Tag: Hebron

Hebron: Israeli military targets Palestinian children for searches and detention

Christian Peacemaker Team Hebron

In the last month, the Israeli military has been detaining children for extended lengths of time in the Old City, and at times appearing to be “practicing” soldiery by randomly selecting boys off the street and searching them.

In one incident, a fifteen-year-old neighbor of the Hebron team was cutting a rope on a package of materials in his father’s shop when soldiers saw him. They grabbed him, blindfolded him, and led him off to their military gate at another checkpoint close to a settlement. The father followed the soldiers, pleading for his son, trying to explain why the son needed to use a knife.

The next week, another neighbor boy, age fourteen, was running an errand for his father who asked him to hurry because there was another meeting that he, the father, needed to attend. Unfortunately, this boy was wearing a coat similar to a child whom the soldiers said had thrown a stone at them. Six soldiers apprehended him. Even before the soldiers had released him, four more soldiers led a ten-year-old boy and his eight-year-old brother behind the gate also. The soldiers insisted they too were throwing stones. At this point, one of the CPTers stepped up to the gate on the Palestinian side to take a picture of the action through the cracks in the gate. One of the soldiers from the other side forcefully threw or kicked a stone at the gate close to the CPTer’s ear.

After one hour, the father of the two younger boys arrived from his work, punished his boys in front of the soldiers, and then led them home, his hands squeezing the neck of the smallest boy. The CPTer looked at the soldiers responsible and said: “Are you happy now?” As one soldier put his arm around a fellow soldier, he responded, “Yes, I am happy now.”

A Palestinian bystander commented: “See, if they can’t punish the father, they will get the children, harass them until the family finally moves away.”

From Hebron to Nablus

From Pork to Palestine Blog

27 December 2009

I’m banned from Sheikh Jarrah and occupied East Jerusalem so I spent the last two days in Hebron and recently arrived in Nablus.

Hebron is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and the place where Isaac and Ishmael buried their father, Abraham, signaling a reconciliating between the two feuding brothers. Unfortunately there is no such reconciliation in Hebron today.

Hebron is unlike any place I’ve ever seen before. The old city reminds me of the old city in Jerusalem, except not as crowded. But there are military check-points and Israeli Occupation Forces everywhere, including in watch-towers all across the city. When we were walking through the city, settlers openly carried automatic weapons and assault rifles.

I asked one of them if I could take their picture.

“No,” he said. “It’s forbidden on the Sabbath.”

“It’s forbidden to get your picture taken on the Sabbath, but it’s okay to walk around with an automatic weapon?” I asked him. He snorted and turned around, ignoring me.

Hebron is also the only city I’ve visited so far where beggars are openly walking the streets, asking for money. Street hustlers are also much more aggressive here than in Jerusalem. A few hundred Israeli Jewish settlers live amongst thousands of Palestinians in Hebron, and the tension is palpable. A thick layer of netting seperates the Israeli apartments from the Arab markets below them because the settlers throw stones and trash at the Palestinians from their windows.

Later on, we met up with our contact, a woman named Leila who runs a Women’s Collective that sells homemade tapestries, kufiyyas, purses, coin wallets, and other items. She invited us into her our home and told us a little bit about the situation in Hebron over a delicious Arab dinner.

“The situation in Hebron is very bad, very dangerous,” she said. “There is no work, and the settlers and the Army threaten us and attack us everyday.”

On Saturdays, a settler “tour” goes into the old city through a military checkpoint to visit the holy sites important to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. They are guarded by a phalanx of soldiers and private security, but sometimes the overzealous ones use the day as an opportunity to take potshots at the Palestinian merchants, overturning their stands, stealing from their stores, insulting them, spitting on them, and sometimes worse.

We spent most of the day and night patrolling the streets of the old city, but it was quiet. We talked with the young men on the streets, drank tea inside their houses with their families, and generally just had a relaxing time.

I left Hebron this morning and am now in Nablus.

The US cash behind extremist settlers

Andrew Kadi and Aaron Levitt | guardian.co.uk

8 December 2009

The Hebron Fund is raising vast sums for Israeli settlements that violate the Geneva convention, with little scrutiny

Last month, a Brooklyn-based non-profit organisation called the Hebron Fund, which supports Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied city of Hebron, held a fundraiser at the New York Mets’ stadium, Citi Field.

