Israel’s Wanton Murder of Palestinian civilians and its sanctification

Israel has a simple explanation for whenever it is caught out murdering another civilian(s).  ‘We are conducting an investigation.’  It is Mark Regev’s explanation when he has run out of any other excuse.  When, as with the case of the 4 boys who were mowed down by a fire from an Israeli airplane whilst running on a Gaza beach, the excuse was that it was 'a tragic accident'.

And when the Israeli military investigates itself it exonerates itself without exception.  That is why it is the ‘most moral army’ conducting the ‘most moral occupation’ in the history of the world.  Every act of murder is justified. 

The murder of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun was particularly horrific in Hebron last year.  An 18 year old student, Israeli army personnel barked orders at her in a language she didn’t understand.  She was clearly frightened and paralysed before she was gunned down.  No one has ever been charged, still less convicted of her murder.

The latest incident, involved a soldier Elor Azarya, whose name is subject to a gag order i.e. censorship, in Israel (despite it being the world's most democratic society, gag orders are frequent) deliberately aimed his rifle and shot a severely wounded Palestinian lying on the ground. The soldier it turns out from his FaceBook page was a supporter of the neo-Nazi Rabbi Meir Kahane (deceased) and a supporter of the racist Jerusalem Beitar football club.

It was only 2 days ago that I predicted that he would end up being released if not becoming a hero.  My prediction has come true even more quickly than I expected.

After having initially criticised him, Netanyahu has backed off as 57% of the Israeli public support him compared to half that condemning him.  The murder was particularly blatant yet a majority of Israelis support the murder of yet another Palestinian in Hebron, where 450 neo-Nazi Zionist settlers occupy the centre of the town.

Indeed a sickening 50,000 Israelis have signed a petition calling for this callous racist murderer to be given a medal.  It is the honour that used to attach to the SS.

This is the society which Western leaders call a 'democratic society'.  The Jewish democratic society is democratic for Jews (bar dissidents) and Jewish for its Arabs.

Tony Greenstein

See Israelis rally around soldier filmed executing injured Palestinian 

Elor Azarya, seen in an image posted on his Facebook page, has been named as the suspect in the apparent extrajudicial execution of Yusri al-Sharif in Hebron on 24 March.

Netanyahu and Sen. Leahy tangle over Israel’s killingof Hadeel Hashlamoun, 18

Killing of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun, 18, in occupied territory goes unmentioned in J Street statement lamenting violence

 

The murder of Hadeel Hashlamoun

Update: The Benjamin Netanyahu government has responded angrily to the congressional letter, and Sen. Patrick Leahy has defended it. See below.

The horrifying killing of 18-year-old Hadeel al-Hashlamoun at an Israeli checkpoint in occupied Hebron last September has at last become a public issue in the U.S. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has called on the State Department to determine whether the killing, and several other Israeli “extrajudicial killings,” violated the Leahy law against military assistance to gross human rights violators. The letter to John Kerry cites Egypt along with Israel, and is signed by ten members of Congress along with Leahy. They include Raul Grijalva, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Chellie Pingree, Eddie Beatrice Johnson, Sam Farr, Jim McGovern, Jim McDermott, and Andre Carson.

Politico has published the letter. It includes these crucial passages:

There have been a disturbing number of reports of possible gross violations of human rights by security forces in Israel and Egypt — incidents that may have involved recipients, or potential recipients, of U.S. military assistance. We urge you to determine if these reports are credible and inform us of your findings:

Israel: Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have reported what may be extrajudicial killings by the Israeli military and police of Fadi Alloun, Saad Al-Atrash, Hadeel Hashlamoun, and Mutaz Ewisa. There are also reports of the use of torture in the cases of Wasim Marouf and Ahmed Manasra.

Hadeel Hashlamoun’s killing was of course the most dramatic and appalling Israeli killing last year because it was so amply documented and the pictures were so graphic, and it took place on September 22 before the so-called intifada of knives had begun in earnest.

Here is a report on the Fadi Alloun killing by police, near Damascus Gate last October, as Alloun was being chased by a mob, after allegedly stabbing a settler in East Jerusalem.

Here is a report from EI on the killing of Saad Atrash, 19, in Hebron last October.

