Gaza Unsilenced Read online

  After barring an ambulance from transferring Abu Eisha, who sustained head and ear injuries, to the hospital for medical treatment, police detained the two Palestinian men at the Russian Compound police station close to the scene and charged them with “having a knife and obstructing the work of police,” according to Nijim.

  Abu Eisha and Ubeidat were eventually released on bail but are currently under ten days of house arrest. Meanwhile, several of the mob participants filed complaints against their victims, accusing the men of trying to assault them with a knife.

  Racist Activism on the Rise

  The same Ma‘an article notes that in Jerusalem, “Jaffa street has been covered with flyers warning Arabs not to ‘touch’ Jewish women in recent weeks, as part of a right-wing Jewish campaign to prevent mixing among Jews and Arabs.”

  The fliers were probably designed and distributed by Lehava, a fanatical anti-miscegenation group whose sister organization, Hemla, receives state funding to “rescue” Jewish women from romantic relationships with Arab men.

  Leanne Gale, an anti-racist activist living in Jerusalem, recently reported on her blog that Lehava has been holding nightly gatherings in West Jerusalem’s Zion Square and littering all of Jerusalem with stickers and fliers in Arabic that state, among other things, “Do not even think about a Jewish woman.”

  Other catchphrases adorned on Lehava T-shirts and stickers include “Jews love Jews” and “The women of Israel for the nation of Israel,” according to Gale.

  Fascist Mobs from Haifa to Tel Aviv

  Violent mobs of anti-Arab fascists aren’t isolated to Jerusalem.

  Last week in Haifa, the Arab deputy mayor and his son were brutally beaten by a mob of Jewish supremacists chanting “death to Arabs” and “death to leftists” in response to a rally against the Gaza onslaught. Police did nothing to stop the assault.

  Similar fascist demonstrators have surfaced in supposedly liberal Tel Aviv as well, verbally and physically attacking Palestinians and leftists protesting the war on Gaza.

  Israeli blogger Elizabeth Tsurkov, who has been regularly attending and live-tweeting the racist attacks against anti-war demonstrators in recent weeks, heard a new racist chant mocking the more than two hundred children slaughtered by Israel’s merciless bombing campaign in Gaza: “Tomorrow there’s no school in Gaza, they don’t have any children left.” [Eds.: The original article includes a screen capture of the chant.]

  Incitement from the Top

  While calls for extermination have been rampant both in the streets of Israel and on Israeli social media for months, the “death to Arabs” sentiment is not isolated to vigilantes.

  Take for example Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked, a rising star in the far-rightwing Jewish Home party, who recently called for genocide by slaughtering Palestinian mothers to prevent them from giving birth to “little snakes.”

  Fast forward several weeks, and the United Nations is reporting an alarming rise in miscarriages and premature births in Gaza, where newborn infants are dying due to electricity blackouts that shut down their incubators.

  Another Israeli public official inciting violence is Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of the illegal West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba, who issued a religious edict declaring that it is permissible under Jewish religious law for the Israeli army to “punish the enemy population with whatever measures it deems proper,” even if that means “exterminat[ing] the enemy.”

  Since then, portions of Gaza have been reduced to rubble in apocalypse-like scenes that look indistinguishable from the flattened cities of Syria.

  With all eyes glued to Israel’s destruction of the besieged Gaza Strip, little attention is being paid to the heightened levels of racism in Israeli society as demands for “death to Arabs” echo across the country with devastating consequences for Palestinians from Shuja‘iya to Qalandiya to Jerusalem to Haifa.

  The Electronic Intifada, July 27, 2014, http://bit.ly/1rNlpdO

  As Israel Bombs Gaza, It Kills Palestinians in the West Bank Too

  Maureen Clare Murphy

  Two Palestinians were unlawfully killed by Israeli soldiers at during a protest in the occupied West Bank village of Beit Ommar on July 25, an investigation by Human Rights Watch has found.

