27th October 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Acts of injustice done
between the setting and the rising sun
In history lie like bones,
each one. – W. H. Auden, from “The Ascent of F6″
Today marks one year since the murder of a young man outside the ISM apartment in Tel Rumeida, occupied al-Khalil (Hebron).
The shooting of the 23-year-old at 10:30 at night was followed less than 24 hours later by another blast of gun fire, when a young man was shot by Israeli army personnel beneath our lounge room windows, in full sight of my colleague. The two men, it was identified in the following hours, were Hummam Adnan al-Saeed and Islam Rafiq Hammad Ibeido.
At the time, I was among the nine or so internationals working with ISM in the face of increasingly targeted restrictions on our solidarity work in the H2 areas of al-Khalil (under full Israeli control). This was to be exacerbated just days after the murders by the declaration of the Closed Military Zone across Tel Rumeida and the surrounding district, which culminated in our eviction from the neighbourhood and a series of impossible, arbitrarily renewed military orders upon the Palestinian residents, which have continued to this day.
—A historical irony of numbered identities
The deaths of these two young men were among 70 extrajudicial executions of Palestinians across the occupied territories and 1948 historical Palestine which occurred during my short two months’ stay, the overwhelming majority of which were of men and women in their late teens or early twenties, and in circumstances where the evidence against their alleged attacks were so insurmountable, it would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.
Since leaving the West Bank, I have watched the occurrences of these executions only sky-rocket. In the customary fashion of geopolitics with regard to Palestine, this has been met with: persistent outrage, suffering and at once steadfast and tired resistance by Palestinians; ongoing condemnation by rights organisations across the world; meagre intermittent mention by the UN; and velvet-gloved, rare, tokenistic slap-on-the-wrist rhetoric by the USA, followed by a fistful of $38bn in support. The situation hasn’t changed.
The current estimates of Palestinians to be killed in this way now number over 200, with more than 230 Palestinians being killed in total and at least 18, 000 injured in the past year. Meanwhile, the “Third Intifada” outpouring of frustration and rage through mass demonstrations and actual stabbing and car attacks, taking the lives of 34 Israelis – the supposed excuse for such blatant disregard for due process of law – are decreasing.
What remains are socialised, cultural and new legal precedents of emboldening Israeli military, civilian and illegal settler populations to act as judge, jury and executioner, with the horrifying consequence of both hysterical and calculated instances of murder with complete impunity. On the rare occasions when there has been a Palestinian witness able and willing to face the very real danger of publicly disputing the discourse of a “pre-emptive” “neutralisation” of a “terrorist,” [from an Israeli police spokesperson in regard to the murder of 17-year-old Dania Irsheid] their voices very rarely make it into the mass media.
This is what foreign conflicts look like:
Remote.
When the terms ethnic cleansing and genocide are used by ISM to relay internationals’ interpretation of Israeli policy and the tenets of popular Zionism, it is often met with criticism, abuse, and scepticism, even amongst supporters of Palestine. I’ve found a distance between my interpretations and many would-be supporters, finding it near impossible to capture the ubiquitousness of the occupation and the dynamics of apartheid, shy of having actually being there or in a comparable situation. To use a word so historically associated with the holocaust, in which millions of Jewish people were murdered, is considered inappropriate, disproportionate and insensitive. Yet, the brazen murders of Hummam and Islam stand out to me as an iceberg tip symptom of contemporary Israeli state-sanctioned racism, and the extent to which the lived experience of ethnic cleansing has come to be normalised if not expected of the region.
They were part of a generation who have grown up entirely under the gunpoint of Zionism and their deaths are treated like history’s collateral.
On the ground, what one comes to both expect and desensitise to is a rigorous psychological warfare of oppression, humiliation and state-sanctioned terrorism. This predominantly presents itself in the physicality of checkpoints, the vast concrete wall and settlers with M-16’s. However, more insidiously and equally damaging is also the stop-and-spread body searches, the crippling bureaucracy of arbitrary permits to access food crops, night raids where children viscerally learn the meaning of insecurity, and superhero fathers are emasculated by teenage soldiers emboldened with righteousness and immunity. And then what of the psychology of the kindergartners who anticipate tear gas en route to school and are excluded from streets where metres away, settler children live illegally in stolen houses backed up by the full weight of an internationally supported state? These things which are happening in Palestine, when “nothing is happening” (From a speech by Steven Salaita at the Israeli Apartheid Week opening event, London, 2016): ethnic cleansing and genocide in slow motion.
