Brighton & Hove Labour Council Attacks the Disabled By Closing Down Wellington House, The Last Day Centre for Adults with Learning Difficulties

Starmer Labour Has an Obsession With Attacking the Disabled – The First Thing They Did in Government Was to Attack Their Benefits

Save Wellington House campaign protests outside budget council - Brighton & Hove Local Democracy Reporting Service

In the last 20 years Brighton and Hove  Council has closed the Beaconsfield Villas Day Centre (2005), Cromwell Road Day Centre (2008), the Connaught Centre (2013/14), Buckingham Road Centre (2015) and the Belgrave Day Centre (2016).

The Petition Can Be Signed here

My son, Daniel, used to go to the Belgrave Centre in Portslade before that was closed. At the time we were reassured that there was space in the Wellingon House Centre. Now they are closing that too and hope to farm it out to the voluntary sector, a mishmash of different facilities, all of which are overstretched. This is privatisation by another name.

All the Labour councillors were handpicked and vetted, according to Greg Hadfield by Ivor Caplin, the former Hove MP and Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement who was caught in a sting by paedophile busters. Because of who he is he still has not been charged nor is he even on bail. Starmer, with his turning of a blind eye to Peter Mandelson and his ennoblement of Lord Doyle, despite having canvassed for a paedophile Sean Morton, who was facing charges at the time.

The ideology that says that disabled people are surplus to requirements and dispensable did not begin with Brighton and Hove Council.

From 1909 until 1979, California forcibly sterilised more than 20,000 women, third of the total in the United States. In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that

What I wrote in my Argus Opinion in 2016 when the Belgrave Centre was closed is still relevant. We had a Tory Govt. then & a Labour one now - but in essence there's no difference

There is today one state, in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of citizenship] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.

Hitler Attacked What He Called ‘Useless Eaters’ and ‘Life Unworthy of Life’ and thus began the policies that ended with the so-called Euthanasia program, which many consider the beginning of the holocaust.

I’m not saying that Brighton and Hove Council or even Starmer’s Labour are going down that road but the singling out of disability benefits and services for the disabled reflects the same mindset. That is why mental health has always been the cindarella of the NHS.

Councillor Mitchie is driving through the closure of Wellington House under the guise of improving the service - she hasn't yet bothered to actually visit it

Cllr. Mitchie Alexander is the cabinet member responsible for Adult Social Care. She is quoted in the local Argus as saying that

It is not just about making a saving. It is an opportunity to assess what provision people with learning disabilities and their families would like to see offered in the future.”

Which is the kind of mindless word salad that you expect from Starmer Labour. It’s like saying, as Jonathan Turner of UK Lawyers for Israel did, that Israel’s starvation of people in Gaza that was an opportunity to tackle their obesity!

There is though no pretending that the intended closure of Wellington House is driven by anything other than financial considerations, austerity and the cuts agenda. Jacob Taylor, the Deputy Leader of the Council was quoted as saying that if the day centre remained open, the council would have to find the savings elsewhere in the adult social care budget.

10 years ago we were fighting the same fight - to save another centre - now Brighton's 'Labour' Council is intent on further 'savings'

 At a committee meeting on Thursday, February 19, the Brighton and Hove Parent Carers’ Council’s (PaCC) Fiona England said the day centre had capacity for at least 24 people and that the proposed closure would affect 21 adults, mostly in their forties, fifties and sixties.

According to Ms England 17 eligible young people are due to leave full-time education in the summer and their transition from children’s services to adult social care was already a source of concern. Closure of the day centre would add to that concern.

Ms England also raised concerns that other service providers lacked the capacity to absorb and meet the need of those currently cared for at Wellington House.

However the Labour Group is, at the moment, determined to plough ahead with their plans unless they are stopped.

There is a statutory consultation due to take place with carers and those affected from April onwards for 12 months but these ‘consultations’ are more a case of going through the motions than a genuine exercise in seeing whether the closure of Wellington House should go ahead.

We know this because Steve Hook spoke to staff at Wellington House informing them of the closure last week and got by all accounts a frosty reception. Likewise Cameron Brown, Head of the Specialist Disability Service wrote a letter on 27 January informing carers of the outcome of the Council meeting that took the decision to close Wellington House on 26 February (!)

