“If the soldiers had shot a dog... it would have attracted more attention. But a dead Palestinian child?... Why should it interest anyone, why is it important?” Gideon Levy
Al-Harika, central Hebron: Settlers throw stones at Palestinian passersby and homes in presence of soldiers, who raid home and harrass inhabitants on pretext that one threw stones
The news has been dominated by the defection of a Belorussian athlete and the Olympic games. The terror campaign being waged by the Israeli military and settlers against the Palestinians isn’t considered fit to grace the screens of the BBC or the press.
To gain the attention of the BBC or ITN we would need the Palestinians in Gaza to fire a few firecrackers into Israel and see the Israelis disappear into their bomb shelters. Palestinian deaths are not news because politically they are not White (and don't have bomb shelters).
That is why I am highlighting
just a few of the many terrorist attacks by Israel on an unarmed civilian
population.
The incidents speak for themselves and require
no commentary. However to vile creatures like Keir Starmer, who is gracing the
dining tables of Israeli Embassy front group, Labour Friends of Israel, in November,
what matters is non-existent anti-Semitism.
Tony Greenstein
The Media Yawns at the Israeli Army's Death Squads
Gideon Levy, Haaretz
Israeli terror is at it again. The Israel Defense Forces’ death squads chalked up another successful week: four bodies of innocent Palestinians piled up between the two Fridays. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between the four incidents in which four sons were killed, but the link cannot be broken.
In all these cases, soldiers chose shooting to kill as the preferred option. In all four cases another way could have been chosen: Arrest them, aim for the legs, don’t do anything or simply don’t be there at all. But the soldiers chose to kill. It’s probably easier for them that way.
They come from different branches of the army with different backgrounds, but they share the incredible ease with which they kill, whether they have to or not.
They kill because they can. They kill because they’re convinced that this is how they’re expected to act. They kill because they know that nothing is cheaper than the life of a Palestinian. They kill because they know that the Israeli media will yawn and not report a thing. They kill because they know that no harm will come to them, so why not? Why not kill a Palestinian when possible?
They killed a 12-year-old boy and a 41-year-old plumber. They killed a 17-year-old youth and a 20-year-old young man attending a funeral, all in one week. An Israeli slogan during the 1948 war went “To arms, every good man,” leading later to the concept of the IDF’s “purity of arms.” Four in one week, for no reason, with no hesitation, with no terrorist facing them. Four executions of young men with dreams, families, plans and loves.
None of the four endangered the soldiers, certainly not in a way that justified lethal fire. Thirteen bullets at a car driving by innocently, carrying a father and his three small children. Shooting a plumber holding a wrench and claiming that he was “moving rapidly toward the soldiers.” Three bullets at the stomach of a 17-year-old who was on his way to take his brother home.
All this can be called terror; there is no other definition. All this can be called the actions of death squads; there is no other description. It sounds horrible, but it really is horrific.
It could be less horrific if the Israeli media bothered to report on it, possibly shocking Israelis. It could be much less horrific if IDF commanders took the necessary steps given their army’s murderous recklessness. But most of the media believed that the killing of a child interests no one or is unimportant, or both, so this shocking incident wasn’t reported on.
If the soldiers had shot a dog – also a shocking act, of course – it would have attracted more attention. But a dead Palestinian child? What happened? Why should it interest anyone, why is it important?
“Are you working for the Arabs?” journalist Yinon Magal maliciously tweeted, addressing Haaretz’s Hagar Shezaf, virtually the only journalist who covered the boy’s funeral. This is the new journalistic ethos: Reporting the truth is tantamount to working for the Arabs.
Let’s leave aside the media of trivia and nonsense that was busy to the hilt with the modeling agent suspected of sexual misconduct and with lists of pedophiles – what does the media have to do with the killing of children? The question is: Where are the military commanders and the political leaders?
Their disgraceful silence leads to only one conclusion: They believe that this killing is acceptable. It’s exactly what they expect of soldiers: the killing of innocents. There is no other way to explain everyone’s silence without even a semblance of condemnation.
If the killers of the boy Mohammed al-Alami are still not in custody, then the IDF under Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi – a person known to speak in lofty terms about values – is saying that the soldiers acted correctly. If the paratroopers who killed Mohammed Tamimi by firing three bullets into his body from their armored jeep are still walking around freely in the West Bank, this means the army salutes them.
And if the IDF salutes them, we really are talking about death squads, just like in the most dreadful regimes.
