on the prone man.”
The indictment states that although Zarhum was one of
the most seriously wounded in the fracas, he was evacuated to hospital only
after all other wounded were evacuated (per Haaretz).
The lynchers celebrated the killing on live TV
broadcast, when they still believed that Zarhum was the shooter.
It is important to note, that the autopsy concluded
that Zarhum died from his gunshot wounds, not from the beatings, but the
beatings were severe. The prosecution stated that
“the defendants committed serious acts of
violence towards the late citizen Haftom Zarhum, who was already shot, wounded
and profusely bleeding, from a motive of vengeance and in order to relieve
their anger, and not as the defendants claimed from self-defense”.
Originally, four people were charged in this case, and
two of them were civilians. The civilians took a plea bargain in 2018 which
downgraded the charge from “causing
injury with grave intent” (which entails potential 20 years prison) to “abusing the helpless”. One was sentenced
to four months in prison and the other got 100 days of community service and
eight months of probation and was ordered to pay NIS 2,000 (approximately $550)
compensation to Zarhum’s family.
But the security officers would not take a deal – they
pleaded not guilty, and they got what they wanted from the judge – acquittal.
The judge Aharon Mishnayot has a long record as a
military legal advisor and judge (from 1990, judge from 1998), and he spent the
last part of his military career 2007-2013 as head judge of the military courts
in the Occupied West Bank.
The judge stated that after having seen the evidence,
he was “certain that the defendants were
convinced that the deceased was one of several terrorists”, that the
(mostly lone wolf) attacks of the time had “created
an atmosphere of fear and panic in the public”, and that he could not
“ignore the connection of the
event to the frequent terror events that had occurred in the state in those
days, before the event at hand and the implications that this may have on the
state of awareness of the involved”.
But the defendants were not responding to a security
threat as such. They were acting in revenge. The judge is thus suggesting that
pure revenge for Palestinian attacks is a mitigating circumstance.
The judge added, that that while the prosecution
stated that the defendants could distinguish between “neutralizing a terrorist or who seemed to be one, and attacking an
innocent person”, he is
“afraid that such appraisal is
true for a utopian reality, where one can easily distinguish between good and
bad and between friend and predator, but it defies the actual reality and to
the real world, and does not correctly reflect the complex circumstances of the
difficult situation, into which the people in the central station were unfortunately
drawn at the evening of the attack, including the defendants”.
So the lynch mob, and in particular the security
officials, were, according to the judge, simply victims themselves – victims of
an “unfortunate circumstance”.
But what about Zarhum? Was he not really the victim of
this “unfortunate circumstance” in a
much more deadly way? And were not the lynchers creating this deadly
circumstance in a singular way? After all, he was just a passerby, killed for
his skin color.
And what would happen if Palestinians, for example,
act like the defendants did?
Alma
Bilbash noted a comparative case on her Facebook page: in 2005 an Israeli
soldier, Eden Nathan
Zada, opened fire on a bus at the Palestinian-Israeli village of Shefa-Amr,
killing four and wounding twelve. After having been restrained and handcuffed,
he was beaten to death by the crowd. So here we had an actual, certain, terror
attack, with an ensuing lynching of the terrorist.
Let’s put aside the lopsided power structure of
Palestinians in Israel in relation to the Jewish State. Eventually, six
Palestinian Israelis were convicted – four of attempted manslaughter, two of
aggravated battery. Three of them were sentenced to two years prison, the
others to 20, 18 and 11 months prison.
Orly Noy
notes in her Facebook post another comparison – to the case of Shlomo
Haim Pinto from 2015, an Israeli Jew, who decided to stab a Palestinian in
a supermarket out of a “spiritual calling”, but mistook Uri Razkan, a Mizrahi
Jew, for a Palestinian, stabbed him and caused him moderate injuries. Pinto was
sentenced to 11 months prison.