  A third man killed at the protest “also appeared to have been killed unlawfully,” the rights group states.

  Human Rights Watch’s status of the third man seems to be different because witnesses say he was throwing stones when he was fired on, though the New York-based group concedes “he was 35 meters away when he was shot and could not have posed an imminent deadly threat to Israeli forces.”

  This qualifier is dubious at best, given that Palestinians defending themselves with rocks hardly justifies lethal use of force by the invading and occupying Israeli military.

  Human Rights Watch again uses cautious language when it states: “Some offenses by Israeli forces in the West Bank as part of their occupation could be subject to prosecution as war crimes.”

  This tip-toeing language is jarring when compared to the violent reality in the Israeli-occupied West Bank this summer.

  Collective Punishment

  During the month of June, Israel launched its largest military assault on the occupied West Bank in more than a decade, invading refugee camps, villages and cities across the territory. Six Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during the military operation, all of them civilians. Hundreds were arrested, universities were raided and soldiers stole Palestinian property worth $3.5 million.

  The pretext for the assault was the disappearance of three Israeli youths who were hitchhiking between settlement colonies in the West Bank on June 12. It was later revealed that the Israeli police, intelligence officials and the prime minister knew within hours of the kidnapping that the teens had been killed.

  Following the campaign of collective punishment and the discovery of the teens’ bodies on June 30, the Israeli government, starting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the top, fanned calls for retribution and revenge for the teens’ deaths.

  On July 2, sixteen-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair was abducted near his home in the Shufat neighborhood of eastern occupied Jerusalem. His body was found hours later in a Jerusalem forest; a preliminary autopsy indicated that the boy was burned alive.

  Three Jewish Israelis confessed to the brutal crime and reenacted it for investigators.

  Meanwhile, mobs of Israeli youths continue to roam the streets of Jerusalem looking for Palestinians to attack. Two twenty-year-old Palestinians were recently beaten unconscious by youths wielding iron bars and baseball bats.

  Palestinians in Jerusalem live in fear of being the next victims in an increasingly violent environment.

  Killings Across the West Bank

  Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, at least seventeen Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and civilians since the beginning of the military’s slaughter in the Gaza Strip on July 7.

  Palestinian rights group Al-Haq has investigated and summarized the circumstances of each killing, painting a picture of an army bound by no restraints on the use of force.

  The victims include:

  Mahmud Hatem Shawamra (27) of the al-Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, shot dead by three live bullets after throwing a Molotov cocktail at an army jeep on July 21.

  Mahmud Saleh Hamamra (33) of Husan village near Bethlehem, shot in front of his wife and small child outside his shop by invading soldiers who had situated themselves next to his store on July 21.

  Muhammad Qasem Hamamra (20), also of Husan village, shot in the head by a live bullet from a distance of one meter, after clashes erupted following Mahmud Hamamra’s funeral on July 22. An eyewitness told Al-Haq that Israeli soldiers fired bullets into the air for no apparent reason during the funeral procession. During confrontations with protesters following the funeral, no gunshots were heard. “As Muhammad was killed by live fire, it is assumed that the Israeli soldiers used a sound suppresser when firing the
bullets,” Al-Haq states.

  Muhammad Zeyad Araj (17), shot with live fire in the head, thigh and arm during the #48KMarch mass protest which set out from al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah and marched on to Qalandiya checkpoint on July 24. “That night, there were more than 142 people wounded with live bullets,” states Al-Haq.

  Eid Rabbah Fudeilat (28), shot by eleven live bullets in the legs, shoulder and in the back in al-Arroub refugee camp in Hebron on July 25. In the time preceding Eid’s shooting, his brothers had called him to ask him to intervene with soldiers who were firing on demonstrators; the fire was preventing them from reaching their home. Eid approached the soldiers and got into an argument with one. “A soldier pushed Eid, who responded by punching the soldier several times. He then ran away to where his brothers and nephew were. When Eid had run about 10 meters away from the soldiers, they opened fire in his direction. Eid fell forward onto his face approximately 40 meters away from his house,” according to Al-Haq.

