Senseless violence against Palestinian demonstrators in al-Khalil (Hebron)

29th September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestin

Today in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), Israeli forces ruthlessly attacked a peaceful demonstration.
The demonstration was organised against the Israeli forces deadly shooting of 18 year old martyr Hadeel Hashlamoun at a Tel Rumeida checkpoint yawning into segregated Shuhada Street.
Israeli forces started shooting endless rounds of stun-grenades at the protestors. An ISMer present there explains: “The sound of stun grenades kept echoing throughout most of the day.” Many of the stun grenades were also directly targeted at Palesinian family homes’ roofes as well as fruit stands in the neighbourhood around the checkpoint.

Israeli soldier shooting rubber-coated steel bullet from a Palesitnian house
Israeli soldier shooting rubber-coated steel bullet from a Palesitnian house

In the evening, rubber coated steel bullets were shot by Israeli forces at the youth. At least two persons were injured, one in the arm, and another one in the leg.

Israeli forces targeting demonstrators with rubber-coated steel bullets
Israeli forces targeting demonstrators with rubber-coated steel bullets

Unproportional use of force against Palestinian demonstrators is widespread throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Watch a video of Israeli forces shooting rubber-coated steel bullets at the demonstrators:

Double standards, one rule for all – except Palestinians

27th September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Nabi Saleh, occupied Palestine

On the 28th of August, Mahmoud Tamimi was arrested in Nabi Saleh during the weekly non violent demonstration. Every Friday, just after the prayer, the residents demonstrate against the expansion of the illegal settlement of Halamish which has continuously confiscated Palestinian land as well as the only water source of the village: ‘Ain al-Qaws.

During the Friday march towards the expropriated lands the residents were stopped by Israeli forces using excessive brutality, shooting tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets, live ammunition and sound grenades against civilians. Additionally, demonstrators are often arrested and beaten up.

On the 28th of August, in the course of the demonstration I, as a foreigner, was arrested by Israeli forces together with the 19-year old Palestinian Mahmoud Tamimi.

Both of us have been brutally beaten by the soldiers with punches, kicks and the butts of their guns. Both of us were arrested and secluded for 6 hours, kept blindfolded and handcuffed in a small room in a military base.

Afterwards, we were taken to the police station based in the illegal settlement of Ben Yamin and, at that point, our paths were divided: he was brought to the military prison of Ofer and I was brought to “Ramle” near Tel Aviv.

Within a few days, my predicament was positively solved: I was acquitted from the charges of throwing stones and other objects, and returned to be a free citizen. Regarding Mahmoud, although the charges were exactly the same, because he’s Palestinian, the situation is completely different: in fact Mahmoud is still under arrest in Ofer military prison and is waiting to attend his first hearing, to be held on the 28th of October, that is 60 days after his arrest. In my case, the first hearing took place the day after my arrest.

Israeli soldier arresting Mahmoud
Israeli soldier arresting Mahmoud

Mahmoud is now under threat of a penalty of a minimum of 7 months which, under the practice of military law and consequently administrative detention used on the Palestinians of the West Bank, this sentence can be arbitrarily renewed for additional 6 month periods of imprisonment.

The absolute asymmetry of treatment endured by me and Mahmoud is a blatant demonstration of the discriminatory laws applied by Israel for over 40 years towards the Palestinians. According to the International law, the application of military laws in occupied territories is completely illegitimate.

Israeli soldiers arresting Mahmoud in Nabi Saleh
Israeli soldiers use brutal force on Mahmoud

Mahmoud will be accused by military personnel covering the role of persecutors and will be judged by some other military personnel covering also the role of judges. He doesn’t have the right to be tried in front of a civilian court, although Mahmoud is a civilian – and not a soldier. All of this because he’s a Palestinian.

Even if the evidence does not indicate his guilt, just the fact that he’s in a military court with both the prosecutor and the judge from the military, will most likely result in a guilty verdict. The procedures in military court are not about establishing the truth, the possibility of establishing a defense is extremely slim, justice simply isn’t done in a military court. It’s about punishment, punishment to weaken the Palestinian resistance to an illegal occupation, even if this resistance is non-violent.

Mahmoud in court
Mahmoud in court

Within this system, it must be said, settlers from illegal settlements in the West Bank are judged in front of civilian courts, not military courts – just because they have a different status: they are not Palestinians.

In my case, hard evidence would be required to bring charges against me, for Mahmoud in contrast, as a Palestinian, no evidence is required at all. All the trial is only based on the statement of 18-year old soldiers.

Of course, when an international is unjustly beaten and arrested the media reacts with utter disapproval attracting the medias’ attention and causing the civil society’s indignation. When it’s a Palestinian receiving the exact same treatment, however, the reaction is quite different. Mahmoud‘s case seems to be totally forgotten. Currently he is still rotting in a prison cell in Ofer military prison, while being entirely ignored by the media and the international community.