Noy comments that Pinto only went to prison because
his victim was Jewish. If Razkan was not Jewish, it is possible to assume that
judge Mishnayot from the Zarhum case would have acquitted Pinto due to “reasonable doubt”. She summarizes the “race pyramid that prevails here”:
“If you are a dark-skinned
man, you are, per definition, in a risk group. Your skin color marks you as a
target. If you are Jewish and your murderer was in uniform, you’ll get some
media coverage but forget justice or sentence. If you’re not Jewish and your
murderer wore uniform, say thank you if you don’t get declared a terrorist
post-mortem. If you’re Jewish and your attacker was Jewish not in uniform,
there’s a chance that he would pay for his deeds. If you are not Jewish and
your attacker was Jewish not in uniform, your family will get a full 2000
Shekels that will bury you. If you’re Palestinian, whether your murderer wore
uniform or not, be sure that you will be declared a terrorist after your
death”.
Commenting on yesterday’s verdict, Ronen Cohen’s
attorney Zion Amir said that Cohen was a hero:
“There is no doubt that this is
a big day for an officer who acted heroically during the incident, and instead
of an award got an indictment. I am glad that the court acquitted him after an
almost five-years legal battle.”
Cohen is not the only hero in the killing of Hafton
Zarhum. The soldier and fellow defendant Yaakov Shimba deserved a medal of
honor for his acts, according to
Israeli general (res.) Gershon Hacohen. Hacohen testified in the case two years
ago and although admitting to not even having read the charges, he opined that
charging the soldier is “immoral” and
that the soldier is “worthy of respect”
since he “didn’t shoot one bullet”.
(Neither did George Floyd’s killer, Derek Chauvin, notes Edith Breslauer on
Facebook.)
Another general who testified in 2018, Dan Biton,
opined that the soldier acted “calmly”,
even when he cursed Zarhum.
“He came from Golani (infantry
brigade), so I don’t need to add anything. If he was from Armory it wouldn’t
have been like that. It is calmness (to curse) which belongs to some from
Golani. Whoever comes from Golani curses unconsciously. In the end, when
examining the event throughout, he acted calmly”.
Just imagine how it would have been if Shimba had a
bad day. It was a good day after all, per general Biton.
There was no doubt that Haftom Zarhum was lynched.
There is absolutely no doubt that the two defendants were a central part of his
lynching. But because they suspected Zarhum was a terrorist, although they
never saw him touching a fly nor posing any kind of danger to them, in fact was
incapacitated, their bloodthirsty revenge was “reasonable”. That’s “reasonable
doubt” for you, in Israeli Newspeak.
Military prosecutors
are seeking a penalty of three months’ community service for the soldier who
shot Ahmad Manasra, who was helping another Palestinian who was shot and
wounded by the same soldier
Published
on 03.09.2020
Military prosecutors have proposed a sentence of three
months’ community service in lieu of prison for an Israeli soldier accused of
negligently shooting an innocent Palestinian to death.
Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg has ruled that
three judges of the High Court of Justice will hear an appeal against a plea
bargain reached with the soldier who fatally shot 23-year-old Ahmad
Manasra.
The victim was killed while helping another
Palestinian who had been shot and seriously wounded by the same soldier. The
soldier was charged with negligently causing death but was not charged with
wounding the other man, even though that shooting is mentioned in the
indictment. Two weeks ago, military prosecutors asked for a penalty of three
months’ community service.
According to the indictment, a car accident occurred
in March 2019, when a Palestinian, Alaa Raida, was driving with his wife and
two daughters. Another car crashed into them near the village of al-Khader,
then fled the scene. Raida stopped his car near an intersection, got out and
waved his arms at the fleeing car. According to the indictment, the soldier,
who was in a concrete pillbox near the intersection, thought Raida was throwing
stones at Israeli cars. He called out a warning and fired into the air before
shooting Raida.
In contrast, an affidavit submitted by Raida says he
was shot outside his car without warning, contravening the army’s rules of
engagement. He was wounded in his stomach and evacuated from the area in
serious condition.
“Anyone reading the
indictment can see that this was an execution,” said attorney Shlomo Lecker, who submitted the
appeal.
“Raida was shot while stopping at a traffic light at
an illuminated intersection, while exiting his vehicle. Ahmad was shot while
fleeing for his life. It was [rifle] fire directed straight at him.”
The indictment notes the assistance Manasra gave
Raida, after arriving at the scene with three other friends who were returning
with him from a wedding in Bethlehem in the West Bank. The three helped
evacuate Raida to the hospital, while Manasra stayed at the scene with Raida’s
wife and daughters, helping them start their car. According to the indictment,
he was shot while emerging from his car, and shot again while trying to flee.
