28th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On Wednesday 28th October at 3.25pm, Islam Rafiq Obeido, 23, was shot in cold blood in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron. Human rights observers from International Solidarity Movement witnessed the young man being murdered while walking in the street near the Gilbert Checkpoint.
The eyewitness from ISM, identified as Orion, states: “I am 100% sure he was unarmed. I saw the two soldiers creeping slowly along the road outside our apartment window with their guns cocked, so I looked down the street to see why. I saw an unarmed man walking normally towards the soldiers and suddenly they shot.”
The young man was shot at a distance of around two meters and at least 12 shots were fired. He died immediately after being shot.
No shouting or running was heard on the site prior to the murder. Minutes before the incident, a policewoman was overheard at the Shuhada Street checkpoint 56 saying on her radio “he looks like a good one, shoot him.”
Another activist from the ISM states: “It was just like last night, when they shot Hoummam Said. Everything was quiet and suddenly we heard many shots outside our apartment. I am sure he was unarmed and they murdered him for no reason, just like Hoummam”
24th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Hamza Khalil Abu Eltarabish| Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine
Hamza Khalil Abu Eltarabish is a freelance journalist who graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza
The young Palestinian man Fadi Alon performs the dawn prayers in his home in the west of Jerusalem and browses his Facebook and other social media, until he falls hungry. He heads then to get some fresh Palestinian cakes for breakfast.
Carefully, Aloun, 19, walks in the alleys of the Old City of Jerusalem, with all the fears a young man can feel coming up, as Israeli settlers surround the city waiting for any Palestinian to attack and kill.
When he gets close to the bakery, a group of settlers surround him insulting and attacking him. The young man defends himself alone before the savage settlers.
After being attacked and beaten, Alon manages to escape and run towards his home. The group follows him and keeps saying “this is a vandal, kill him!” Immediately a policeman comes and shoots him, according to videos released on social media. His public execution is documented by videos that prove the handsome young Fadi Alon was not attacking Israelis, but that he was attacked by settlers and then shot by seven bullets.
“Israeli police killed my son while he was peacefully walking, with their alleged charge of stabbing Israeli settlers, where is the knife! We want to see the surveillance camera tape that separates every corner of the streets,” Alon’s father stated, accusing Israeli police of killing his son.
What happened with Alon is one of dozens of stories of Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Most Palestinians killed publicly are aged between 11 and 20 years of age, according to The Independent Commission for Human Rights.
Farid Atrash, a lawyer at the ICHR told Donia Al-Watan that this is a deliberate execution and violates all the international law, Rome, and Geneva conventions. “They are war crimes, the executions of the child Abdulrahman Obidallah and Ahmed Sharaka prove that.”
The ICHR documents the Palestinian killed under the execution policy: Ahmed Abdullah Sharaka (13 years); Amjad Joundi (17 years); Mohammed Al-Jabari (19 years); Obaidullah Abdul Rahman (11 years); Hudhaifah Solomon (18 years); Ibrahim Ahmed Mustafa Awad (28 years); Fadi Alon (19 years); Thaer Abu Ghazaleh (19 years); Sam Mansi (20 years); Isaac Badran (16 years); Ahmed Salah (20 years).
Hadeel’s execution as she refused to take her veil off
This is not a different story to Alon as she was executed in Hebron the second day of Al-Adha Eid, on September 22, 2015.
Fawaz Abu Eisha, an eyewitness to the incident, said that Hadeel tried to pass as others through Checkpoint 56. As she was wearing a veil, the soldiers asked her in Hebrew to leave the barrier immediately but she didn’t understand the soldiers, she stood not responding. Fawaz Abu Eisha, a Palestinian municipal worker, tried to translate the soldiers’ words to her.
Hadeel performed the soldiers’ order but they ordered her to stop again, firing a shot where she stood and firing another shot at her left leg then another at the right one until she fell to the ground.
A Palestinian ambulance arrived but Israel prevented them from evacuating Hadeel in order to give her medical treatment. Omar Ja’ara, a specialist in the Israeli issue pointed out that Israel claims that it directly kills Palestinian people in order to deter persons from stabbing Israeli soldiers, however Israel is executing Palestinians as a deterrence preemptively, rather than provoked by the Palestinians. Ja’ara pointed out that Israel has surveillance cameras so why hasn’t this been sent to the media?