Although he announced the formal consultation process and statutory review of the needs of those using the Wellington Centre it is clear that these processes are merely going through the motions before implementing the closure.

Why the Council is Lying Over the Consultation Process

The Council has issued 3 documents before making the budget proposals which make their position crystal clear.

They are

1.          Day Options Briefing Document – issued December 25

2.          Reprovision of Council provided Adult Learning Disability Services – Day Options Wellington House  Issued 9 January 2026

3.          Budget Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) Template 2026/27 Service Users Issued 20 Jan 2026

These documents make it crystal clear that:

The purpose of the proposals is not, as Cllr. Alexander said an
  ‘opportunity to assess what provision people with learning disabilities want in the future’ but solely with financial savings in mind. The consultations are merely to pay lip service to peoples’ needs and to provide a justification for the cuts.

The alternative provides do not exist or do not have the capacity to absorb the present, let alone new people.

The document entitled Reprovision of Council provided Adult Learning Disability has under Objectives just one objective and that is at 4.1 – Financial. There are no other objectives.

The document entitled ‘Day Options Briefing Document - Dec 25’ lists at Section 5 – Market Costs & Benchmarking 6 Providers and this is what it concludes under ‘Summary of benchmarking’:

That just 2 out of the 6 providers ‘have the skills and experience to meet the needs of the 9 people with complex needs. These are Ambito and Aspirations.’

Neither of these providers have the capacity required.

Of the other 14 people their needs could potentially be met.

This is back of the fag packet stuff dressed up in the appropriate jargon. It is clear that the Council doesn’t have a clue as to the alternative provision and that any closure of Wellington House will be a leap in the dark.

The main objective, as the Council makes clear, is financial.  A saving of £400,000. This is pathetic even by Brighton and Hove Council’s own lamentable standards.

However we don’t accept the whole concept of the consultation process.  Firstly and most obviously because the decision will be taken by the Council Cabinet who can simply proceed to ignore the outcome of the consultation.

Secondly the Consultation will not be run by those who are neutral or disinterested. 

Thirdly consulting present users and their representatives ignores all those potential users in the years ahead who will have no input. Even if the Council were to ensure that no one presently using the Centre was disadvantaged, the effect of any closure would be to remove the possibility of anyone in the future gaining access to Wellington House’s facilities or those provide in the alternative.

At Wellington House users can access a whole range of facilities and expertise which would be lost in a private sector provider. The privater/charitable sector has no legal obligations unlike the Council.

What is clear though is that this ‘Labour’ Government under Starmer is determined to cut back local authority financing as it expands the ‘defence’ i.e. war budget.  Bombs and missiles to Israel and Ukraine are a higher priority than basic local services.

However parents and carers aren’t taking this lying down and a campaign is being launched to prevent the closure of Brighton and Hove’s last day Centre. We lobbied the Council Budget meeting on 26 February and the first meeting of parents and carers was held earlier this week and a Petition has also been launched.

If you are living in Brighton and Hove then please sign it here.

In the coming weeks then there will be further activity.

Tony Greenstein

Many thanks to Sarah Booker-Lewis, Local democracy reporter  whose reporting I have plundered!

 

See Closure of Wellington House, Brighton, would be 'devastating'

Councillors make promise over plans to close Brighton day centre

Sam Matthews, Labour’s Witch-finder General has found a new victim – disabled member Marianne Tellier

Marianne's offence? Comparing the Tories policy towards the disabled under Ian Duncan Smith with the Nazis

Letter from Sam Matthews suspending Marianne Tellier

Page 1 of Solicitor's letter to Sam Matthews

On 29^th March 2018 Sam Matthews, whose title is Head of Disputes, wrote to Marianne Tellier, an autistic member of the Labour Party, to inform her that she was administratively suspended.  This is the same Matthews who suspended Carl Sergeant, a Labour Minister in the Welsh Government.  Shortly after being suspended, having been given no reason for his suspension despite a letter from his solicitors, Carl Sergeant took his own life.  Given the callous way that Matthews has treated victims of Labour’s witchhunt it is difficult to understand why he has not been suspended for gross misconduct.

Was IDS antisemitic for saying Work Makes You Free?

It is part of the atmosphere of fear and the intolerance of political debate in the Labour Party, to say nothing of the chilling effect of the false allegations of anti-Semitism, that any mention of the Nazis immediately brings accusations of anti-Semitism.  Especially if the person concerned is a supporter of the Palestinians.