- Israeli
Army Seeks Three Months Community Service for Soldier Who Killed Innocent
Palestinian
- 'Nothing
Changes': Palestinians Report Attacks by Israeli Settlers on West Bank
Villages
The military prosecution’s response to the appeal
shows that the soldier deleted messages he had sent other soldiers regarding
the incident. Moreover, it is noted that soldiers who had served with the
accused remarked that he was very enthusiastic about using his weapon in some
kind of operation. A source familiar with the case says the deleted messages
were found on other phones, and that the soldier’s version was consistent.
The appeal notes that no other soldier testified that
stones were thrown at that location and that no one was in danger. No other
soldier saw the entire incident unfold. Footage from surveillance cameras was
collected, but it was argued that the quality was poor. Some soldiers who
testified during the trial said that right after the incident, the accused told
them that he had shot stone throwers.
It also turned out that stones were found in the area,
but the indictment made no mention of stone throwing. Military prosecutors
labeled this case as “complex,” since the incident occurred during operations
in a tense area in which other incidents were taking place. They added that
this incident happened soon after an alert was issued regarding a possible
attack. However, they noted that the soldier’s training for dealing with such
events was “somewhat flawed.”
The response to the appeal notes that the soldier was
questioned under caution three times, as were his commanders. According to the
soldier’s attorney, he felt that civilians were endangered by stone throwing
before he opened fire. The soldier claimed that he was following the rules of
engagement and that this was the first time he had used his weapon in an
operation. Before his hearing, prosecutors had intended to charge him with
negligent cause of death, causing aggravated bodily harm and destruction of
evidence. After the hearing, they signed a plea bargain in which the soldier
admitted to one charge, negligent cause of death.
Opening fire under the rules if engagement is a
central issue in this case, since according to the soldier, he acted
appropriately when he shot Raida. That is why wounding Raida is not part of the
indictment.
Even
for the Wild West Bank, This Is a Shocking Story
Gideon Levy
A young Palestinian's attempt to help a stranger shot by Israeli troops
costs him his life
It was appallingly cold, rainy and foggy on Monday of
this week at the southern entrance to Bethlehem. A group of young people stood
on the side of the road, gazing at something. Gloomy and toughened, they formed
a circle around the concrete cube in which are sunken the spikes of a large
billboard – an ad for Kia cars that stretches across the road. They were looking
for signs of blood, as though they were volunteers in Zaka, the Israeli
emergency response organization. They were looking for bloodstains of their
friend, who was killed there five days earlier. Behind the concrete cube they
found what they were looking for, a large bloodstain, now congealed. The stain
held fast despite the heavy rain, as though refusing to be washed away,
determined to remain there, a silent monument.
This is where their friend tried, in his last moments,
to find protection from the soldiers who were shooting at him, probably from
the armored concrete tower that looms over the intersection a few dozen meters
away. It was to here that he fled, already wounded, attempting to take cover
behind the concrete cube. But it was too late. His fate was sealed by the
soldiers. Six bullets slashed into his body and killed him. He collapsed and
died next to the concrete cube by the side of the road.
Even in a situation in which anything is possible,
this is an unbelievable story. It’s 9 P.M. Wednesday March 20. A family is
returning from an outing. Their car breaks down. The father of the family, Ala
Raida, 38, from the village of Nahalin, who is legally employed paving roads in
Israel, steps out of his Volkswagen Golf to see what has happened. His wife,
Maisa, 34, and their two daughters, Sirin, 8, and Lin, 5, wait in the car.
Suddenly the mother hears a single shot and sees her husband lean back onto the
car. Emerging from the car, she discovers to her astonishment that he’s wounded
in the stomach. She shouts hysterically for help, the girls in the car are
crying and screaming.
Another car, a Kia Sportage, arrives at the
intersection. Its occupants are four young people from the nearby village of
Wadi Fukin. They’re on the way home from the wedding of their friend Mahmoud
Lahruv, held that evening in the Hall of Dreams in Bethlehem. At the sight of
the woman next to the traffic light appealing for help, they stop the car and
get out to see what they can do. Three of them quickly carry the wounded man to
their car and rush him to the nearest hospital, Al-Yamamah, in the town of
Al-Khader. The fourth young man, Ahmad Manasra, 23, stays behind to calm the
woman and the frightened girls. Manasra tries to start the stalled car in order
to move it away from the dangerous intersection, but the vehicle doesn’t
respond. He then gets back out of the car. The soldiers start firing at him. He
tries to get to the concrete cube but is struck by the bullets as he runs.
