Category: In the Media

Sohaib, 6 years old, injured by an Israeli bullet

by Rosa Schiano

20 March 2012 | il Blog di Oliva

6 year old Sohaib Sultan, and his father Majed.

On Saturday evening around 7pm, Israeli soldiers opened fire on the edge of Karm Abu Salem, east of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.

Sohaib Sultan, 6 years old, was playing at home with his brothers when he was injured by one of the bullets on the right side of his thigh.

His parents, Majed, 45 years old, and Fayza, 44 years old, transported him to the hospital. They first went to the Najar hospital and then to the European Hospital in the Khan Younis area.

The bullet is still in the child’s body.

His parents told us that the doctor did not feel comfortable performing surgery on the child. He simply told them “it is your responsibility”.

Therefore the parents decided to turn to another hospital.

The father showed us the X-ray. The bullet was clearly visible inside the child.

We asked Sohaib, “Kif halak” (“How are you?”), and he replied “Alhamdulilah” (“Praise be to God”).

Everything is all right for Sohaib. I was astonished by his answer. Alhamdulilah, as if nothing had happened, as if his little body was not inhabited by a bullet of 215 mm.

Sohaib is a strong child.

I caressed his head smiling, and he returned my smile.

Sohaib has three brothers and 5 sisters, and he is the youngest of his family. His mother Fayza suffers from kidney problems and his father Majed is unemployed.

His father is worried. “There is nothing that can stop the bullets”, he says, with reference to the panels which constitute the ceiling of their home and part of the walls, which bullets can easily enter.

I asked if he felt like sending a message to the outside world. “Put an end to the siege of Gaza,”  he said, “and let the people live a normal life. We are civilians, please do not shoot. We do not have any weapons, we live a civilian life. Let us just live a human life, in peace.”

Tomorrow we will go together to the hospital to talk to a doctor and maybe Sohaib will be operated on. We will be with them for support, to make them aware that they are not alone, despite the silence of the international community.

Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.

His story told by his mother: Ayoub Asalya, 12 years old, killed by an Israeli missile

by Rosa Schiano

19 March 2012 | il Blog di Oliva

Ayoub Asalya, 12, was going to school on Sunday morning when he was killed by an Israeli missile. On the walls of his house there is a poster with his image. Ayoub is shown smiling with a cap on his head.

“The nights before he was killed, he came to me stating that he was afraid to sleep alone in his room because of the attacks,” his mother told us.

So that night Ayoub slept in his mother’s room, and he woke up early in the morning to go to school.

“Before leaving,” said his mother, “he asked me to buy a new pair of shoes, and he told me that he would buy me a present for Mother’s Day.”

“After a few minutes I heard an airstrike, I ran outside, and I found an injured boy, Wafi, Ayoub’s cousin, lying with his face on the ground. The ambulance arrived and transported Wafi to the hospital.”

The personnel of the ambulances started looking for other potential injured and suddenly one of them started shouting “A Palestinian kid with a school uniform has been killed.”

Ayoub’s body was torn into pieces everywhere. A neighbor recognized Ayoub’s face and he informed his family that he had been found dead. His mother started running and crying.

“I cannot think to have found my son, with whom I had spoken to a few minutes before, suddenly reduced into pieces. We found him without the lower part of the body. Now who will bring me a gift for Mother’s day? The Israelis declared to have hit members of the resistance movement this means that Ayoub was throwing rockets? Where are the human rights of the Palestinian people? My message should reach the whole world; we should expel all the Israeli ambassadors from our countries.”

Ayoub’s mother took her son’s schoolbag; she showed us his school books.

She then brings us to a place close to the house where the signs of the attack are still visible. Materials scattered everywhere on the ground. His mother begins to collect them.

In her hands, together with pieces of the ground, small pieces of flesh, it is the flesh of her son’s body, still there. She shows them to us. She kneels down and she collects some more. She approaches her hands to her face, she smells them. Then she smells them again and she turns towards another woman smiling and holding out her hands, inviting her to smell those pieces.

Her smile was full of love for her child. Her son is still there, in her hands, even if reduced in small pieces of flesh. Then she collected from the ground leaves and lemons, stained by his blood, and small pieces of his clothes. She would have continued to collect what was left of her son, if a relative had not intervened asking her to go back home.

A mother who picks up the remains if her son must be very strong, but her eyes cannot hide the terrible pain of his loss.

 

Before I left, she rubbed her hands on mine, tightening them, calling me “habibti”, hugging me.

What I am describing is not a horror movie but the horrors caused by Israeli’s shelling. However, the Palestinian people resist.

“Alhamdulilah,” thinking to the future, tomorrow  the children will resume going to school and new lives will born, even under the sound of the drones and the F-16.

Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.

Video: IDF caught in a lie about Tristan Anderson

by Allison Deger

16 March 2012 | Mondoweiss

Following a police investigation that closed with no criminal charges against the Israeli military, new video evidence in Tristan Anderson’s last round for justice—a civil suit—was brought forth, identifying the solider who injured the peace activist with a long-range tear gas canister in 2009. “Sergeant Jackie” is named as the border patrol officer who shot Anderson in the clip filmed by a Palestinian activist from Ni’lin, the village where Anderson was wounded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<a>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBQj28e3-8o</a>

In the video, Sgt. Jackie is with two other soldiers, walking towards Palestinians and activists who are in close proximity. Initially, Sgt. Jackie is on the right, then moves to the center as he fires tear gas into the already dispersed crowd. He carries an “extended-range tear gas” launcher, which looks like an oversized rifle. “It’s an experimental weapon,” said Gabby Silverman who was with Anderson that day. Speaking to me, she explained, “not everyone had them [a tear gas launcher] that day.”