The fundraiser went forward despite calls for its cancellation from grassroots human rights organisations from the US, Palestine and Israel. The fact that the Hebron Fund likely raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for extremist Israeli settlers at a major US venue with little public scrutiny is a troubling sign for those who hope that the US can play a constructive role in achieving a just peace in the Middle East.

Perhaps more worryingly, according to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius: “A search of IRS records identified 28 US charitable groups that made a total of $33.4m in tax-exempt contributions to settlements and related organisations between 2004 and 2007.” Some of the larger organisations, including Friends of the Ateret Cohanim and Friends of Ir David, both leading the Jewish settler takeover of Palestinian East Jerusalem, are based in New York City.

Israeli settlements violate the Geneva convention’s prohibition against an occupying power transferring its population into occupied territory, and Israeli settlement expansion directly contradicts the US call for a settlement freeze.

Hebron’s Jewish settlers, who are supported by the Hebron Fund, are openly fundraising in New York City. Under the protection of the Israeli military, they are expanding settlements in Hebron’s Old City and driving out the Palestinian residents.

The Hebron Fund’s extremist positions are clear. Hebron Fund executive director Yossi Baumol told The American Prospect that “[d]emocracy is poison to Arabs”, “Israel must not give Arabs a say in how the country is run” and “[y]ou’ll never get the truth out of an Arab”. Hebron’s chief rabbi, Dov Lior, a featured participant in some Hebron Fund events, recently praised a new book that says it is permitted for a Jew to kill civilians who provide moral support to an enemy of the Jews, and to even kill young children, if it is foreseeable that they will grow up to become enemies.

Settlers and the Israeli army routinely attack and terrorise Palestinians in Hebron, according to human rights groups such as B’Tselem in Israel. In 1994, Hebron settler Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 unarmed Palestinians who were praying in a Hebron mosque. One of the honorees at the 2009 Hebron Fund dinner, Noam Arnon, called Goldstein “an extraordinary person” in 1995. In 1990 Arnon called three Jewish terrorists who were convicted of killing three Palestinians and maiming two Palestinian mayors “heroes”.

Though the Hebron Fund tells the IRS that its purpose is to “promote social and educational wellbeing”, in 2008 Baumol assured New York radio listeners: “There are real facts on the ground that are created by people helping the Hebron Fund and coming to our dinners.”

A 2007 appeal explained: “Dozens of new families can now come live in Hebron … waiting for you to be their partners in the redemption of Hebron.”

Baumol dedicated the 2009 fundraiser to protesting at “racist limitations, led by President Barack Obama on Jewish growth”.

Settlers frequently claim that preventing Jews from living anywhere they want in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is “racist”, regardless of the settlers’ severe infringement on the rights of longstanding Palestinian residents. Settlers justify their takeover of Hebron by invoking the massacre of 67 Jewish residents of Hebron by Palestinians in 1929. But rather than equality, Hebron’s settlers aim for superior rights enforced from the barrel of a gun.

Non-profit organisations like the Hebron Fund play a substantial role in fuelling the Middle East conflict, but largely fly under the radar in the US. They brazenly hold public fundraisers, and the media generally ignore them. Major US advocacy organisations that claim to oppose Israeli settlements typically fail to criticise them. In one rare mainstream media report, David Ignatius highlighted the US government’s self-defeating policy, writing that “critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns”.

Until the public, advocacy groups, media and the US government scrutinise and rein in settlement non-profits like the Hebron Fund, policy statements about peace in the Middle East will do nothing to stop the daily violence and dispossession suffered by Palestinians.

Andrew Kadi is an IT professional and a member of the Middle East rights organisation, Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East. Aaron Levitt has volunteered as a human rights monitor in Hebron and is a member of Jews Against the Occupation-NYC

Letter to family and friends: Bir el-Eid, West Bank

I have now been in the village of Bir el-Eid for three weeks. This has been a great time of connecting with the people here, helping with chores with the sheep, going out in the hills with the sheep, and helping rebuild the village.