Disability campaigner

When I grew up it was common amongst claimants to call the DHSS (Department Health & Social Security) as the DWP was then, the SS.  We didn’t literally mean that those who ran Britain’s social security system were Nazis but that their attitude to the unemployed bore a similarity to fascist ideas of the work shy.

Likewise the students in Paris in May 1968 when they were confronting the riot police chanted CRS-SS.  No doubt Matthews and his fellow witch hunters consider that too was anti-Semitic!

Disabled People Against the Cuts regularly use the phrase Arbeit Macht Frei in their campaigns against the attacks on the disabled - to call this 'antisemitic' is a product of the Labour Party's parallel universe

The phrase that someone was a ‘little Hitler’ also used to be common.  It was part of an anti-fascist culture.  Today, with Zionists defining anti-racists as anti-Semites, such comparison are considered ‘anti-Semitic’.  This of course is from people who openly support a state where ethnic cleansing is official government policy.

Marianne committed the cardinal offence of comparing the policy of the DWP under the hated Ian Duncan Smith, to that of the Nazis’ with their slogan ‘work makes you free.’ She retweeted an image of the Job Centre Plus sign replaced by Arbeit Macht Frei. This  image is common amongst disability campaigning groups but is deemed ‘anti-Semitic’ by the political terrorists of the Jewish Labour Movement.

Marianne Tellier

Apart from anything else it would seem that Matthews and his fellow apparatchiks are also suffering from a sense of humour failure. They don’t seem to understand the power of irony or exaggeration when making a political point.  These humourless creatures, whose sole activity is monitoring what others say for any signs of deviance, forget that campaigning groups or political activists use all sorts of rhetorical devices when constructing an argument including analogies with the Nazis. Satire is something that is entirely beyond them.

At the entrance to Nazi concentration camps there was a sign Arbeit Macht Frei, (Work Makes You Free). The assumption of the tiny minds that run Labour’s witch-hunt is that any comparison of this slogan with anything today is anti-Semitic.  Thus the whole Nazi and fascist period is completely divorced from the circumstances in which it grew up.

Presumably Fawlty  Towers, Basil and Manuel would have been condemned as anti-Semitic for the phrase ‘Don’t mention the War.’ 

I visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the early 1990’s.  It was the second concentration camp after Dachau and opened in 1936. It is situated to the north of Berlin. It didn’t house Jewish prisoners primarily but socialists, communists and other political prisoners.  It housed Pastor Martin Niemöller of the Confessing Church.

In fact IDS did say, without a trace of irony, that ‘work makes you free.’ Far-Right US academic Laurence Mead, who IDS brought over to Britain to advise him on ‘reforming’ the benefits system complained of the allusion to the Nazis. Mead whined that.

"Hitler was non-democratic, whereas work requirements claim a popular mandate. There is something wrong when because of fascism we have to solve every problem with freedom and benefits."Does getting tough on the unemployed work?

In other words although Tory and New Labour attitudes to the unemployed are similar to those of the Nazis it is unfair to make a comparison since those who persecute the unemployed might take offence. There is nothing ‘democratic’ about those who make the unemployed a scapegoat.  Whipping up hatred is no more democratic than when Hitler did it.  The fact that the unemployed aren’t sent to concentration camps (although in America they can be sent to boot camps) is irrelevant.

What this nonsense is about is the fear of Israel’s supporters and Zionist groups that people will compare Israel’s practices to those of Nazi Germany. Matthews and Labour’s regional mafia run scared of any attempt to locate the Nazis in the context of society. This fear is part of the intellectual terrorism that Zionism has successfully engaged in.

I'm not sure whether this image is anti-semitic or not - it probably is since it is clear that disabled people tend to use Hitler comparisons

The ideas behind the Work Capability Assessment that New Labour introduced and IDS refined and its implementation by private firms like ATOS does indeed bear comparison to the Nazi treatment of the disabled.  Although the disabled were not exterminated as happened in the T-4 (Euthanasia campaign) the attitudes, that they are a burden are not dissimilar.  There is also no doubt that the policies of the DWP, presided over by IDS, led to the deaths of thousands of disabled people.  The stories of cancer victims and other severely ill people being labelled as fit for work are legion. See Thousands have died after being found fit for work, DWP figures show

IDS has a history of links to racist and fascist organisations. In 1995 he was happy to meet with senior figures in the French National Front at Westminster. Le Pen’s deputy, Bruno Gollnisch MEP, later said of IDS and other Tory MPs that they were “sympathetic” to their views:

IDS was once leader of the Tory Party before MPs removed him as a liability. The  vice-president of his campaign team in Wales was  Edgar Griffin  –  the father of BNP leader Nick Griffin. Edgar later said the reason he was not a member of the BNP was because it was “too moderate” for him.