Three rounds hit him in the back and chest, the others slam into his lower
body. He dies on the spot.
The army says that stones were thrown. All the
eyewitnesses deny that outright. Nor is it clear what the target of the stones
might have been. The armored concrete tower? And even if stones were thrown at
cars heading for the settlement of Efrat, is that a reason to open fire with
live ammunition on a driver whose car broke down, with his wife and young
daughters on board? Or on a young man who tried to get the car moving and to
calm the mother and her daughters? Shooting with no restraint? With no pity?
With no law?
We visit the skeleton of an unfinished apartment on
the second floor of a house in Wadi Fukin. It’s an impoverished West Bank
village just over the Green Line, whose residents fled in 1949 and were allowed
to return in 1972, and which is now imprisoned between the giant ultra-Orthodox
settlement of Betar Ilit and the town of Tzur Hadassah, which is just inside
the Green Line. A wood stove tries to rebuff the bitter cold in the broad space
between the unplastered walls and the untiled floor. A grim-looking group of
men are sitting around the fire, trying to warm themselves. They are the
mourners for Manasra; this was going to be his apartment one day, when he got
married. That will never happen now.
Only the memorial posters remain in the unbuilt space.
A relative and fellow villager, Adel Atiyah, an ambassador in the Palestinian
delegation to the European Union, calls from Brussels to offer his shocked
condolences. One of the mourners, Fahmi Manasra, lives in Toronto and is here
on a visit to his native land. The atmosphere is dark and pained.
The bereaved father, Jamal, 50, is resting in his
apartment on the ground floor. When he comes upstairs, it’s clear he’s a person
deeply immersed in his grief though impressive in his restraint. He’s a tiler
who works in Israel with a permit. He last saw his son as he drove along the
main street in Bethlehem as his son was going to his friend’s wedding. Jamal
was driving his wife, Wafa, home from another wedding. That was about two hours
before Ahmad was killed. In the last two days of his life they worked together,
Jamal and his son, in the family vineyard, clearing away cuttings and spraying.
Now he wistfully remembers those precious moments. Ahmad asked to borrow his
father’s car to drive to the wedding, but Jamal needed it to visit the doctor,
and Ahmad joined the group in Wahib Manasra’s SUV.
Quiet prevails in the shell of the unfinished apartment.
Someone says that Manasra was already planning the layout of his future home –
the living room would be here, the kitchen there. Maisa Raida, the wife of the
wounded driver, is at her husband’s bedside at Hadassah Medical Center, Ein
Karem, Jerusalem, where he’s recovering from his severe stomach wound. He was
brought there from Al-Khader because of the seriousness of his condition. Major
damage was done to internal organs in his abdomen and he needed complicated
surgery, but he seems to be on the mend.
Maisa told a local field investigator from a human
rights group that at first she didn’t realize that her husband was wounded.
Only after she stepped out of the car did she see that he was leaning on the
vehicle because of the wound. She yelled for help, and after the young men
stopped and took her husband to the hospital, she got back into the car with
Manasra, whom she didn’t know. While they were in the car with her daughters,
and he was trying get it started, she heard another burst of gunfire aimed at
their car from the side, but which didn’t hit them.
She had no idea that Manasra was shot and killed when
he got out of the car, moments later. She stayed inside, trying to calm the
girls. It wasn’t until she called her father and her brother-in-law and they
arrived and took her to Al-Yamamah Hospital that she heard that someone had
been killed. Appalled, she thought they meant her husband but was told that the
dead person had been taken to Al-Hussein Hospital in Beit Jala.
Eventually, she realized that the man who was killed
was the same young man who tried to help her and her daughters; he was dead on
arrival. Before Maisa and her daughters were taken from the scene, an officer
and soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces came to the stalled car and tried
to calm them.