An Israeli state attorney was then able to identify Jackie, whose face is not clear in the clip, by applying facial recognition software. Though out of frame, Silverman’s voice is also heard as Anderson’s wounds are dressed and he is transferred into an ambulance. Anderson’s skull was fractured and the frontal lobe of his brain was severely damaged.

Almost as important as naming Anderson’s shooter, the video shows that the border patrol unit Sgt. Jackie was with was at a distance different from the distance stated in testimony given during a military investigation. Silverman said “in order for this to have been a legal shooting, they would have to be about 100 meters away, as opposed to 50 meters away, as what is shown in the video.”

“Justice for Tristan,” Anderson’s support group, explains:

Note the scene where the Border Police are seen standing between two colorful doors. To the side of them, there is a gate going into a grassy area. This is the grassy area where they were standing when they shot Tristan. Activist eyewitnesses have testified all along that the shots were fired from this area. The Border Police, however, have testified that they were at another location on the other side of town, because to shoot a high velocity tear gas grenade from this distance is illegal. This video seriously undermines the IDF’s story by establishing that the shooters lied about their locations, and were in fact standing just where activists say they were.

For Silverman, the video “also establishes the military is willing to lie in order to cover up their story.” During their time in occupied Palestine, Silverman and Anderson attended many demonstrations in Ni’lin. The day Anderson was shot was their fifth protest. When asked if she had seen the Israeli military use the same weapon Anderson was injured with on other occasions, she said it was “standard…this wasn’t an anomaly, it’s part of a pattern of police violence.”

Supporters of Anderson hope the new evidence will be instrumental to both his current civil suit, as well as re-opening a criminal investigation against the Israeli military. “Both sides,” said Silverman, “have political point to make in the courtroom,” explaining the case is in part about negligence, and in part about Israeli’s systematic use of violence against Palestinians.

 

When teargas and rubber bullets are not enough: Israeli soldiers release the hounds on unarmed Palestinian protesters

17 March 2012 | Ni’lin Village

The jaws of Zionism locked – Click here for more photos

 

In Kufur Qaddoum, clashes between Israeli Border Police officers who shot tear-gas projectiles and rubber-coated bullets and local youth who threw stones at the forces developed. Roughly 15 minutes later – in a scene that seemed as if it was taking place in the American South of the 1960s – Border Police officers decided to sic an army dog at a group of the demonstrators, standing several dozens of meters away. The dog chased after the protesters, biting and locking his jaws into the arm of one of them – Ahmad Shtawi.

For long minutes, the dog would not release its hold of the bleeding arm, even as its handler arrived at the scene and tried to order it to do so. The Border Police officers then arrested Shtawi, despite the fact he was in obvious need of medical attention. Morad Shtawi, a member of the village’s popular committee, tried to reason with the commanding officer into releasing young man. He was then pepper-sprayed and arrested as well.

Two other residents of the village were injured during the demonstration, after being hit by tear-gas projectiles shot directly at them. One was hit in the leg and another in the shoulder.

The weekly protest in Kufer Qaddoum, west of Nablus, was dedicated to the memory of Rachel Corrie – an American protester who was killed after an Israeli D9 bulldozer drove over her in Rafah exactly nine years ago, on March 16, 2003.

In Nabi Saleh, at least three protesters were injured during the demonstration, including an Israeli woman who was hit in the head by a rubber-coated bullet. The two others were hit lightly injured, one by a rubber-coated bullet and the other by a tear-gas projectile. The woman was evacuated to the Ramallah hospital.
Earlier today, large forces entered the village and sprayed a foul-smelling liquid known as the Skunk from a water cannon.
During the night, the army staged yet another raid on the village, the fifth in a week’s time.

In Ni’lin,, demonstration was held despite the rainy weather, the demonstration was dedicated to the American activist Tristan Anderson who was shot by high velocity tear gas projectile in his head by the Israeli soldiers in 13.03.2009 in the middle of Ni’lin village. also commemorating the anniversary to the killing of Rachel Corrie in gaza strip by an israeli military bulldozer.
Israeli soldiers fired massive tear gas canister at protester,rubber coated bullets and skunk water,one demonstrator was hit with a rubber bullet in his hand and was treated directly.

 


In Photos: Bethlehem met with rain of Israeli violence

by Mahmoud Zawahre
16 March 2012 | Al Ma’sara Popular Committee
Click here for more photos | Photos courtesy Ahmad Mezher, 2012
Today the weekly demo of Al-Ma’sara, near Bethlehem, was underway as dozens of Palestinians and Israelis demonstrated in  the heavy rain against the wall in solidarity with Hana Shalabi . Israeli Occupartion Forces first attacked Mahmoud Zawahre, the coordinator Of Al-Ma’sara Popular Committee, tearing his clothes before he managed to escape them. After that they started attacking people with their batons and  arrested four Israeli activists. They were later released. They  also broke the camera of journalist, Musa Alshaer. After that they broke the glass of one Palestinian car.