Mohammed
Was Looking for His Little Brother When Israeli Soldiers Shot Him Dead at Close
Range
The door of an Israeli army jeep that had entered the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh for no apparent reason suddenly opened and a soldier shot 17-year-old Mohammed Tamimi, while his cousin looked on in shock
Jul. 30, 2021 10:47 AM
Mahmoud Tamimi climbs the trunk of the dead olive tree
in the yard of his house, and hoists the flag of Palestine. He’s a boy of 13
who last Friday lost his older brother, 17-year-old Mohammed, who was shot to
death by Israel Defense Forces soldiers while he was on his way to fetch
Mahmoud. Their younger brother, Mustafa, is named for another Mustafa Tamimi,
their cousin, who was killed by soldiers in 2011.
Mohammed
Munir Tamimi was the fifth person killed in recent years in the
village of Nabi Saleh, not far from Ramallah in the West Bank....
Of all the killings in Nabi Saleh, the death of
Mohammed is perhaps the most criminal of all. The soldiers had no apparent
reason to enter the village a week ago, when it was quiet – and even less of
one to open the armoured door of their jeep, shoot the youth in the stomach
from close range and then close the door. And if that wasn’t enough, soldiers
who were walking behind the vehicle fired more bullets at the wounded teen who
was trying to flee for his life into an adjacent house, but collapsed,
bleeding, on the way to its entrance.
Nabi Saleh called off its regular Friday anti-occupation demonstrations
in 2016, after six years, when the IDF started to use snipers and live
ammunition against the unarmed inhabitants. But more people have been killed
there since the demonstrations ended than during the period when they were
taking place.
On Friday the first rumor that spread was that it was Mohammed, the
brother of Ahed
Tamimi, the young activist-heroine of the Palestinians’ popular struggle,
who had been killed. There are dozens and perhaps hundreds of people named
Mohammed (or Mohammad or Muhammad) Tamimi. The teen who was shot was not Ahed’s
brother, but her cousin. Ahed’s brother was with him when he was killed; the
two youths were close.
Ahed’s
father, Bassem Tamimi, one of the leaders of the struggle in Nabi
Saleh, joined us during our visit to the events hall where the grieving family
was receiving condolences in Deir Nidham. The bereaved father, Munir, speaks
fluent Hebrew, having worked for decades in Israel and in the settlements. For
30 years, he’s worked as a home renovator and air-conditioner technician in the
settlement of Beit Aryeh. He has many friends there who wanted to pay their
condolences, he tells us, but he suggested that they refrain from visiting
during the tense grieving period in the village.
Munir Tamimi, Mohammed's father. Credit: Alex Levac
“They are friends-brothers who wanted to come, but I want to make sure that no one will be hurt,” he says.
Bassem Tamimi relates that a jeep arrived in Nabi Saleh around 4:30 P.M.
and stopped at the gas station at the village’s entrance before proceeding. It
was quiet at the time. During the years of the demonstrations, the IDF arrested
about 400 locals, most of them adolescents
and children, and including 16 women, out of a total local
population of about 600. When the jeep drove in this time, youngsters began
throwing stones at it. The soldiers fired tear-gas canisters, and a cloud of
gas covered the village – a familiar experience. But Mahmoud, the younger
brother of the deceased, recently recovered from cancer of the eye, and his
mother, worried that the gas would endanger the recovering eye, sent Mohammed
to the home of relatives where Mahmoud had been told to go, in order to bring
him home. Their father was installing an air conditioner in the neighboring
village of Deir Abu Mash’al at the time.
The home of the Tamimi family in Nabi Saleh,
this week. More people have been killed since the protests ended there in 2016
than during the six years when they took place.Credit:
Alex Levac
Munir, 52, has four remaining children. He’s a solidly built man, suited to his livelihood. He met his wife, Baraa, 40, in Jordan. Her family immigrated long ago to the United States, and she too has American citizenship. During the first 13 years of their marriage, Israel did not allow her to enter the West Bank, and the family was divided between Zarqa in Jordan and Nabi Saleh. Munir’s work is in the West Bank but his wife was not permitted to go there. He divided his life between here and there, crossing into Jordan every two or three months to see his family and then going back.
Friday, July 23, Mohammed got up around 8:30 A.M. and went to work in the
family’s olive grove ahead of the fall harvest. In the afternoon, as tear gas
spread through the village, his worried mother sent him to find his younger
brother Mahmoud and try to bring him home. According to his father, Mohammed
didn’t do anything to provoke the soldiers. The IDF jeep stopped near him, its
door opened and the one shot fired from it hit Mohammed. He doubled over in
pain and tried with his remaining strength to flee, but then four soldiers on
foot felled him with two more bullets.