The ex-deputy of the British Ku Klux Klan, Bill Binding – who later joined the Tories – was also a fan of IDS. see Iain Duncan Smith’s historic links to the  far-right

Marianne Tellier

Marianne is 57 years old and a carer for her 17 year old son who is autistic.  She is herself autistic.  In other words the ideal target for Sam Matthews and his bullying henchmen. Marianne was brought up on a council estate, went to my local comprehensive school.

She was always opposed to social injustice and any form of racism which is why she supports the Palestinian people. As she wrote ‘I'm certainly not anti-Semitic in any way.” But in the present atmosphere in the Labour Party anyone who expresses support for the Palestinians is automatically suspected of ‘anti-Semitism’ whereas someone on the Right who has never lifted a finger for anti-racist causes is considered an opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’ like for example John Mann MP, who is a bigot and an anti-Roma racist.

Marianne became involved in feminism as a young mother, joined the Labour Party and supported the miner's strike. With the advent of Blair she left the Party like many of us.

She became a midwife and having had a child who was autistic she gradually realised that she was also autistic which is why she finds her suspension so difficult to deal with or come to terms with.  But for scum like Matthews, the disability of a victim of his witch-hunt is, as far as he is concerned, a bonus.

Marianne’s disparate tweets are a reflection of her personal history but she became the target of vicious trolls Zionist trolls who are the associates of ‘gnasher Jew’ and they focussed on her weaknesses. Having played the role of agent provocateurs they then reported her for things like accusing them of being supporters of Apartheid (that too is a sign of anti-Semitism!).

Marianne was attacked by Zionist trolls like @Karen_E_Leon, a friend of @GnasherJew. She called her as an apartheid denier and that's where the anti-Semitism allegations began. 

After Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2014 she became more active on Twitter. With the election to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn she rejoined the party and became secretary of her local branch.

As she said ‘If an individual blatantly denies the existence of apartheid in Israel then that individual is an apartheid denier. David Baddiel took issue with this and the attack on me escalated.’ David Baddiel himself is someone who has a history of making racist remarks and disparaging and mocking Black people, including Blacking up.

Marianne was criticised in particular for retweeting the image of a job centre sign with the words 'arbeit macht frei'. It is an image that has been widely used by disability campaign groups for several years.

 ‘It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the Tory government's use of this fascist ideology whilst they preside over the needless deaths of one hundred and twenty thousand poor, vulnerable, ill and disabled human beings from cuts to benefits and unjust sanctions.”

It takes pretty sick individuals, people like arch-Zionist Luke Akehurst (who has been booted off his Oxford Labour Party Executive) to draw the conclusion that comparison between the DWP and the Nazis is anti-Semitic.

Marianne tweeted the job centre/arbeit macht frei sign on several occasions over the past year because ‘We have a government that thinks those words are worth repeating to poor & disabled people. I abhor the use of those words in that context. I used it as a response to a 'work hard-get nowhere' meme.  It is a criticism of the Protestant Work Ethic and a criticism of capitalism in general. I'd like someone to explain to me exactly what they think is anti-Semitic about my use of this image. It isn't anti-Semitic. Quite the opposite.’

It is a sign of the poverty of intellect of Sam Matthews and those around him that the comparison disabled people make between the DWP and the All Work Test and the Nazi attitude to the unemployed is considered anti-Semitic.  This at a time when the Israeli government is inviting the anti-Semitic leader of the Hungarian government, Viktor Orban, on a state visit.

‘art belongs to it's audience. To be received & interpreted by them. I've never come across this image being used in any way other than to criticize our right wing government & capitalist ideology.  If our evil Tory government are using the words 'work sets you free' I feel that we should be shouting it from the rooftops.  No aspect of this is anti-Semitic.’