Mahmoud Tamimi is only 19 years old, he has 2 brothers and a sister. His uncle is Rushdie Tamimi, one of Nabi Saleh’s martyrs killed by the Israeli forces 3 years ago on the 19th of November. He died following an intense shooting during which he was inured in the thigh and the stomach. Rushdie is already the second martyr in a village which counts only 500 inhabitants. Considering the dimension of the village, they are indeed suffering from significant losses. However, we must keep in mind that in the Occupied Palestinian Territories the violence and the killings are daily and are perceived by the so called civilized world as casualties of a 60 year old conflict.

Mahmoud at al-Aqsa mosque
Mahmoud at al-Aqsa mosque

Let’s take a stand and spread Mahmoud’s story, let’s not forget him. We should show the world that the treatment a Palestinian youth receives – and thus the live of a Palestinian – is not less worth reporting about in the media and has to receive as much attention and result in an outcry as that of an Italian citizen. Let this not be about the rare case of an international being maltreated by Israeli forces, but about the every-day harassment, violence, illegal detentions and arrests of Palestinians.

In Gaza no figures can express the sorrow

26th September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza Strip, Occupied Palestine

If there is any reason for our existence, at least it should be our capacity to inform about a story while it is happening, in a way that nobody can say: We did not know, nobody had told us anything”

Robert Fisk

I don’t know if pain can destroy or fortify, I only know that pain changes everything. I also know that the recollection of such suffering shall remain, has to remain in my memory. At the beginning of the Israeli aggression, the first days of last July, I had promised myself not to forget the names of the children that were killed, those who I photographed horrified in the nightmare’s morgues in Gaza under fire.

In that moment I didn’t know that it would be impossible to keep that promise. More than 500 names of children, destroyed by bombs should be now pronounced by my voice, one by one. However, I do not forget, I can not nor want to forget.

The crimes and brutality do not deserve forgetfulness nor forgiveness, only rage. An unmitigated rage that drives us to act, to fight to prevent that their murders go unpunished, so that death won’t be in vain, even though the death of children always is. They are gone, we cannot bring them back to life, but we can, have to punish their executioners.

It is 10 am and several drone’s fire impact onto a house in Deir Al Balah while a Bulldozer recovers the remains of a family, buried under a one-ton bomb dropped by a F-16, those that leave craters, smoke and smell of death, where before were homes, affections, dreams, lives.

Bodies of children killed in Israeli attack on Gaza last year
Bodies of children killed in Israeli attack on Gaza last year

The ambulance fills with wounded persons in seconds, a man enters carrying a small body of a child about six or seven years old, the boy lacks the right calf, his foot is hanging from a tendon or a shred of skin, I don’t know, I don’t want to look, but I do.

The boy squirms and his intestines are out of his belly, I help the man to lay down the child on the floor of the ambulance – the only stretcher is already occupied by another injured person. The ambulance drives fast to the Al-Aqsa Hospital, located in the central area of the Strip, the same hospital that has been attacked by Israel leaving seven dead and over seventy injured.

At each turn the child’s blood is spilled on the floor of the ambulance, I put my hand over his eyes to prevent him seeing his own intestines, I don’t want to see them either, or step on his blood; I don’t want to see his father mourn and cry in despair. But who cares about what I want? What his father wants? With all the impotence of his anguish, with all the force of his love, everything is banal, useless, tiny compared to death.

Boy wounded by Israeli forces during last year's attack on Gaza on the ambulance floor
Boy wounded by Israeli forces during last year’s attack on Gaza on the ambulance floor

The murderers do not care about anything nor the world. For Israel it is easy to kill, Israel is massacring children for free.

A man in the ambulance asks, demands the father to pray, and then they start to pray together, everybody who can articulate a word inside the crowded vehicle prays, I don’t do it, I don’t know how, I just hold his light head of shaved hair in my hand with the other I still cover his eyes.

I look at him and strange details are recorded in my mind, terrible and tender ones. His little face is beautiful despite the agony that deforms his face. I think he has his hand clenched into a fist because of the pain then I look again and it is not a fist – the Israeli bomb has torn all his fingers and the little bones are now protruding from his knuckles, they are fragile, white and thin, like those of a bird.

The boy stops squirming slowly and his lips turn pale, I’m relieved that he is no longer struggling, that his intestines stop escaping from his belly, I’m relieved by this calm so close to the end, it relieves me so much that I feel guilty. Till this day I do not know his name, I only know that he died minutes after arriving at the hospital.

On the ruins of my house I hoisted the Palestinian flag, it is our symbol of resistance,” tells me Ahmed without any drama and then smiles, “now my family lives in a crowded shelter in a school”.

Less than a block away, in Beit Hanoun, seven little girls are sitting on a rickety mattress under a makeshift tent, here called “Jaima”, located next to some rubble that once was their home. Through an unstable triangle of collapsing walls the girls enter into this concrete tomb to retrieve a doll, rescued from an abyss of desolation and then smile.