The physicians who treated him later told his father that one of the
three bullets exploded in the teenager’s stomach and did not leave a single
internal organ intact. Everything is torn apart inside, they told him. The
cousin Mohammed, Bassem’s shocked son, told his father that he “saw the rice spill out of Mohammed’s stomach.”
According to Munir, who saw his son’s body in the small hospital in Salfit, one
bullet struck him in his right hip, another entered via the back and exited
through the stomach – or vice versa – and the deadliest bullet of all slammed
into his buttocks and hurtled upward throughout his body, wreaking havoc.
Three videos were shot by three local eyewitnesses. In one clip, the
armored door of the IDF vehicle is seen opening for a split second and the
soldier next to the driver fires a shot and shuts the door; another soldier
then opens the back door and closes it immediately. In the second clip, the
jeep is seen in the street, being pelted by villagers with plastic chairs and
rocks, without doing any damage. The third clip shows the bloodstains and
people evacuating Mohammed from the path leading to a nearby house. It’s not
clear what preceded what, but it’s even less clear what the jeep was doing
there and why it stopped so provocatively in the middle of the village. The
red-and-white flag of the Paratroops Brigade flaps in the wind above the
fortified tower that looms over the entrance to the village, a sign that the
soldiers who shot Mohammed also wore the telltale red berets.
Graffiti on a wall in Nabi Saleh depicts
Mohammed Tamimi.Credit: Alex Levac
Haaretz asked the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit why the army vehicle entered
the village in the first place and why Mohammed Tamimi was shot. Why with live
ammunition? And why with three bullets to the gut? The reply:
“Following the incident in
question, an investigation has been opened by the Criminal Investigations Department
of the Military Police, after which the findings will be transferred for
examination to the office of the military prosecution.”
Mohammed was apparently still semi-conscious when the neighbors rushed
him in a small shared taxi to the hospital in Salfit; he mumbled that his
stomach hurt. He died on the operating table. By the time his stunned father
reached the hospital, it was too late.
When we visited this week, his brother Mahmoud, a pale boy with a sickly
looking eye, took us to the place where Mohammed was killed and showed us the
bloodstain on the road and another at the place where he fell, en route to the
house.
As we left Nabi Saleh, we saw Ahed Tamimi returning from her studies at
Birzeit University in her small car. In March 2018 she was convicted on four
counts of assaulting an IDF officer and a soldier, and sentenced to eight
months in prison. Her aunt and uncle were killed by the army. Another
relative named Mohammed, 15, was shot in the head in 2017 across
from her house by soldiers using a rubber-coated metal bullet; he lost an eye
and remains disabled. Now her cousin Mohammed Munir Tamimi has been killed,
too.
Settler Shoots at Palestinians With Israeli Soldier's Weapon, Footage Shows
Israeli settlers attack Palestinians & Soldiers escorting them fire at them, South Hebron Hills
On Saturday, 26 June 2021, some
20 settlers invaded the village of a-Tuwani, stoned residents and beat some
with sticks, injuring one. Soldiers then escorted the settlers to other
communities. A settler fired at Palestinians and several others torched an
agricultural structure of an a-Tuwani resident and damaged his olive grove.
After the settlers retreated, other soldiers arrived and fired live fire and
tear gas at the Palestinians and their homes. This is life for Masafer Yatta
residents, whom Israel works to expel from their land.
Israeli soldier kills Husam 'Asayrah during violent settler raid on 'Asirah al-Qibliyah, 14 May 2021
On 14 May 2021, settlers and soldiers came to the village in Nablus District. The settlers threw stones at homes and residents and fired in the air, and residents threw stones at them. The soldiers used force against the residents instead of distancing the settlers. After the party moved to a distant hilltop, a soldier shot and killed 'Asirah and injured another resident although they posed no danger. Such collaboration between soldiers and settlers is part of Israel’s unofficial policy to drive Palestinians out and take over West Bank land. Read full incident report:
Israeli settlers and soldiers harass residents of al Harika neighborhood central Hebron
Al-Harika, central Hebron: Settlers throw stones at Palestinian passersby and homes in presence of soldiers, who raid home and harrass inhabitants on pretext that one threw stones
Joint militias: How settlers and soldiers teamed up to kill four Palestinians
A Local Call investigation reveals how on a single day in May, Israeli
settlers and soldiers cooperated in attacks that left four Palestinians dead.