I would note that many of the signatories, including Hank Johnson, Andre Carson, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Raul Grijalva, are people of color; this is relevant because as Tamara Cofman Wittes said at Columbia Monday night, Israel support is slowly becoming politicized in the U.S. as the Democratic base becomes more heavily black and Latino, groups that have sympathy for the Palestinian cause. And all the signatories to this letter are Democrats.

Politico states that Jewish Voice for Peace advised Leahy on the letter. Nahal Toosi writes:

The letter’s real impact may be political: Israel’s unusual, if not unprecedented inclusion with Egypt on such an inquiry is likely to rile Israel’s allies in Washington, who bristle at the notion that the Middle East’s only established democracy could be lumped in with a notorious human rights abuser like Egypt.

Though it was sent to Kerry well beforehand, the timing of the letter’s release comes just days after an Israeli soldier was filmed executing a Palestinian prisoner at close range – setting off fury in the Arab world and launching a military disciplinary process that has many on the Israeli right fuming.

Update. The Netanyahu government is enraged by the letter.

PM Netanyahu's response to US @SenatorLeahy: IDF & police defend innocent civilians against bloodthirsty terrorists. pic.twitter.com/5QYblbGHE4

— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) March 30, 2016

And Leahy has responded strongly:

“The Prime Minister of Israel knows – and it should go without saying – that the United States does not provide weapons or other aid to Hamas or any other terrorist group, and that no nation more strongly condemns and works to eradicate terrorism worldwide than does the United States.  There are multiple laws prohibiting such aid to Hamas and other such groups, and one reason Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid is to help defend against terrorist attacks.

“The congressional letter cites allegations of possible serious abuses, identified by respected international human rights organizations, by the military and police forces of Egypt and Israel.  Under the Leahy Law it is the responsibility of the State Department to evaluate the credibility of such allegations.  The Leahy Law, which has existed for nearly 20 years, applies uniformly, worldwide – no country is exempt – and it applies to specific military personnel and units, not to general security forces, when U.S. aid is involved.  It has led to the suspension of U.S. aid to military personnel and units found to have committed abuses in many countries when governments fail to punish those responsible, and only when those governments themselves have failed to act.  This is only fair to U.S. taxpayers, and it is necessary in upholding the rule of law that our country stands for.”

Israelis rally around soldier filmed executing injured Palestinian

Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 28 March 2016

 A new video shows an Israeli soldier shaking hands with a settler leader just after the soldier was filmed apparently executing an injured Palestinian in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
The video has emerged as Israelis, including top leaders, are rallying around the accused killer.

Abd al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif was shot dead along with Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, both of them 21 years old, after allegedly stabbing and moderately wounding a soldier in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron’s Old City on Thursday.

The slaying of al-Sharif, who was lying on the ground incapacitated but moving his head before he was shot, was caught on video.

The new video shows the shooter “shaking hands with far-right activist Baruch Marzel” while al-Sharif’s body is removed from the scene, according to Haaretz.

The US-born Marzel, a former leader of the violent group Kach, is notorious for fomenting attacks on Palestinians.

Kach was outlawed by Israel after one of its members, the US-born medical doctor Baruch Goldstein, gunned down 29 Palestinians at Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque in 1994.

The video provides visible evidence of the close relationship between the Israeli army and the violent settlers it supports and protects.

Shooter named

Haaretz says the new video, published on its YouTube account with the face of the gunman blurred, was filmed by a Palestinian fieldworker with B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group which released the video showing the execution on Thursday.


The blurring of the faces in the new video is in apparent deference to a gag order that prevents Israeli media from revealing the suspect’s identity.

However, blogger Richard Silverstein, who has frequently published information censored by Israeli authorities, has named the suspect as Elor Azarya, citing independent Israeli websites.

Israel’s Ynet news website effectively confirmed the identification by publishing an image of the suspect with his face blurred.

The same image, without the blurring, appears on Azarya’s Facebook page.

“He is a devoted follower of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club,” noted Silverstein, based on analysis of Azarya’s social media accounts. Azarya has also written “Kahane was right” on his Facebook page – a slogan used by supporters of late Kach founder Meir Kahane, who called for the total expulsion of Palestinians.

Beitar Jerusalem fans are notorious for taking part in mobs and rallies calling for “death to the Arabs.”

“Confirming the kill”

According to Silverstein’s analysis, Azarya, a medic, “asked permission from his commanding officer to ‘finish off’ the wounded Palestinian.”