  Basem Sati Abul Rub (19), shot in the center of his chest with a live bullet while throwing stones at soldiers near al-Jalameh checkpoint north of Jenin city on July 25. Al-Haq states: “According to Al-Haq’s field researcher, there were 27 people at the hospital that had been injured at the protest. Most were injured in the lower parts of the body and had been hit with live bullets. According to witnesses, the sound of live bullets during the protest was rare. However, due to the number of injuries caused by live bullets, it is suspected that the Israeli forces used a sound suppressor when firing bullets.”

  Khaled Azmi Odeh (20), shot with a live bullet by a motorist driving an Israeli-plated civilian car near Huwwara checkpoint outside the city of Nablus on July 25.

  Tayyeb Saleh Shihada (21) was wearing a mask and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers at Huwwara checkpoint on July 25 when he was shot with a live bullet in the head.

  Nasri Taqatqa (14) was shot with a live bullet in the chest during confrontations between Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers in Beit Fajjar village near Bethlehem on July 26.

  Alaa Jihad Ezghir (21) was declared dead on July 29 after he was injured on July 23 when he was shot in the stomach while throwing stones at soldiers at the entrance of Ithna village near Hebron.

  Oday Nafez Jabr (19), shot and left to bleed for ten minutes on August 1 after attempting to run away from an Israeli soldier who had pointed a gun in his direction during a Gaza solidarity protest in Saffa village near Ramallah. “The demonstrators had yelled at the soldiers that someone was injured but the Israeli forces continued firing tear gas and live bullets,” according to Al-Haq.

  Tamer Faraj Samur (22) was shot with a live bullet in the stomach after a peaceful demonstration escalated into confrontations near Gishori factories outside of Tulkarem on August 2.

  The three men from Beit Ommar whose killings were investigated by Human Rights Watch are also among the seventeen victims. After Friday prayers on July 25, hundreds of Beit Ommar residents marched to an Israeli military watchtower at the village’s entrance to protest the assault on Gaza. Israeli forces pushed them back by firing teargas and rubber-coated steel bullets.

  Hashem Abu Maria was attempting to cross the street after the protest had dispersed when he was shot, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. Abu Maria, married with three children, was a human rights defender working with Defence for Children International Palestine.

  Sultan al-Zaaqiq and Abd al-Hamid Breigheth were shot by Israeli forces about twenty minutes later, according to Human Rights Watch’s investigation. Al-Zaaqiq was reportedly throwing stones at the soldiers from approximately 35 meters away when he was shot by live fire; Breigheth was shot in the leg and abdomen when he ran to assist al-Zaaqiq.

  “In the course of half an hour in Beit Ommar, Israeli forces left three families without a father,” stated Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa director.

  Evading Justice

  Human Rights Watch notes that the Israeli military has a poor record of bringing soldiers to justice for the use of live ammunition against Palestinian protesters who pose no threat. At least 46 Palestinians were killed in such circumstances from 2005 to early 2013, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, as mentioned in the Human Rights Watch report.

  “Since September 2000, Israeli forces have killed more than 3,000 Palestinians who did not participate in hostilities in the West Bank and Gaza, according to B’Tselem’s data,” Human Rights Watch adds.

  “But the military justice system has convicted only six Israeli soldiers for unlawfully killing Palestinians, with seven-and-a-half months as the longest jail sentence, according to Yesh Din, another rights group.”

  Even when the willful killing of Palestinian children is caught on video, Israeli soldiers are able to evade justice. Security cameras owned by a local shopkeeper recorded the shootings of Palestinian boys Nadim Nuwara, 17, and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir, 16, at a demonstration near the Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank village of Beitunia on May 15.

  The footage released by Defence for Children International Palestine showed the boys walking slowly in a calm scene when they were shot, posing no threat. The Israeli military ordered the owner of the security cameras who captured the footage to dismantle his cameras and confiscated recording devices owned by other shopkeepers in the area.