Palestinian journalist Sawsan Shaheen declared that the Israeli attack on Palestinians comes in a calculated way by putting sharp tools near a Palestinian who is wounded or killed to send the international media a version about what happened: that Palestinians are terrorists.
Presidency Stance
The precedency spokesperson said in a statement released by the official media news Wafa that if the Israeli executions continue, the area will be considered to be an uncontrolled situation and everyone will pay the price.
Legislative Council Stance
The legislative council condemned these publicly committed Israeli crimes and that the world does not raise a finger against Israel, suggesting that the world continues to consider Israel above the law.
Negativity of Local Media
Palestinian local media deals with this policy very passively. Israel succeeds in passing on its poison as most journalists and activists spread any killing as a stabbing attack by Palestinians.
Issa Abdullah, a journalist at the official newspaper Al-Ayam said that journalists are approaching the news in this way due to their incomprehension of the Israelis, in a call-out to all activists and journalist to be sure about news they’re publishing especially the execution cases.
Finally, we remind the reader of the video of the Palestinian child Ahmed Manasra, who was lying down, surrounded by many settlers calling him dirty words and saying “die son of *****!” Since the beginning of October, killings have increased to reach 24 Palestinians and more than 1000 wounded [Ed note: this number has increased significantly since this article was written] . The videos prove that Israelis shot Palestinians without being a threat. After all this evidence, who will draw an end to public executions?
22nd October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Valeria Cortés | Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine
How much hopelessness, suffering, unpunished abuse, how much spilled blood can the human heart take before bursting?
“All I possess in the presence of the death is fury and pride”
Mahmoud Darwish
Ahmed Al Sarhi was executed in cold blood yesterday by an Israeli sniper, from the cowardly distance of the Zionist fence that encloses Gaza, turning it into a prison. This is just another story of this shameful concentration camp that, as if that was not enough, is also routinely bombarded by the Zionist war machine with total impunity.
The body of Ahmed Al Sarhi, killed by snipers of the Zionist occupation forces on October 20, 2015, Al Bureij, Gaza Strip (Photo credit: Ashraf Amra)
Including Ahmed, there has been a total of fifteen people killed by Israeli forces since October 9th, in the Gaza strip alone. This includes a three year old girl and her pregnant mother, who died as a result of the bombing of their family home. Throughout Palestine since the beginning of this month, fifty-two people have been killed, among them twelve children. The systematic killing of children by the occupation forces is not a mistake or collateral damage, figures confirm that Palestinian children are themain military target of Israel.
Children killed during the Zionist slaughter in Gaza 2014. Photo taken at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Deir Al Balah, central Gaza Strip.
But we cannot limit ourselves to stating names, figures, data without contextualizing what happens here in Palestine – at the root of this catastrophe, a vicious occupation of a colonial entity imposed by blood and fire on Palestinian territory, with the full support of the so-called Western Democracies. Palestinians are being killed on their own land, the land of their ancestors. They have not come to seek death, death has come to them under the guise of a “religious conflict,” but that is not true – this is plainly colonialism, theft, conquest and occupation, and for this the Zionist entity conducts a continuous and terrifying ethnic cleansing.
Among the first victims of this genocide is the truth, so it is our duty to prevent mass media outlets from turning Palestinians into “terrorists” who always “die” in an “ongoing terror attack.” To begin with, they are not terrorists, they are an occupied people exercising their legitimate right to defense with all the resources – very few resources – at their fingertips. They do not “die”, they are executed in cold blood by one of the most powerful armies in the world or by that other paramilitary entity, formed by fanatical settlers highly trained and armed to the teeth.
How much hopelessness, suffering, unpunished abuse, how much spilled blood can the human heart take before bursting? What terrible reasons can drive a young man to take a kitchen knife and be under the Zionist bullets attempting a futile defense, the last desperate act of rebellion for justice? A justice that has been denied to them from the day of their birth to the day of their death.