The unprecedented spate of joint assaults has inaugurated a new era of terror.
By Yuval Abraham July 15, 2021
Nidal
Safadi was a quiet man, his neighbors said. He lived in Urif, a Palestinian
village of several thousand people in the West Bank. Just 25, Safadi had three
children with his wife and a fourth, a girl, on the way.
Urif is
not always quiet. With the Palestinian city of Nablus less than 10 miles away,
the occupying Israeli military established a base on a nearby hilltop in 1983.
A year later, it was turned over to civilian purposes: part of Israel’s illegal
settlement program in the Palestinian territories. Since 2000, the settlement,
called Yitzhar, has been home to a yeshiva known for its hard-line Jewish
nationalist views; the settlement has become known for its
extremism. The so-called outpost settlements it has spurred — illegal even
by Israeli law, but nonetheless defended by the Israel Defense Forces — have
gradually encroached on villages like Urif. Over the past 10 years, settler
aggressions have given rise to violent recriminations between the Israelis and
Palestinians living nearby.
“There were many protests in the area, but
Urif was quiet,”
said Mazen Shehadeh, head of the village council. “It is a small village and the residents stayed indoors. Had the
settlers not arrived to attack the houses, nothing would have happened.”
Shehadeh
said a group of settlers arrived at about 2 p.m., along with six soldiers, and
began wreaking havoc. “The settlers
uprooted almost 60 fig and olive trees,” he said. “Then they attacked the school with stones and broke its solar panels.”
The damage was still evident when I visited a month after the attack. “While the settlers did all of that, the
soldiers covered for them by gunfire,” Shehadeh continued.
“The soldiers
led, gave orders, everything looked coordinated. The soldiers pointed for the
settlers, where to go, where to uproot, and then they shot at anybody who tried
to get close. After a few minutes, residents came to protect the village.”
One of
the villagers who arrived was Nidal Safadi. “Nidal arrived at the school terrified,” said his brother, who asked
that his name not be used for fear of retribution. “We have relatives who live nearby, and the mosque’s loudspeaker
announced that the settlers were attacking, so he ran.”
Photos and videos from the scene show settlers and soldiers from the IDF aiming their weapons toward the Palestinian villagers. One video, obtained by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, shows a shirtless settler with a face covering walking around and chatting with nearby soldiers. At one point, the settler, armed with an automatic rifle, stands directly in front of a soldier, takes aim toward the villagers, and opens fire. Other photos show settlers and soldiers alike with weapons raised.
Amid the
chaos, Safadi was struck by four bullets in the chest and abdomen, according to
Shehadeh. He died of his wounds.
“We do not
know whether it was a settler or a soldier who shot him,” Shehadeh said. “We
had many who were wounded by gunfire that day. Nine people were hurt: one in
the abdomen, another was shot three centimeters from his heart. And there was
Nidal, who got killed.”
Shehadeh
went on,
“It was a
planned attack. Revenge, not a confrontation. We used to have clashes every day
and it never looked like that. They didn’t use live ammunition before, only
tear gas and rubber bullets. Also, more soldiers used to be present.”
Joint attacks
Safadi’s
death was one of 11 violent killings of Palestinians in the West Bank on May
14, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. While Israeli media reported
that the killings occurred amid “clashes” — implying the widespread protests
over Al-Aqsa and the Gaza bombings — at least four of the deaths occurred
during deliberate attacks by settlers and soldiers on Palestinian villages, an
investigation by Local Call and The Intercept found.
The joint
attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers were not linked to protests in the
targeted villages; no demonstrations preceded the violence in three of the four
locations. The incursions all occurred at almost the same time, around 2 p.m.,
and all involved the settlers destroying agricultural land, including by
setting fires, as well as stone throwing and the use of live ammunition.
Attacks
on Palestinians by stone-throwing settlers, as Israeli soldiers stand idly by,
are a common occurrence in the occupied Palestinian territories. But scenes
like those from May 14 — settlers and soldiers attacking villages in apparent
cooperation, with live ammunition — are unprecedented.
“The only way I can describe this is by
calling it militias,” said Quamar Mishirqi-Assad, an attorney and a partner
in Haqel-Jews and Arabs in Defense of Human Rights, an organization that works
in the Israeli court system to represent Palestinians who have faced
settler violence. “These cases, in which
soldiers enter villages together with settlers, and in which there is massive
gunfire by settlers — this is unprecedented.”