  The Electronic Intifada, August 6, 2014, http://bit.ly/1v8SIMl

  The Constant Presence of Death in the Lives of Palestinian Children

  Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

  At a gathering at the Abu Khudair house in Jerusalem after Muhammad Abu Khudair was burned alive, a mother narrated a conversation she had with her daughter:

  Lama: “If I die, will they burn me like they burned Muhammad Abu Khudair? What will happen to us? If I die like all the children in Gaza, how could I play or sing?”

  Her mother: “But, you must keep on singing, nothing in this house is like you playing and singing. You are my little girl.”

  Lama: “No Mama, I won’t sing, because my voice is afraid to be happy, I can’t even draw, because my hands do not want to draw the sun and the flowers. Mama, did they bomb the sun? Can they?”

  Her mother: “No, no one can take the sun or the moon from us.”

  Lama: “I know, the children are dying in Gaza, and all the colors died in Gaza.... Mama, if I die, will you ever have a home? ...Don’t worry, I will draw you a home, and children, they will sing and bring all the colors back to us...but, why do they fear children and kill them Mama?”

  Lama’s voice is one of the many young voices that present serious questions, not only to her parents in Palestine, but to the world, about our failed morality. Scenes of displaced, injured and dead Palestinian children affected by the attack on Gaza are shared in the international media, yet their ordeals and suffering in the continuous attack on their society remain insufficiently examined and under-discussed. These are things that have occurred every day since the 1948 Nakba (“catastrophe”) in which their parents and grandparents were forced off their lands and into exile in places like Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. Today, the innocent children in Gaza pose questions that seem innocent, like those quoted above, but these inquiries must actually be interpreted as political questions that should challenge world leaders.

  Numerous publicized reports and documents published by international and local Israeli and Palestinian human rights and children’s rights organizations teach us that politically motivated abuses against children are additional tools of Israel’s colonial dispossession of the Palestinian people. According to an update from Defence for Children International-Palestine, citing statistics from the United Nations, over 400 Palestinian children have been killed since Israel began its military offensive on Gaza. Over one three-day period of the conflict, a Palestinian child was murdered every hour, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

  Lama’s qu
estions, like many other Palestinian children’s questions, are matters of urgent concern in Palestine today. How can one reply to Lama’s question: “Why do they fear us Mama?” How can we explain that the conquest, the fear, and the continued dispossession of Palestinian life and land are the result of the settlers’ ideology and of the policies that have resulted from their own constant feeling of being threatened simply by the presence of the indigenous Palestinian population?

  Childhood experience in Palestine is characterized by constant anxiety, the loss of homes, fear for safety even in children’s bedrooms, and worry over the meaningful objects they possess, such as toys. Palestinian children’s experiences are preconditioned by the larger socio-political context, that of living under the structural machinery of settler colonialism.

  Israel is aware of the power that each Palestinian child possesses by virtue of their mere existence, and therefore, they need to keep children under constant threat of disappearing. For the colonizer, life passes not only through the capacity to kill the “other” in order to live, but also through the capacity to control the death of the “other” even after they are dead. Within the Israeli context, Palestinian children are viewed as security threats and therefore thrust outside the accepted and established human rights framework—one that sanctions the high civilian death toll that has been experienced in Gaza over the last few weeks—and into a discriminatory structure of power. In hearing Lama’s questions, one realizes how ever-present death is in her life.

  Evicting the natives and targeting them at such an early stage in life serves to further the demonization, criminalization, incarceration, and killing of Palestinians, denying them the right to resist their own oppression. How else can we explain the statement by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel condemning the use of children as “human shields” in an ad so offensive in its comparison of Palestinian culture to “barbarism” that the London Times refused to run it? In this instance, even a Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor joined the settler colonial machinery of violence and uprooting to legitimate the regime and its expansion through continuous colonial appropriation.