Manasra was dead by then, sprawled next to the
concrete cube. He was a Real Madrid fan and liked cars. Until recently he
worked in the settlement of Hadar Betar, inside Betar Ilit. His little brother,
8-year-old Abdel Rahman, wanders among the mourners in a daze.
After Jamal Manasra returned home, his phone began
ringing nonstop. He decided not to answer. He says he was afraid to answer, he
had forebodings from God. He and his wife drove to the hospital in Beit Jala.
He has no rational explanation for why they went to the hospital. From God. “I was the last to know,” he says in
Hebrew. At the hospital, he was asked whether he was Ahmad’s father. Then he
understood. He and his wife have two more sons and a daughter. Ahmad was their
firstborn.
We asked the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit a number of
questions. Why did the soldiers shoot Ala Raida and Ahmad Manasra with live
ammunition? Why did they go on shooting at Manasra even after he tried to flee?
Did the soldiers fire from the armored watchtower? Do the security cameras show
that stones were indeed thrown? Were the soldiers in mortal danger?
This was the IDF’s response to all these questions:
“On March 21, a debriefing was held headed by the
commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, Brig. Gen. Eran Niv, and the
commander of the Etzion territorial brigade, Col. David Shapira, in the area of
the event that took place on Thursday [actually, it was a Wednesday] at the
Efrat junction and at the entrance to Bethlehem. From the debriefing it emerges
that an IDF fighter who was on guard at a military position near the
intersection spotted a suspect who was throwing stones at vehicles in the area
and carried out the procedure for arresting a suspect, which ended in shooting.
As a result of the shooting, the suspect was killed and another Palestinian was
wounded.”
“The possibility is being examined that there was
friction between Palestinians, which included stone-throwing.
“The inquiry into the event continues, parallel to the
opening of an investigation by the Military Police.”
After the group of young people found what they were
looking for – bloodstains of their friend, Ahmad – they reconstructed for us
the events of that horrific evening. It was important for them to talk to an
Israeli journalist. They’re the three who came out alive from the drive home
after the wedding. One of them, Ahmad Manasra – he has the same name as the
young man who was killed – wouldn’t get out of the car when we were there. He’s
still traumatized. Wahib Manasra, the driver of the SUV, showed us where the
stalled VW had been, and where they stopped when they saw a woman shouting for
help.
Soldiers and security cameras viewed us even now, from
the watchtower, which is no more than 30 meters from the site. Wahib says that
if there was stone-throwing, or if they had noticed soldiers, they wouldn’t
have stopped and gotten out of the car. Raida, the wounded man, kept mumbling,
“My daughters, my daughters,” when
they approached him. He leaned on them and they put him in their car. By the
time they reached the gas station down the road, he had lost consciousness.
Before that, he again mumbled, “My
daughters.”
Wahib and the other Ahmad, the one who was alive,
returned quickly from the hospital, which is just a few minutes from the site.
But they could no longer get close to the scene, as a great many cars were
congregated there. They got out of the car and proceeded on foot. A Palestinian
ambulance went by. Looking through the window, Wahib saw to his horror his
friend, Ahmad Manasra, whom they had left on the road with the woman and her
girls, lying inside. He saw at once that Ahmad was dead.
Littering
and Violent Racism Break Record as Israelis Flock to Sea of Galilee Shores
'They tell us
we have no place in this country, that we’re their slaves’
Cleaners recount tales of discrimination and disrespect
Cleaners recount tales of discrimination and disrespect
Published
on 31.08.2020
In the final week of August, beaches along Sea of Galilee and
streams in the Galilee are reflecting two facets of Israel. On one side,
hundreds of thousands of citizens with nowhere to fly are descending on every
water source or footpath, leaving behind mountains of garbage. Trailing them
and attending this mess are workers who, for meager pay and under difficult
conditions, have to contend with a country in which discarded beer cans and
snack food wrappers have become an inseparable part of the landscape. And these
workers, who remain behind to return nature to some semblance of normalcy,
report constant daily bullying and expressions of racism by visitors.
Towards the weekend, cleaning staff on Levanon Beach on the eastern side
of the Sea of Galilee, or Lake Kinneret, could breathe more
easily for a while. This is when the profile of visitors changes, with families
with children replacing groups of young adults. As children frolick in the
water and smoke rises from a barbecue, Tarek Hassuna, from the Arab village of
Misr, who has worked here for a decade, describes an incident from the previous
day.