“Apparently the commander approved,” Silverstein added. “The soldier walked to within six feet of the wounded Palestinian, cocked his rifle and shot him.”

This practice is known in the Israeli army as “confirming the kill,” and has been used and subsequently approved even in the slaying of Palestinian children such as 13-year-old Iman al-Hams in Gaza in 2004.

Azarya also “liked” the Facebook pages of Israeli leaders who have incited violence or genocide against Palestinians – justice minister Ayelet Shaked and former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman – as well as the Facebook page of Marzel.

Public support

Israel’s political and military establishment broke out into a chorus of condemnation immediately after the release of the video on Thursday.

The army also announced the detention of the soldier and an investigation into the killing.
Yet the condemnations were baldly hypocritical given the long record of Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of inciting and approving extrajudicial executions of Palestinians.

Numerous videos have shown such killings of Palestinians who were injured, incapacitated or otherwise posed no plausible threat.

Now Netanyahu appears to backing away from his criticism, in light of a swell of public support for the Hebron gunman.

The prime minister told cabinet colleagues on Sunday that “questioning the IDF’s [Israeli army’s] morality is outrageous and unacceptable … IDF soldiers, our children, maintain a high moral standard when they deal with bloodthirsty murderers.”

Netanyahu added that he was “certain that in this case, like in every other case, all of the circumstances are taken into account. Thus we must all support the IDF chief of staff, the IDF and the soldiers that protect us.”

Haaretz called Netanyahu’s comments a “backtrack” from his initial condemnation of the shooting.
Netanyahu’s change of tune appears to be in harmony with public opinion as well as with other politicians who are striking tougher poses
.
Naftali Bennett, the Israeli education minister who has boasted about his own record of killing Arabs, also offered his support to the gunman.

“The soldier is not a murderer. Have we lost our minds?” Bennett wrote in a Facebook post that calls Israel’s military “the most moral army in the world.”

At Sunday’s cabinet meeting, several ministers, including Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, voiced support for the soldier.

Meanwhile, Avigdor Lieberman demanded the impeachment of the defense minister for failing to back the soldier, and called Netanyahu “spineless.”

Israel’s Channel 2 published an opinion poll on Saturday showing that 57 percent of Israelis believe
there is no need to investigate or detain the soldier, as reported by Haaretz.

Two in five respondents called the soldier’s behavior “responsible” and just five percent described it as murder.

A petition asking Bibi to give a medal to the soldier who executed a Palestinian in Hebron has ~42,000 signatures. 

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) March 27, 2016

An online petition calling on Israel to give the soldier a medal has received almost 50,000 signatures.
The municipality of Beit Shemesh, a town in present-day Israel, even published an ad on its official website urging citizens to attend a rally on Monday to demand the release of Azarya, whom it called a “national hero.”

Official website of the Beit Shemesh municipality advertises rally in support of Elor Azarya, who was filmed executing an injured Palestinian at close range.

The soldier’s family has also mounted a high-profile campaign in defense of Azarya.


The gunman’s mother wrote an open letter to Moshe Yaalon, the defense minister, telling him that

“you stood in my son’s place, only in the room of Abu Jihad, and confirmed the kill of a despicable terrorist and murderer.”

She was referring to Yaalon’s role in the 1988 slaying of Khalil al-Wazir, a senior PLO leader who was executed in his Tunis home by Israeli assasins, in front of his wife and son.

Mother of solider who executed Palestinian to @bogie_yaalon: You also shot to confirm death. 

— Jamil Dakwar (@jdakwar) March 27, 2016

Meanwhile, the Israeli army investigation into Thursday’s killing has reportedly revealed that the shooter had told a comrade that Abd al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif “needs to die” shortly before he shot him.

According to Haaretz, the “investigation also found that in contradiction to claims of self-defense voiced by the soldier’s lawyer, there was no evidence supporting the claim there were fears the prone Palestinian was carrying a suicide belt.”

Palestinians targeted

While Israeli leaders line up to support al-Sharif’s killer, Israeli forces on the ground are targeting the youth’s family.

On Sunday, Israeli soldiers raided the home of Abd al-Fattah’s brother, Khalid Yusri al-Sharif, in the village of Jabal Abu Rumman, near Hebron, the Ma’an News Agency reported.