Five such
attacks on May 14 left four Palestinians dead. One was killed in the village of
Asira Al-Qibliya, in the Nablus area; another in Iskaka, near the Israeli
settlement Ariel; a third in the village Al Reihiya, in South Mount Hebron; and
Nidal Safidi in Urif. In the fifth village, Burin, which is also near Nablus, a
similar attack ended without any deaths.
View of the Palestinian village of Urif, near the settlement of
Yitzhar, in the West Bank, on December 1, 2019. (Sraya Diamant/Flash90)
Videos,
photographs, and villagers’ testimonies of the attacks indicate that, in at
least three cases, Israeli settlers and soldiers acted as a combined fighting
unit, effectively working as a joint militia attacking civilians and firing
interchangeably at Palestinian residents. Coordination between the military and
settlers is a burgeoning political issue in Israel: On Tuesday, 100 former
combat soldiers sent a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz demanding he
take action against settler violence that they themselves had witnessed during
their service.
“In the past
year, settler violence has intensified and manifested in, among other things,
property destruction, stone throwing, and physical violence against
Palestinians,”
the
former soldiers wrote.
“We are the
ones who witnessed how the ‘lords of the land’ behave unrestricted and what
this violence looks like on the ground. We were sent to defend them but were
not given the tools to deal with them.”
Palestinian women mourn at the funeral of Nidal Safadi in the West Bank
village of Urif, near Nablus, on May 14, 2021.Photo: Majdi Mohammed/AP
Local
Call and The Intercept sent a detailed description of our findings to an IDF
spokesperson, including photographs and footage. The spokesperson said the
cases “are under processes of checking
and investigating.” Though the IDF spokesperson declined to comment on many
of the specifics, they acknowledged, in response to one of the photographs
showing a settler closely interacting with an IDF officer in Urif, that
the settler was in the area without permission.
No
autopsy was carried out on Safadi’s body, nor on those of the other
Palestinians killed that day, so there is no way of determining whether
soldiers or settlers were responsible for the deaths. Israeli police have not
announced any inquiries into the killings.
Update
[July 18]:
Following publication of this story, the IDF Spokesperson announced that the
Investigative Military Police launched an inquiry into the death of Nidal
Safadi in Urif. Neither the army nor the Israeli police have announced any
inquiries into the other three killings described below.
Despite
the common timeframe and modus operandi, there is no evidence that the May 14
attacks were coordinated. Some settler ideologues, though, did note the
confluence of events. Zvi Sukot, a spokesperson of the settlement Yitzhar and a
rising online star of the movement, posted photos from some of the incidents on
Facebook. The photos he shared show, among other things, a dead Palestinian with a bullet in his head
and another with a bleeding chest, as well as a host of bodies lying prone in
various settings.
“The security situation in Samaria is
excellent. No need for protests!!” Sukot wrote in his Facebook post, asking his fellow settlers
to stay at home. He used the common Israeli term “Samaria” to describe the
northern West Bank. There are “casualties,
lots of people injured and serious trauma on the Arab side,” he wrote. “In all my years in Samaria, I do not
remember the army being that determined.”
A settler, armed with an automatic rifle, aims and opens fire at
Palestinian villagers, Urif, May 14, 2021. (Mazen Shehadeh)
Many
village residents interviewed by Local Call and The Intercept attributed the
attacks to “revenge” by both soldiers and settlers — apparently for protests
against the Israeli assaults on Al-Aqsa and Gaza, as well as unrest in “mixed” cities inside Israel. The incursions fit into a
pattern of so-called price tag attacks, where settlers launch retributive
assaults on anyone deemed to be even remotely viewed as an obstacle to their
movement.
The
yeshiva in Yitzhar, near Urif, was instrumental in formulating the religious
justification for “price tag” attacks. The concept gained notoriety among some
Israeli Jews because it rationalized attacks against the Israeli military in
rare cases where, for instance, the IDF was used to evacuate settlement
outposts. The most common targets of “price tag” attacks, however, are
Palestinian civilians. On May 14, soldiers were far from being targets or even
ineffectual bystanders. Instead, they were active participants and
collaborators in the joint assaults.
“The army now perceives the settlers
as an auxiliary fighting force,” said Mishirqi-Assad, the human rights lawyer.