Marianne’s local councillors and her MP, Louise Haigh, have been particularly unsupportive and their criticism has been completely ill informed.  Marianne was also invited to apologise by the Chair, of Sheffield Heeley but she declined this since she didn’t feel that she had said anything she needed to apologise for.

As she said ‘Some of my tweets may be in 'poor taste' but surely taste is in the eye of the beholder. ‘She has also been told that her manner is often very direct and to the point but this betrays the middle class nature of the Labour Party apparatchiks who don’t understand that this is quite normal in working class communities.  As she says ‘I am also autistic and my communication skills are often lacking.’  Under the regime of Sam Matthews, this too is a crime.

Comrades in her constituency have been supportive. ‘My constituency comrade, Stuart Gibbins made this statement at the last constituency meeting.’

 ‘On the satirical news programme 'The Day Today' there was a sketch in which a Jeremy Paxman type TV anchor man is interviewing the foreign secretaries of Britain and Australia. To begin with it's all very amicable with the two politicians congratulating themselves on a trade agreement that's beneficial to them both. Then, the interviewer manufactures a disagreement between them and within seconds he has forced them into a corner in which there's only one logical outcome to what they've been coerced into saying, to declare war on each other.   It's war, shouts the interviewer and immediately the studio around them begins to be turned into a war studio.

I've been reminded of this sketch a lot recently with regard to the antisemitism issue in the Labour party. How disturbingly easy it is for those with power and influence to manufacture an issue, set up a few straw men and to top it all, succeed in enlisting a substantial portion of the party they are trying to undermine to do their bidding for them. 

Marianne Tellier, the branch secretary for Park and Arbourthorne, has been suspended from her role in the party pending an inquiry. Her misdemeanor? Using satire to highlight the callousness of the government towards people who are unfit to work. She RE-tweeted a picture of a job centre sign in which the words had been changed to read ' work sets you free ', the slogan on the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp. 

Set aside the question of taste here or the quality of the satire for a moment and consider who the target was? Emphatically, it was the Tory government. That much was obvious.   Which makes it utterly astounding that an unnamed senior Labour party official described the tweet as being antisemitic in EVERY sense. This was not antisemitic in ANY sense. Precisely the opposite. 

For all those who are prepared to call this antisemitic I suggest they look up the meaning of the word and think about the intention of the satire and then try, honestly, to draw even a smidgen of a correlation between the two. But the accusation has been made and as a result, a committed party worker has had her life turned upside down and must be feeling an inkling of the sense of the kind of claustrophobic, impotent dread that people must feel when they are falsely accused under totalitarian regimes

On the subject of taste you could make a legitimate point that the picture had the potential to cause distress to those whose relatives died in the holocaust. That's possible and no decent human being could waive that away as an irrelevance. It's also possible that there will be a Jewish perspective on this which accepts that the freedom to employ satire is an intrinsic aspect of living in a free society and that the basics of satire is exaggeration and that an unwritten rule is that the best satire punches upwards, not down. The job centre mock up was definitely punching up.

The difference that this indicates demonstrates the difficulty of the taste issue, which is endlessly problematic and subjective. It's not an issue on which you can easily make unequivocal statements. The arguments surrounding it are nuanced and shaded, which is an inconvenience for a world that seems to increasingly demand that all argument is reduced to a thumbs up or a thumbs down, a like, or a dislike.

In the light of all this I would like to think that in future our spokespeople will be a bit more circumspect if a similar issue crops up and resist the temptation for a knee-jerk condemnation that has so disfigured this present case.’

I couldn’t put it better myself!

email from LP Investigator Dan Hogan complaining that Ms Tellier hadn't responded to his letters.  Hogan didn't of course think that Ms Hillier's autism might have played a part in her lack of response

Below are the different tweets being used as 'evidence' against Marianne - this kind of pathetic, tawdry and grubby material, scraped from Twitter is seen as proof of 'antisemitism' by Matthew and his fellow McCarthyists

One of the many tweets used in evidence - Marianne is taunted and provoked by Zio trolls and her responses are used against her

Doris the cat, not a Jewish name, reports 'antisemitism' for being called a supporter of apartheid

sharing this is 'antisemitic'

Apparently this article from my blog is also 'antisemitic' - opposing the false antisemitism witchhunt is apparently antisemitic

It's nice to know that Sam Matthews and his scummy friends are such avid readers of my blog!