“We swept the grassy area with eight
workers at midday”,
he says. Then they encountered a group of young people who looked like hilltop
youth, an idiom for young, radical
Israeli settlers, so called because they originally lived on unsanctioned
illegal outposts on West Bank hills.
“We
brought them a garbage bag, and one of the girls in the group said that she
doesn’t need the bag. ‘The Hasbani Stream is mine, Be’er Sheva is mine and so
is Hebron. The whole country is mine and you are the ones who have to clean
it,’ she said."
“I
didn’t argue with her. I called my supervisor and he sent a policeman, who came
within seconds. He told them that if they didn’t clean up, they’d have to
leave. We now have inspectors and policemen accompanying us while we work.”
Hassuna says that incidents like these have pushed some of the older
cleaners to stop working.
“They
have families, they’re afraid. I’m 45. Girls come looking for an argument.
There are bins right there but they throw garbage next to them on purpose.”
A visit to the beach shows some garbage next to a bin, as well as
vandalized equipment. This bothers the workers less than the harassment by
visitors.
“This year, most of the visitors
are okay,” says 53-year-old Bassem Zoabi, also from Misr. “But there are young people making racist
comments. This year they’ve crossed all lines: One manager was even beaten up,"
he says, before recounting an incident from two weeks before. Three cleaners
asked a group of young people on the beach to lower the volume of the music
they were playing, and a clash broke out, with dozens of youths taking part.
The police said that this was not a racially-motivated incident and detained
three workers as well.
“My workers hear calls such as ‘death
to Arabs’ and ‘dirty Arab’ all the time. Our managers back us and we can call
them anytime,” says
Zoabi. “I only hope no one is murdered
here. Other nearby beaches don’t have this. I don’t know why it happens only
here.” He shows us photos of broken toilets and excrement smeared on walls.
He’s been working these beaches for 30 years, currently as a contractor. He
says that this year is unusually harsh by any standard.
Zoabi’s son Sharif has been working here for a decade. He too talks about
racist taunts he is constantly subjected to.
“The
minds of 14-year-old children are
full of hatred and racism. They tell us we have no place in this country,
that we’re their slaves. I don’t respond when they curse us and the police.
They use drugs and alcohol. Two girls pushed a worker into a latrine yesterday,
telling him to clean it. They break bottles and children cut their feet, and we
get the blame.”
Hassuna says that in the past there was the odd troublemaker, but now
they are the majority.
“You have some good ones, but most have grown up on
hatred. We live near a kibbutz and have never felt that. I served in the army
and contributed to the state.”
The head of the regional council said that this team is devoted, working
hard to keep the beaches clean, but that the violence and racism must be
condemned.
Not all visitors behave that way. One of them notes how clean and quiet
the area is. He jokes with the cleaners that if everyone disposed
of their garbage like he does, they’d have no work.
The western side of the lake is somewhat different. Most of the cleaners
are Sudanese. Ibrahim Abdullah has been working there for seven years.
“There
is more filth here now, more garbage. Some people don’t talk nicely. Some drunk
Arabs quarreled with me two weeks ago. They despise Sudanese. Some of them
laugh at us.”
A friend of his, also from Sudan, proudly shows his Israeli ID card. He’s
been working here for nine years, also saying some people don’t clean up when
they leave. His mobile phone was stolen for the first time this year, after all
the years he’s worked here.
Merciless heat
Small numbers of cleaning staff along streams in the north have to
contend with masses of visitors, many of whom leave behind creative forms of
garbage. One cleaning contractor shows us photos of carpets and armchairs left
in the area.
“People
don’t care about cleanliness here. They don’t see these sites as needing to be
kept clean. Ten percent of the visitors clean up while the rest leave their
garbage behind. Bags they leave here are scattered at night by wild animals and
the garbage gets into the water, floating down to the Kinneret,”
he says.
This contractor hasn’t encountered physical violence, but he has been
cursed. He takes it lightly, noting that the police are often summoned.
“Workers
aren’t heeded when asking people to pick up their garbage so they call their
supervisors. When these are also ignored, they call the police. This happens
every week.”