“The
cooperation is more transparent. No one is ashamed of it. The soldiers see the
settlers as a backing force, it is very noticeable. And the settlers, too, are
more fearless. It’s clear that things have become more organized over the last
year.”
Women sob during the funeral of Hussam Asaira, killed the day before
during a demonstration in West Bank against Israeli attacks, in Nablus, West
Bank, on May 15, 2021. Photo: Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Palestinians trying to extinguish the fires sparked by Jewish settlers
on agricultural land in the southern West Bank village of Safa, near Hebron, on
July 13, 2009. (Najeh Hashlamoun/Flash90)
Sexism, homophobia and harassment by settlers and soldiers: life’s routine in Hebron (video)
Mondoweiss
Israeli soldiers make sexual
threats to Palestinian women in videos from occupation
In January, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem
charged Israel with maintaining an “apartheid… regime of “Jewish supremacy”
from the river to the sea.
Now the organization has released two videos from the
occupied territories that document this reality in chilling ways– as they show
Israeli occupiers, some in uniform, abusing Palestinians in sexually degrading
terms during the recent Gaza war. Published July 12, the videos capture the
racist, homophobic, and misogynist abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers
and Jewish settlers.
Both videos were shot by Palestinians in occupied Hebron on
May 13, during the Muslim holiday of ‘Eid al-Fitr. (And B’Tselem issued
a press release about the dehumanizing language.)
Here are excerpts of some of that abuse. Warning, the
language is highly offensive.
In the first video, Israeli soldiers raid a home in the Palestinian neighborhood of Al-Harika in Hebron. The soldiers break windows and threaten residents as they look for a young stone thrower. The soldiers ignore settlers who throw stones at Palestinians.
The soldiers abuse a Palestinian woman who bravely holds a camera, documenting the raid for B’Tselem, and threaten to break her camera:
Palestinian woman: I didn’t
see anyone throw a rock.
Soldier: Because you are
very fat. And ugly.
Palestinian: I do my job, I
work for B’Tselem.
Soldier: One more time, I
break your camera. Alright? You understand me?
Palestinian: I’ll take
another camera. It’s not a problem. I have many cameras.
Soldier: Mother, why is your
son throwing stones at the soldiers?
As the soldiers leave the
house, one blows a kiss to her, a second says, “Happy holiday,” and a third
sings, “Hey, sexy lady!”
Screenshot of B’Tselem video of Israeli raid on Palestinian home in
occupied Hebron, May 13, 2021.
Screenshot of B’Tselem video of Israeli raid on Palestinian home in
Hebron, May 13, 2021.
The second video records events that night in the same
neighborhood. Israeli settlers from the illegal colony of Kiryat Arba, built on
the eastern side of Hebron, shout racist abuse and sexual threats at
Palestinians from a fence, as Israeli soldiers raid the Al-Harika neighborhood.
Settler: Come on, you snitches,
you whores.
Settler: I’ll fuck up this
entire village. What do you call this fucking family? All by myself, you
asshole. Listen, you dog. Listen up, you pig. I’m fucking you, you dog. I’m
fucking your mother and your sister.
Settler: Death to Arabs.
Settler: You dog, you dog.
Muhammad’s a pig.
Settler: Muhammad’s a son of
a bitch.
Settler: Come, come, I’ll
fuck you.
Settler: Muhammad’s dead,
you asshole.
Settler [hearing boy’s
voice]: You’re hiding behind kids, you faggot. I’ll fuck you. You tranny, you
coward.
Settler: Come on, I’ll fuck
you, you faggot.
Settler: Come on, I’ll open
up your ass.
Settler: Gaza’s on fire, you
coward, you faggot.
The same video captures an encounter that day outside a
Palestinian home, this time with an Israeli soldier hurling abuse.
Soldier: I spit on
Palestine. Fuck your mother.
Soldier: I don’t give a
fuck. I’m the Israeli army.
Soldier: Throw it, you
faggot.
Soldier: Palestine, you
assholes.
Soldier: Go get
your mother, you faggot. Come on, bring her here, I’ll fuck her. Come on.
Of course these encounters with occupying forces are often
deadly. Here is a new
report from 972, also based on a B’Tselem video, about Israeli soldiers
coordinating attacks on Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank with
masked Jewish settlers, including a half-clad sniper.
The attacks took place on May 14, a day on which four
Palestinian villagers were killed in what appear to be “pricetag” attacks–
retribution against Palestinians for protests against Israeli actions.