I imagine that the above posts from my blog infringed multiple rules such as don't criticise Owen Jones, don't defend the 'antisemitic' Corbyn mural

Remind people that the Board of Deputies told Jews NOT to oppose antisemites in 1936 is probably antisemitic too - but I can't quite work out why yet

sharing this is 'antisemitic'

Even by Israel’s sordid standards the cold-blooded murder of double-amputee Ibrahim Abu Thuraya is shocking

Perhaps Labour’s Zionist apologists - Ellman, Ryan, Austin & Newmark will explain how Ibrahim's murder squares with Israel's claim to be the Middle East’s ‘only democracy’?

It will be interesting to see how Mark Regev, Israel’s smooth talking Ambassador in Britain or maybe Luke Akehurst of Stand by Israel explain away the murder of Ibrahim Abu Thuraya.  Perhaps it was another of these ‘tragic accidents’?  That was the excuse for the murder of 4 young boys on a Gaza beach by an Israeli plane.  Strangely when Israelis die at the hands of Palestinians it is always murder, never a tragic accident.

Or perhaps they won’t explain it away?  They will simply pretend it didn’t happen.  After all it is just one more Palestinian life amongst many.

Last Friday Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, who had already lost both his legs to an airstrike during Operation Cast Lead in 2008 was murdered.  An Israeli army sniper decided to finish the job.  Ibrahim was in his wheel chair at a protest on the other side of the Gaza fence.  He was protesting against Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.  He posed no danger to Israeli troops, he wasn’t throwing stones, he was simply demonstrating.

Everytime you hear Israel’s apologists – such as Louise Ellman, Ian Austin, Joan Ryan MP or perhaps Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement – defending Israel as the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ and its army of occupation as ‘the most moral army’ and most benign occupation in the world, you should think of Ibrahim Abu Thuraya.

When Palestinian prisoners go on hunger strike to demand their rights after decades in prison we are told that they have ‘blood on their hands.’  The soldier who committed this crime will not even see the inside of a prison for one day.  Israeli Jews who have Palestinian blood on their hands are not seen as criminals but heroes.  We do not know the name of the sniper nor does it matter.  He is part of a criminal army for whom Palestinian life is cheap.

When Labour MPs Joan Ryan, Louise Ellman or Ian Austin stand up in Parliament and defend Israel right or wrong, we should understand that they, in their own way, are equally as guilty as Ibrahim’s killer because they create the conditions in Ibrahim is murdered.  Their failure to speak out about this and Israel’s other atrocities, indeed their continual attempts to justify Israel’s military occupation make them equally as guilty as the sniper who took his life.  Those who act as Israel’s apologists are as guilty as the war criminal who took Ibrahim’s life.

These four children were murdered in another 'tragic accident' by Israel during Operation Protective Edge

The precedent for this was set at Nuremburg in 1946 when Julius Streicher, the Editor of the viciously anti-Semitic Der Sturmer was convicted of the new Crimes Against Humanity.  He wasn't accused of actually killing people but he created the conditions for the murder of 6 million people.  We should understand the role of Luke Akehurst, Ellman, Ryan and Austin as making the murder of Palestinians like Ibrahim palatable.  That is why they are no different from those who pull the trigger.

In Israel, apart from Israel’s sole liberal paper Ha’aretz, this murder has not even been reported.  Why should it when Palestinian life is as cheap as water?  Those who are old enough to remember the hijacking of the cruise liner Achille Lauro in 1985 when a disabled Jewish man Leon Klinghoffer was thrown overboard, will note the difference.  Then there was rightly world wide outrage.  Today there is barely a murmur.

The Shooting of a Legless Man

As a double amputee in a wheelchair, Ibrahim Abu Thuraya stood out among the crowd of demonstrators on the Gaza border. Was it his fearlessness that unnerved a soldier on the Israeli side?

Amira Hass

  Dec 17, 2017 6:33 PM

Opinion 

The murder of these children by Israel was also a 'tragic accident'

The car headlights picked out two soldiers in the darkness, carrying guns and other equipment at the entrance to the overcrowded and dense West Bank town of A-Ram. Our eyes met for a fleeting moment, as they say. Their faces expressed that familiar mixture of arrogance, ignorance and fear. How young they look, I thought. I also considered what everyone who drives past soldiers thinks these days: One slight deviation of the car and they’ll assume this lady is hell-bent on running them over. A subsequent Military Police investigation will determine they felt their lives were endangered and so they acted properly. Focus on steering, I told myself, thinking again about how young they were.