Signs forbidding people to stay overnight at Snir
Stream are ignored, as are requests to keep the noise down, avoid lighting
fires or swimming. The head of the regional council says that spending time in
nature makes people better and is good for the local economy. “Just obey the rules and keep it clean,”
he asks.
The cleaning contractor says that when he distributes
garbage bags, some people understand while others get angry, saying that it’s
obvious that they have to clean up.
“But
ultimately, most people don’t. The young ones are the worst. They cause damage
and say that only suckers clean up. Let the state or the contractor clean up,
they say.”
Israeli
Police Detain Five in Brawl at Beach, Witness Says Teens Shouted 'Death to
Arabs'
People threw stones as cleaners hid in a prefab structure, witness says
Brawl began after cleaners asked teenagers to lower music, investigation finds
Five people were detained on Tuesday on suspicion they were involved in a
brawl at a Sea of Galilee beach that, according to an initial investigation,
erupted after cleaners asked teenagers to turn down the volume of their
music.
According to witness Bassam Zoabi, the work supervisor at the beach, at
one point the the cleaners hid in a prefab structure, with some 200 people
gathering around. He said people threw stones at the structure and yelled “death to Arabs,”
and that pepper spray was used. Local authorities confirmed that stones and
tear gas were used and calls of “Death to
Arabs” were heard. The police,
however, said the cleaners didn’t complain about slurs or stones.
The five suspects, two boys aged 15 and 16 and three cleaners, were
released with restrictions and ordered to stay away from the beach. None of
those involved required medical attention.
“The
cleaning workers and their shift supervisor, who were collecting trash, came to
a group of youths and asked them to turn off the music because it’s a quiet
beach, and [the youths] jumped them,”
said Zoabi.
“The
workers hid in the caravan. When I got there, I saw 200 people throwing stones
at the caravan and yelling. If we hadn’t gotten there they would have set them
on fire.”
Zoabi was critical of the police.
“Who
did the police take? They took the cleaning workers for questioning. They were
questioned from 1:00 A.M. until 11:00 A.M.. They didn’t arrest even one of the
200 who attacked [them].”
He said that the racism exhibited
during the incident is not new, although on Tuesday things escalated further
than usual.
“Every night people shout ‘Death to Arabs.’
It’s been like that for a month already,”
How
Israel Became Exempt From the Global Reckoning Over Racism
World sensitivity to racism and oppression is surging, but historical
injustice in Israel is hardly drawing to an end. In fact, it’s only getting
worse
Ofri Ilany Published on 18.06.2020
For a few weeks, a furious debate has been raging in the German media,
centering around the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe. In the eyes of many,
Mbembe, who has taught at Yale and Berkeley, is the most influential African
intellectual of our time. He is one of the most prominent and most incisive
thinkers about postcolonialism in the present period. He coined the term “necropolitics,” referring to the use of
political power to determine who will live and who will die.
Mbembe is well known among the educated public in Germany; some of his
books have been published there, and he has been the recipient of prestigious
awards. He is also an active participant in the debate over the rise of
authoritarian regimes worldwide. But the attitude toward him underwent a
sea-change lately, when he was accused of being anti-Israel and of “relativizing the Holocaust.”
Felix Klein, Germany’s federal commissioner for the fight against
antisemitism, demanded the revocation of Mbembe’s invitation to participate in
a culture festival, on the grounds that the philosopher had denied the distinctive
status of the Holocaust and had supported BDS. Indeed, Mbembe has
frequently likened the colonial occupation of Palestine to the apartheid regime
in South Africa.
In previous cases, anyone accused of denying Israel’s right to exist
would immediately find him- or herself persona non grata in Germany. But in
this case, the dilemma was especially difficult. Mbembe is a popular
interviewee in the culture and thought columns of the German press; when the
opinion of an African intellectual is wanted, he is sought out.
Furthermore, postcolonial theory is a popular field in academic and
literary realms in Germany, and the delegitimation of Mbembe spells the
complete rejection of that line of thought. What’s the solution? To pontificate
about postcolonialism and resistance to racism, but to mark out Israel as a
special case to which the rules of the postcolonial debate do not apply.
The German case is exceptional, because German politicians and media
outlets are known for their shameless refusal to countenance any and all
criticism of Israel. But the Mbembe affair marks a fundamental paradox that
characterizes current public discourse in Europe and the United States.