Israeli settlers attacked a flock of sheep on Saturday, November 28. About 30 Israeli soldiers and police came and did nothing except to remove all the Israeli peace activists from the area.

A major issue continues to be whether Palestinians can use the road they built and paid for back in 1984, or whether they have to drive through fields to get to town for supplies. Under legal and moral pressure, the Israeli military has agreed to allow Palestinians to use their road, but soldiers on the ground are continuing to take orders from the settlers who demand that only Jews be allowed to use the roads. I recently waited with Palestinians who were trying to bring tanks full of water to the village. Soldiers had stopped the two tractors. International activists waited with the Palestinians, while Israeli activists put pressure on Israeli military authorities. After four hours, the soldiers left and the water was brought to the village.

On Saturday, December 5, twenty Israeli activists came to work in the village. That is inspiring. The Israeli military declared the area a closed military zone, but the Israeli activists refused to leave. As a token symbol of their authority, the soldiers arrested one activist. I hid in a cave to avoid being removed from the area.

Israeli settlers invaded one of the homes I was protecting in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem on December 2. Two international friends of mine were arrested while the Israeli police protected the thieves. The settlers are now living in the Palestinian house. One by one, the settlers, with the support of the Israeli government, are taking more and more from the Palestinians. Bir el-Eid is an important exception.

I recently took two days off to visit friends in Hebron. The Sultans and Jabers are doing well, but Israeli soldiers recently stole a thousand dollars worth of irrigation pipes from the Jabers. There seems to be a military assault on Palestinian agriculture. The soldiers recently demolished eight major cisterns holding precious water for Palestinian farms in the Beqa’a Valley.

I am extremely happy here in Bir el-Eid. It is the perfect place for me right now. We might be out in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the rest of the world, but it feels like we are at the center of the universe. Activists, aid workers, lawyers, and the media are coming here. I was interviewed for TV. I sure do not feel isolated. I am experiencing the universal through the particular.

Peace, Art (Jaber) Gish

Shock follows footage of settler running over Palestinian

Ma’an News

3 December 2009

An amateur video shocked Palestinians on Tuesday, catching what appeared to be an Israeli settler repeatedly running over a wounded Palestinian at a gas station in Hebron last week.

The Palestinian, an unidentified man shot several times following an alleged knife attack at the station, appeared to be staggering when a silver Mercedes ran him down, stopped, reversed, and ran him over again.

The video was reportedly taken on Thursday, although at the time, Israeli representatives made no mention of the settler’s alleged attack, telling reporters only that a Palestinian man had been shot after he stabbed and lightly injured two settlers.

A military spokesman told Ma’an that after the two Israelis were hurt, a soldier shot and injured the Palestinian, who was taken to the Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem. The settler, on the other hand, was released under house arrest.

That evening, a hospital spokeswoman told Ma’an the Palestinian was undergoing surgery for serious wounds, but did not mention he had been run over and trapped under a car. He was transported by an Israeli ambulance, she noted.

What follows is a partial clip from Al-Jazeera. Click here for an uncut version of the same film.

Warning: contains graphic images.

The full video captures several soldiers standing by as the incident unfolds. Those who run up to the vehicle and appear to take the keys out of the ignition are armed settlers. The Palestinian is left underneath the car screaming as settlers extract the driver. Several seconds later, medics approach the injured man.

According to The Jerusalem Post, police believe the driver was David Mizrachi, an Israeli from the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba and the husband of one of the alleged stabbing victims. He may stand trial for attempted murder, the newspaper reported.

Both incidents come as tensions in settlements rise, with settlers vowing to defy recent orders to slow down certain West Bank construction. Soldiers have also shown an increasing aversion to cracking down on settler behavior, with some announcing their refusal to take part in missions that involve removing settlers from what Israeli courts determine are illegally occupied Palestinian homes or outposts.

Last fall in Hebron, dozens of soldiers were sent to evacuate the Ar-Rajabi home in Hebron, following which a rampaging settler from Kiryat Arba shot a Palestinian at almost point-blank range. The settler was briefly arrested and later released without charge.