Those Palestinians, described by the media in a de-contextualized, biased, malicious way, as “neutralized terrorist” are mostly young people and teenagers. The dramatic reality that the media handle turns this into a grotesque spectacle where the executioner becomes the victim should not go unnoticed.
After the cold-blooded murder of these children, young martyrs, there are more crimes: their families are beaten, lynched, imprisoned, their homes demolished, their residence permits revoked, a whole series of infamous collective punishments – illegal and heinous – trying to silence a people pushed to the limits of their endurance.
In the Gaza Strip there are no kitchen knives as weapons of the juvenile despair. Here the occupation is not present face to face like in the West Bank, here it remains lurking behind cowardly attacks from the distance of warships, planes, helicopters and drones and by land surrounding Gaza with a fence full of turrets, tanks, rifles and all kind of military technology at the service of death.
Then young Gazans, many of them teenagers or children, who have already suffered in their own flesh three brutal massacres, stripped of all hope and future, march to the very limits of their imprisonment in a sacrificial ritual, to offer their defenseless chests to the bullets of the occupier, with no other weapon than a harmless stone, a flag, their rage and pride – it is all they have in the presence of death. Children, young martyrs of Gaza, march to the borders of this, their land, their prison, their grave, to offer their brief life as anonymous prisoner to put a dignified end to their agony.
Young man a few meters from the zionist fence. Picture in Gaza Strip, Palestine. September 2013.
It is our duty to not let them be murdered three times over, where yes – because that Zionist colony sadly known as “Israel” commits on them a triple crime – there is first the murder itself, secondly the impunity of the fact and third, equally or even more terribly, the slander of the victim, makingthe victim guilty of their own death.
If we cannot prevent the slaughter of the Palestinian people, at least we have to avoid that impunity and slander primed on these desperate boys in search for justice, or even more painfully, a quick escape to this long tragedy.
As you read these lines the Zionist occupation and international silence continue to send children to their death.
19th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | West Bank, occupied Palestine
Members of the Daana family sat up into the early morning hours behind their home as explosions, gunshots and the whine of teargas canisters being fired rang out throughout the evening. In front of the family home where 16 children live, including a 13 day old infant, broken glass and large stones are strewn about; evidence of the night of violence they endured after settlers from the illegal Kiryat Arba settlement vandalized the fence separating them from Palestinian homes and went on a rampage.
Internationals from the ISM Khalil (Hebron) team joined the family after a night of settler terror injured ten Palestinians in the neighborhood. 13 year old Abdullah Nasser Daana’s chest was bandaged after a settler-thrown molotov cocktail smashed into his body. When his cousin Basil Khaled Daana, 16 rushed to his aid, settlers threw large stones at him, striking him violently just above his ankle. Ambulances were prevented from getting to the injured who had called the Mosques for help during the attack, prompting the Mosque loudspeakers desperate late night calls for assistance for the besieged family.
16 year old Basil Daana’s injuries from settler-thrown stone while aiding his injured 13 year old cousin.
25 year old Emid Sayeed Daana, whose wrist is bandaged after being injured by a stone looks up sharply after the sound of settlers screaming over the fence begins; one of many times throughout the evening this would occur. “They are shouting dirty things at us.” His words exhibit the commonality of this type of harassment the family gets on a constant basis with explosions randomly punctuating the typical miseries of life under military, and settler, occupation, “This is normal for us. The teargas, the gunshots. Where is the life? Where is the freedom.”
13 year old Abdullah Daana was injured by settler-thrown molotov.
His family is constantly on edge, waiting for the next attack. “If there are 15 of us inside the house, 15 are also outside to keep an eye out, to look out for them.” Emid, who in a rare quiet moment, shows us his diploma for studies in media, went on to express, “We cannot all be inside the home, if we do, the settlers will come through the fence and enter our families home. And the teargas from the soldiers. You see we can barely breathe here, we have a 13 day old baby inside. Teargas could kill a baby that young.”
Throughout the evening, intermittently with the deafening blasts of stun grenades, teargas filled the air, sometimes almost unbearably so which caused several members of the family to cover their faces or rush inside to escape it. In the late night hours, a hurled bottle crashed on the ground in front of the home.