Sensitivity toward racism and white arrogance is on the rise in liberal
circles. In the wake of the recent protests in the United States, lively
discussions are being held on questions of diversity, appropriation and
recognition of colonial crimes. Yet simultaneously, the commitment to the
Palestinian cause and the struggle against the occupation is on the wane.
In Britain, former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn mustered considerable
support but was marked as a dangerous fanatic mainly because of his statements
against Israel. Increasing numbers of platforms and media outlets worldwide can
be seen to shy away from even using the word “occupation” – and this is at a
time when Israel
is declaring its intention to found an almost overtly apartheid regime in the
Jordan Valley.
Different rules have always applied to Israel, both from within and
without. Here, anti-African racism is more or less official policy. When it
comes to asylum seekers in Israel, there isn’t even an attempt to pretend that
black lives matter. The authorities work overtime to embitter the lives of
refugees from Africa, at times invoking openly white-supremacist rhetoric.
Palestinian resistance – even verbal – to the violence of the army, the police
and the Shin Bet security service is also classified as “support for terrorism.”
Moreover, when soldiers kill a Palestinian child, the Israeli media tend
to worry principally about the PR damage the event might entail. The Israeli
government knows that there is hardly any effective barrier today against
whatever policy it wants to implement in the territories. At most, there will
be feeble remonstrations from Europe.
Precisely at a time of a worldwide awakening of opposition to racism,
Israel is considering a horrific scenario that the left has been warning about
for 50 years: annexation of the territories. At the moment of truth, attempts
to prevent the move seem to be both scattered and hesitant. Racism is
infuriating, but the occupation is a yawn.
Different explanations exist for the indifference to the Palestinians
shown by world public opinion. It’s related to the political changes in the
United States and Europe, the disintegration of Arab nationalism and also the
weakness of the Palestinian national project. But what’s odd is that the
Palestinians don’t especially interest even President Trump’s avowed opponents
– all those young, sensitive people who are waking up and venting their wrath
on the streets and in the social media. Most of them couldn’t give two hoots
about any annexation plan.
Poor visuals
The explanation for this paradox may lie in the fact
that the occupation has yet to be transformed into a dilemma associated with
the morality of one’s lifestyle. The questions that currently engage the
liberal classes touch on the individual’s consumer choices. Should one use
cow’s milk or soy milk? Is it right to watch reruns of the television series
“Friends” even though there are no blacks in it? And what do we do with the
books of J.K.
Rowling, who spoke out against trans people? The occupation, in contrast,
is an old, musty political issue. It doesn’t have a visual representation like
blackface, and to understand what it’s all about you have to be acquainted with
maps and historical dates.
In Israel, too, there are many who want to take part
in the current discussion about the issues of racism and cultural
appropriation. If it plays well in Hollywood and on HBO, naturally it will
sooner or later reach Israel’s hip consumers of culture. As such, we can
imagine a group of with-it young folks from the Har Adar settlement or from
Ariel University conducting a discussion about whether the safari ad campaign
featuring model Rotem Sela, for the clothing retailer Castro, is racist, and
whether it’s legitimate for a celebrity to have their photo taken for Instagram
next to Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Enlightened Israelis too want to
engage in historical recognition and reckoning, and to take a knee on behalf of
the oppressed.
The problem is that in Israel, historical injustice
isn’t even approaching its conclusion. In fact, it’s just getting worse. One
can’t deal with processing the crimes of the past when the crimes belong to the
present and the future.
Admittedly, issues of the “new politics” – the
politics of self, focusing on the body and identity – have shunted the
Palestinian question to the margins of consciousness, both in Israel and
everywhere else. Even so, perhaps this situation will ultimately give rise to
hope for the Palestinian people, which is being crushed under the occupation.
Possibly all that’s needed is to adapt resistance to the occupation to the
logic of the contemporary political discourse. To frame the anti-Palestinian
racism as a question of lifestyle and cultural representation.
Some are already moving in this direction, with
slogans like “Palestinian
Lives Matter,” but they are having little success. Still, it might happen –
if, say, a young Palestinian-American woman who’s queer and vegan is discovered
as the next hot thing on Netflix.
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