The joy, that bombproof joy, I think amazed, resists death in Palestine, and sometimes just sometimes wins the battle, and if it doesn’t win at least dignifies it, dignifies and saves it from brutality and impunity.

More than 100.000 people have lost their homes under the Israeli bombs that devastated Gaza during the fifty one days of cowardly attacks.

Shelling from F-16s, Apache helicopters, drones, tanks, mortars and all the machinery of war they havethanks to the support of the so called western democracies – the occupying entity sadly known as Israel uses machinery of war that allowed them to raze entire neighborhoods from the infamous distance of their powerful ships, but did not allow them to defeat the Palestinian resistance in the field, in a man to man combat because that requires that there were men on both sides. The courage and love for the land cannot be purchased with US Dollars in the arms market.

Zionist aggression caused a real slaughter, the almost 70 years of Israeli occupation still remains and it will continue causing damages and death mainly among women, youth and children, as Israel’s military objectives are always homes, mosques, schools used as shelters, ambulances. That’s where those perish who had previously survived the cowardly brutality of Israel, to die after, to continue dying a thousand times in this slaughterhouse called Gaza.

The numbers speak for themselves but today I cannot contain human suffering into figures. Sorrow is not measurable, sorrow is just that and it is everything.

Free Mahmoud Abujoad!

26th September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Jordan Valley, occupied Palestine

Palestinian human rights activist and community supporter, Mahmoud Abujoad, has been detained by the Israeli authorities under false allegations. He and his family urgently need our support to help get him released at his court hearing this Tuesday, September 29th at the Ofer military prison.

Mahmoud Abujoad and his wife Sireen
Mahmoud Abujoad and his wife Sireen

Mahmoud, 29, and his wife Sireen were detained by Israeli border police while they were on their way to Jordan to visit family. They were both detained for eight hours at the border, while being blindfolded, handcuffed, and denied water, food, and access to toilet facilities. Sireen was released, but Mahmoud was kept and later charged with throwing stones at a demonstration during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza a year ago, which he did not attend. His family has to pay a bail of 8000 NIS (£1300) in order to get his released.

Mahmoud is working with Jordan Valley Solidarity (JSV), a movement supporting the communities in the Jordan Valley, documenting human rights abuses, and rebuilding homes and water supplies demolished the Israeli army. Mahmoud was recently involved in a project fundraising for a school bus for children in isolated communities to access school.

As a Palestinian, Mahmoud has no right to see a lawyer, is given no presumption of innocence, and is not given a fair trial. The family has been told he can be released Sunday September 27th 2015, for 8000 NIS (£1300). Under Israeli law, the charge of throwing stones at a demonstration could sentence him to 20 years of prison.

Mahmoud, his family, and the communities he is working with need our help to secure his release.

To find out more about supporting Mahmoud and his family go here.

Father and 3-year old daughter shot in the head by Israeli forces in Kafr Qaddum

25th September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Kafr Qaddum, occupied Palestine

Palestinians in the village Kafr Qaddum in the occupied West Bank endured an hours-long siege by Israeli forces earlier while demonstrating against occupation, ending in a 3 year old Palestinian girl and daughter of Nablus police chief, Colonel Abd al-Latif al-Qaddumi being shot in the face with a rubber coated steel bullet as she stood on the balcony of her family home.

3-year old girl shot with rubber-coated steel bullet by Israeli forces
3-year old girl shot with rubber-coated steel bullet by Israeli forces

Both the girl, Maram Abed al-Latif al-Qaddumi, and her father who was subsequently also shot in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet as he rushed to aid his heavily bleeding daughter, were treated at Rafidia Hospital and released.
For three hours, Israeli forces and Israeli border police had Palestinians, journalists and international human rights monitors trapped along a village road in several houses along with a local Mosque, as every time a Palestinian stepped into the road, rapid fire rubber coated steel bullets, foam bullet projectiles, live ammunition, sound bombs and teargas canisters fired from venom trucks were showered into the street.

Palestinians marching against occupation
Palestinians marching against occupation

Three times the Israeli military skunk truck entered the village road spraying organic waste water at homes where Palestinians were taking cover from the violent assault.  For several hours after the dousing of the foul smelling composition in the village, Palestinian families were seen scrubbing the streets in front of their homes to remove the smell that lasts for up to ten days.

kq2

Instances of extreme violence against Palestinians have circulated throughout the West Bank this week after Israeli forces murdere 18 year old unarmed female Palestinian student, Hadeel al-Hashlamon, at an al-Khalil checkpoint near segregated Shuhada Street and Ahmad Izzat Khatatbeh, 26, died from his wounds after being shot three times in the shoulder, chest and abdomen at the Beit Furik checkpoint last Friday.  These murders accompany a sharp rise in house raids, street harassment and settlers attacks including on a Palestinian shop in al-Khalil and settler machine gun fire on Palestinian homes in the Qeitun neighborhood.