One family member slept outside with two internationals to be on watch for the next attack. The settlers did not breach the fence again this night, yet every hour that passes with a family living in fear, is an hour of violence being committed against them. In the escalated chaos of the past two and half weeks in the West Bank, another Palestinian family navigates the continued crisis of a human rights crushing occupation.
14th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
The oldest was 30, the youngest just 2 years old.
31 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli forces since an escalation in violence, triggered by restrictions on al Aqsa Mosque, spread like wild fire across the occupied Palestinian territories and the besieged Gaza strip. A 20 year old Palestinian man, just shot to death by ten bullets close range near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate joins 30 others martyred by their occupiers in just two weeks. Basil Bassam Ragheb Sidr, 20 was initially reported to be 14 and is believed to be from al-Khalil (Hebron).
Body bag of 20 year old Palestinian man murdered by Israeli forces is removed from the scene by Israeli police.
The latest death comes amidst disturbing news that the Israeli government has passed a decision, as part of new restrictions being deployed in occupied East Jerusalem, that the bodies of Palestinian’s murdered by Israeli forces will not be released to their families. This adds agonizing and acute new cruelties to an already tragic, ongoing situation. The reason for the decision was stated to be a deterrent for post funeral demonstrations by Palestinians. Thus the refusal of Palestinian’s remains to their families is the refusal of the right to resistance of an illegally occupied people.
The decision is linked to measures currently being enacted in East Jerusalem where Israeli forces have set up checkpoints at the entrances to Palestinian neighborhoods beginning early Wednesday. As well, occupation forces were issuing citations to Palestinian drivers at random as well as inspecting several Palestinian youths and students in humiliating ways, forcing them to take off their clothes.
An international human rights monitor on the scene where the youth was killed noted that the man was shot to death after running from Israeli forces. Immediately after the shooting, Palestinians were threatened by Israeli forces with being beaten if they didn’t leave the area immediately, thus they were doubly frightened. Run and get shot, or don’t run and get beaten and possibly arrested. “People were too scared to put their phones in their trouser-pockets in fear they might be shot when taking them out.” Although Palestinians were threatened and chased from the scene, settlers were allowed to get close to the boy’s body to take photos.
Palestinians gathered and prayed near site of Israeli forces murder of 20 year old Palestinian man.
Rather than taking measures to de-escalate the violence, Israeli officials and military have seemingly done the opposite. Israeli rights group B’Tselem has called the Israeli government’s response to recent escalation in the area as “the very inverse of what ought to be done” in realistic efforts to stop current violence.“The events of recent weeks cannot be viewed in a vacuum, isolated from the reality of the ongoing, daily oppression of 4 million people, with no hope of change in sight,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday.
Every death means a lifetime of suffering for the families left behind.
They are:
1. Mohannad Halabi, 19, al-Biereh – Ramallah.
2. Fadi Alloun, 19, Jerusalem.
3. Amjad Hatem al-Jundi, 17, Hebron.
4. Thaer Abu Ghazala, 19, Jerusalem.
5. Abdul-Rahma Obeidallah, 11, Bethlehem.
6. Hotheifa Suleiman, 18, Tulkarem.
7. Wisam Jamal, 20, Jerusalem.
8. Mohammad al-Ja’bari, 19, Hebron.
9. Ahmad Jamal Salah, 20, Jerusalem.
10. Ishaq Badran, 19, Jerusalem.
11. Mohammad Said Ali, 19, Jerusalem.
12. Ibrahim Ahmad Mustafa Awad, 28, Hebron.
13. Ahmad Abedullah Sharakka, 13, Al Jalazoun Refugee camp-Ramallah.
14. Mostafa Al Khateeb, 18, Sur-Baher – Jerusalem.
15. Hassan Khalid Manassra, 15, Jerusalem.
16. Mohamed Nathmie Shamassnah, 22, Kutneh-Jerusalem.
17. Baha’ Elian,22, Jabal Al Mokaber-Jerusalem.
18. Mutaz Ibrahim Zawahreh, 27, Bethlehem.
19. Unknown man from Jerusalem in his thirties. (no name was available until the time of his report )