It’s doubtful you’d have seen any fear in the eyes of the Israeli soldiers who shot to death Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, 29, on Friday. They were on the other side of the border fence, east of the Shujaiyeh neighborhood in Gaza. Perhaps they were in an observation tower. Maybe on a hill or in an armored jeep, which fired in bursts at the Palestinian demonstrators.

What danger did Abu Thuraya pose? He stood out among the crowd of demonstrators, for sure: A double amputee, he was advancing in his wheelchair, getting off it and moving quickly with the aid of his arms, going eastward across a sandy mound. Did his courage and fearlessness unsettle a soldier on the Israeli side of the fence?

Abu Thuraya had been seriously wounded during the 2008-09 Israeli offensive in Gaza, when he lost both legs. A story on the Palestinian Al Watan news website in 2015 reported that he and his friends were the targets of Israeli shelling on the Bureij refugee camp. He later recovered from his serious injuries and made a living by cleaning car windows on Gaza’s streets, maneuvering among the cars in his wheelchair. Undated video footage shows him climbing up an electricity pole near the Gaza border and flying a flag. In another video, probably recorded on Friday, he is seen in his wheelchair on an exposed spot across from the perimeter fence, again waving a Palestinian flag.

At midday on Friday, he was saying to a TV camera that the demonstration was a message to the Zionist occupation army that “This is our land and we won’t surrender.” Edited footage shows him in his wheelchair later, surrounded by dozens of upset youngsters. His head is drooping, and they lift him to an ambulance and accompany him to a hospital. He was pronounced dead that evening, killed by a bullet to the head.

Ibrahim Abu Thuraya during the demonstrations by Palestinians along the border fence between Gaza and Israel, December 15, 2017.Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Did the edited video omit some incriminating footage? For example, did Abu Thuraya aim a rocket at the soldiers? If that was the reason a soldier shot a legless man in a wheelchair, this was a failure of the army and Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories spokesmen. Why didn’t they issue a statement to the media about the thwarting of a rocket attack by demonstrators, thus preventing any harm befalling our soldiers?

Back in the West Bank, a tingling in the nose alerted me to the presence of soldiers on the road leading to the Jalazun refugee camp – meaning there were stone throwers there, too. But there was no turning back. The wafting tear gas increased in intensity and the road ahead curved. On one side, behind some houses, crouched some youths – and they were very young. They were holding stones but not throwing them at the time. On the other side, near a wall that protects the settlement of Beit El, stood a formidable-looking armored personnel carrier with a few soldiers alongside it. Perhaps they were Border Policemen (my sense of panic made me forget some of the details). Under their helmets and from a distance, it was hard to determine how young they were. But their arrogance and ignorance was evident in their stance.

My attempt to travel from Ramallah to Bethlehem on Friday (for a concert and children’s choir performance) was unsuccessful. At an intersection on the way to the Beit El checkpoint, a few young men – how young they were – pulled some tires out of a car with the intention of torching them. I understood what was happening and turned back toward Qalandiyah. The traffic was slow.

A Palestinian demonstrator kicking a burning tyre during clashes with Israeli forces near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah, December 16, 2017.Abbas Momani/AFP

At one spot worshippers were emerging from a mosque, and at another people walked in the middle of the road carrying baskets from the market. Elsewhere, there were double-parked cars or men coming out of a festivities hall carrying disposable coffee cups and pieces of cake. An ambulance, sirens blaring, was coming from the direction of the checkpoint, signaling what lay ahead. A few dozen meters up the road, a cloud of tear gas was clearly visible. Any desire I had to explore the situation at any of the other exits from the five-star prison that is Ramallah had passed. It was later announced that one person died at the Beit El checkpoint and another was seriously wounded in Qalandiyah.

On a morning excursion with friends on Friday, he said: “On the one hand, I know I should be there with those courageous young people at the checkpoint. On the other, I know that only through hundreds of thousands going there, hands in pockets, will anything change.”

She added, “Once, we used to hear about one person being wounded in Gaza and the whole of the West Bank was inflamed. Now, we hear of someone dying in Ramallah or a young person losing an eye because of a tear-gas canister and all we do is shake our heads in sympathy and get on with our lives.”