Imad Abu Shamsiyyeh, the B’Tselem volunteer who filmed the execution video, told Human Rights Watch that Israeli forces threatened him both at the scene of the shooting and later on.

Abu Shamsiyyeh was called in by the army to give a witness statement.

He says the army interrogator told him: “How will you benefit from this video? It got a lot of publicity. Your name is known to everyone. Who is going to protect you and your family from right-wing Israelis? Remember you live in [Tel Rumeida], surrounded by Israeli settlers, who will be able to protect you there?”

“I felt that I was being threatened,” Abu Shamsiyyeh said.

Impunity for war crimes

Human Rights Watch said that “the open and casual way that a soldier appears to execute a wounded, prone Palestinian, which was captured on video, suggests a dangerous climate of impunity for war crimes.”

“The video of al-Sharif’s killing by an Israeli soldier shows both an apparent cold-blooded murder and numerous witnesses, which should make for a strong legal case,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East director.

“The question is whether Israeli authorities will do what they haven’t done in countless other cases and bring the alleged killer to justice,” Whitson added.

Given the way Israeli leaders are rallying around the gunman, there’s little reason to expect anything different this time.

Israeli Medical Association backs refusing to treat Palestinian 'terrorists'

Israel’s new triage guidelines – purely for international consumption

In my previous post on the extra-judicial execution of a wounded Palestinian it was noticeable that 2 Israeli ambulances did nothing to tend to someone who was clearly severely injured on the ground.   Their only concern was a superficially wounded soldier.

Palestinian Red Crescent

It is clear that the new guidelines from the Israeli Medical Association, whilst formally adhering to the triage rules, whereby you tend to the most severely wounded first, is not in practice being adhered to.

Israeli doctors are complicit in the shoot to kill policies of Israel’s military.  The new guidelines are purely for international consumption.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli medics are leaving wounded Palestinians to bleed to death

Israeli soldiers invade hospital demanding records

Dan Cohen March 23, 2016

Last December, an Israeli medic announced on his Twitter account that he would not treat injured Palestinians he deemed “terrorists.”

“As a ZAKA volunteer for close to twenty years. I am announcing publicly, I will not offer aid to a terrorist/murderer that hurt innocents, whatever his condition may be. Before I treat the victims,” he wrote.

Soon after, he claimed to have carried out his promise. On the scene at Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate where a Palestinian man who attacked an Israeli was shot, beaten with a metal rod and kicked by civilians, the medic boasted on Twitter that he did not treat the dying Palestinian man.

“For all of those asking, when I arrived today to the scene of the terror attack at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem. I treated those wounded by stabbing and no! I did not go to give aid to the terrorist may his name be erased! despite the fact that his condition was mortal,” he wrote.

This is not an aberration, rather, it is an instance of increasing turmoil in the Israeli medical community over the concept of triage, the internationally recognized protocol for medical treatment based on severity and likely benefit from immediate treatment. 

Changing Israeli Protocol on Triage

In 2008, the website of the Israeli Medical Association listed a Talmudic dictum in its section on ethics.

“In cases where human caused violence results in casualties for the perpetrators of such violence (the enemy), the obligations towards these parties should be clearly defined. Here, the principle to be implemented is “the poor of your city come first,” it read.

When Hadas Ziv, Physicians for Human Rights Israel’s ethics committee coordinator, found this in October 2015, the committee wrote a complaint to IMA’s ethics committee that “statements from medical teams on the ground indicate that they do not prioritize the injured according to their medical condition,” and requested that the licenses of the offending medical staff be revoked. The IMA does not have the authority to revoke medical licenses themselves, but as a professional organization it is able to make recommendations to the Ministry of Health. After PHRI’s letter, the IMA did remove the directive from its website.

In response to the removal of the instruction breaching triage, the aforementioned ZAKA medic and a handful of others made online announcements that they would continue to discriminate in defiance of the IMA.

Rather than expelling the medic who refused to treat a dying Palestinian, ZAKA, the medical organization he works for, confirmed that this breach of triage is the protocol they are training.

“Usually already in the initial stage the attacker is identified, and our policy is to give precedence to the attacked with medical treatment,” ZAKA wrote on Twitter.

A Twitter poll started after the medic’s announcement indicates public support for attacking triage, with 88% of the 59 polled in support.

On October 18, Ziv filed a complaint over changes to the triage protocol with the Ministry of Health, but more than five months later, she has not received a response and the MOH has been silent on the issue.

A Pattern of Denying Medical Aid to Palestinians

In November 2015, the NGO Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor released a report documenting five separate incidents of denial of medical aid to Palestinians by Magen David Adom, which is officially recognized by the International Committee of the Red Cross, accusing it of violating the Geneva Conventions. “Such discrimination in providing medical treatment, even when a crime has been attempted, is prohibited and illegal under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.”

A video taken after a stabbing attack in the occupied West Bank last Thursday shows Israeli medics treating an injured Israeli soldier while two Palestinians lie on the ground, severely injured. Both Palestinians, Ali Jamal Muhammad Taqatqa, 19, and Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Kar Thawabta, 20, died of their wounds.

In video footage of the killing of 18-year-old Hadeel al-Hashlamoun in Hebron, an Israeli settler named Ofer – who local activists claim has no medical training and operates a fake ambulance – can be seen discouraging Israeli medics from treating her. Other videos show Israeli medical personnel standing idly as she bleeds to death, meanwhile medics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society were refused access to treat her. Amnesty International called her death an “extrajudicial execution.”

In another incident, 21-year old Yasmin al-Zarou was gunned down by Israeli soldiers, who then interrogated her as she bled on the ground. Israeli medics stood over her and even pushed her outstretched hands away as she asked for help.

Widespread Support

Last October, Deputy Minister of the Interior Yaron Mazuz publicly backed the change to triage. “The first priority should be give in to the residents of Israel, mostly to those who were injured from the attacks. Is it unacceptable that we would treat terrorists before residents of the state,” he said on Israel’s Channel Two.

But for Ziv, the MOH’s silence is unusual and deeply troubling.

“Even worse than the right-wing populist politicians who are just looking for headlines – fine, they understand nothing in medical ethics,” Ziv told me in a telephone call. “What worries me is that the Minister of Health [Ya’aldoesn’t see it as its role to say something very clear cut, and I wonder why is that so.”

Attacks on triage are also gaining support in Shaare Zedek, one of Israel’s top hospitals. Speaking at at a conference on the ethics of terror attacks, Dr. Ofer Merin, Executive Director of the Trauma Unit & Deputy Director of Medicine at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, told the audience that adoption of this practice was inevitable – however in euphemistic terms.

“When we reach the ‘day of judgement’ in which we won’t be able to treat everyone, I think – and I say this with complete caution – that if it is impossible to treat everyone, I think there is no avoiding the moral statement that we need to give the innocents different rights than the person who harmed them intentionally,” he said.

Writing in the UK medical journal The Lancet, Merin subtly proposed the idea of abandoning triage in April 2015. “The moral issue of concurrently treating a terrorist and his victim is even more complex. Is it actually realistic to expect the staff to disregard the fact that the terrorist intended to kill the innocent person lying wounded in the same trauma unit?”

Ultimately, he concluded that “Punishment is not the role of the medical staff; rather, their duty and obligation is to preserve life and restore health. Judgment should be the exclusive provenance of the legal system and physicians should practice their art without discrimination and with a clear conscience.”

But the recent violence appears to have created the pretext for Merin to warn that the hospital would soon have no choice but to embrace racist medical practices.

Top state-funded rabbis have also endorsed this practice, abandoning the euphemistic terminology of a moral dilemma, and have even encouraged Israeli police and soldiers to execute wounded Palestinians deemed “terrorists” on the spot.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a top haredi authority, instructed paramedics from United Hatzalah to “not treat injured terrorists,” and that “If the terrorist was in a life threatening condition, they should leave him or her to die.”

“It is forbidden to leave a murderer alive,” Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu told the Galei  Yisrael radio station.

In another instance, Eliyahu said, “Only in a case where you really have no other choice…keep him alive, interrogate him and then send him to hell as soon as possible.”

Rabbi Ben-Tzion Mutzafi, another top haredi rabbi, ordered his students to bludgeon wounded Palestinians to death. “It is commanded to take hold of his head and hit it against the ground until there is no longer any life in it,” he said.

Rabbis Eliyahu and Mutzafi even called for soldiers and police who let Palestinians live to be prosecuted.

“The political situation in Israel is horrific,” Ziv lamented. “The atmosphere, environment and political leadership all influenced other systems in our [Israeli] society. Education has changed, courts have changed – the medical system is not immune to that.”