A person living on a street next to the Beit El checkpoint opened his door to those fleeing the clouds of tear gas. The alcohol-soaked handkerchief passed around by a paramedic helped, but it was only inside the house that the tears and burning sensation subsided.

“Our leadership is cut off,” the host declared. “It doesn’t care about the people, only about the money and the jobs. I can’t tell the young people not to go to the checkpoints, but I know their courage is in vain.”

Opinion The Israeli Military First Took His Legs, Then His Life

On Friday, a sharpshooter shot and killed Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, a Gazan double amputee, as he protested from his wheelchair near the Israeli border

Gideon Levy Dec 17, 2017 4:36 PM

Wheelchair-bound Palestinian demonstrator Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, who according to medics was killed later on Friday during clashes with Israeli troops near the Gaza border, December 15, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

The Israeli army sharpshooter couldn’t target the lower part of his victim’s body — Ibrahim Abu Thuraya didn’t have one. The 29-year-old, who worked washing cars and who lived in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, lost both legs from the hips down in an Israeli airstrike during Operation Cast Lead in 2008. He used a wheelchair to get around. On Friday the army finished the job: A sharpshooter aimed at his head and shot him dead.

The images are horrific: Abu Thuraya in his wheelchair, pushed by friends, calling for protests against the U.S. declaration recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; Abu Thuraya on the ground, crawling toward the fence behind which the Gaza Strip is imprisoned; Abu Thuraya waving a Palestinian flag; Abu Thuraya holding up both arms in the victory sign; Abu Thuraya carried by his friends, bleeding to death; Abu Thuraya’s corpse laid out on a stretcher: The End.

The army sharpshooter couldn’t aim at the lower part of his victim’s body on Friday so he shot him in the head and killed him.

It can be assumed that the soldier realized that he was shooting at a person in a wheelchair, unless he was shooting indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters.

Abu Thuraya posed no danger to anyone: How much of a danger could a double amputee in a wheelchair, imprisoned behind a fence, constitute? How much evil and insensitivity does it take in order to shoot a handicapped person in a wheelchair? Abu Thuraya was not the first, nor will he be the last, Palestinian with disabilities to be killed by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces — the most moral soldiers in the world, or not.

The killing of the young disabled man passed almost without mention in Israel. He was one of three demonstrators killed Friday, just another humdrum day. One can easily imagine what would happen if Palestinians had killed an Israeli who used a wheelchair. What a furor would have erupted, with endless ink spilled on their cruelty and barbarism. How many arrests would have resulted, how much blood would have flowed in retaliation. But when soldiers behave barbarically, Israel is silent and shows no interest. No shock, no shame, no pity. An apology or expression of regret or remorse is the stuff of fantasy. The idea of holding those responsible for this criminal killing accountable is also delusional. Abu Thuraya was a dead man once he dared take part in his people’s protest and his killing is of no interest to anyone, since he was a Palestinian.

The Gaza Strip has been closed to Israeli journalists for 11 years, so one can only imagine the life of the car-washer from Shati before his death — how he recovered from his injuries in the absence of decent rehabilitation services in the besieged Strip, with no chance of obtaining prosthetic legs; how he rumbled along in an old wheelchair, not an electric one, in the sandy alleys of his camp; how he continued washing cars despite his disability, since there are no other choices in Shati, including for people with disabilities; and how he continued struggling with his friends, despite his disability.

No Israeli could imagine life in that cage, the biggest in the world, the one called the Gaza Strip. It is part of a never-ending mass experiment on human beings.

One should see the desperate young people who approached the fence in Friday’s demonstration, armed with stones that couldn’t reach anywhere, throwing them through the cracks in the bars behind which they are trapped.

These young people have no hope in their lives, even when they have two legs to walk on. Abu Thuraya had even less hope.

There is something pathetic yet dignified in the photo of him raising the Palestinian flag, given his dual confinement — in his wheelchair and in his besieged country.

The story of Abu Thuraya is an accurate reflection of the circumstances of his people. Shortly after he was photographed, his tormented life came to an end. When people cry out every week: “Netanyahu to Maasiyahu [prison]” someone should finally also start talking about The Hague.

See Protester in a wheelchair is shot dead by Israeli troops | Daily Mail ...