This period of “increased tensions,” beginning around the stabbing attacks by Muhannad Halabi and the shooting of unarmed 18 year old Hadeel al-Hashlamon, only a few hundred meters from where Islam and Hummam would perish a month later, marks but moments where these policies become visible. Moments where the applicability of the 2nd Article of the United Nations Convention on Genocide: “(a) Killing…with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” cannot be denied. Islam and Hummam’s deaths were among five days of executions in a row that we reached in the H2 suburbs of Hebron. For the other three, Dania Irsheid, 17, murdered at the Ibrahimi mosque checkpoint, Saad Youssef al-Atrash, 19, murdered many metres from a checkpoint, searching for his Identity Card, and Mahdi Ramadan al-Muhtasib, 23, shot from close range whilst incapacitated near Salaymeh Checkpoint, whilst Palestinian voices testified to their innocence, Israeli forces wrote a historical record of benign, thinly defended silences and double-speak. All medical treatment was denied.
These deaths make visible the current expansionist Zionist agenda – to follow with the UN definition: “(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…” Where perhaps for a minute the international community pays attention to the fact that a modern colonial state feels emboldened enough to shoot at ambulances and beat medical staff in the full light of day.
When these realities were brought to a place we had slept in and worked from, the soldiers, the same men who checked our passports and performed countless body searches in front of us, we tasted the sharp edge of genocide up close: ugly. Terrifying. A science-fiction like erasure of lives followed by settlers playing festive music on the site. Maybe you won’t believe me. It happened. I haven’t found a place for it.
These are the bones of history. They have names and dates of birth, and classmates who keep an empty seat for them.
It is not lost on me that the death of a man named Islam did not make it onto the news in my home country. It is not lost on me that Islam and Hummam have been written into the dominant record as terrorists while the men who murdered them have returned to their families. It is not lost that the streets of al-Khalil have the words “Gas the Arabs” graffitied on its walls, or that the Convention on Genocide was written in 1948 in the dying spectre of WWII, and only became accessible for accession by Palestine in 2014, along with Palestinians’ first official, theoretical access to the protections of international law.
“Gas the Arabs” spray-painted by settlers from the illegal settlements
“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.” – Orion, the ISM activist who witnessed Islam’s shooting.
And for the families of these victims, people I never got to meet, people who were not able to bury their children until 2 months later, when their bodies were “released” by Israeli authorities amid 21 others bodies, they are still there. And I cannot imagine the insurmountable suffering of their past year, or their compounded grief of life under occupation.
May their lives be remembered for who they really were, and their deaths be called for what they were.
24th October 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On Monday morning, infamous Israeli settler Anat Cohen attacked a group of school-children harvesting olives near their school in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron). She then ordered the soldier to not only evict the students and teachers from the area, but assist in her attack.
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A group of scout students was helping Palestinian families, picking olives for them next to the Qurtuba school on Shuhada Street. Immediately after the group started picking the olives, a soldier from the nearby Daboya checkpoint came to order them not to pass the fence when harvesting, but allowing them to harvest the olives, as long as they don’t cross the fence.
Only a short time after, he came back, this time with infamous settler Anat Cohen. Anat Cohen has at many times attacked the school-students, teachers and families in this area, always with complete impunity. She makes no difference between elderly, children, men or women, and deliberately attacks Palestinians for the sole fact of them being Palestinians, and also internationals supporting them. She is well-known for those vicious attacks and insults, many of which were caught on camera. Despite this video-evidence, she is always showered with the unwavering protection and support from the Israeli soldiers and civil police, and thus enjoys complete impunity for her crimes.
As the soldier came back together with Anat Cohen, he suddenly ordered the students and teachers to stop harvesting immediately – orders that obviously came straight from Anat Cohen, who was standing right behind him. This is just another example of soldiers acting directly on the orders of the settlers from the illegal settlements, without any interest at all for the law or human rights. Even when Anat pushed a teacher, the soldier refused to intervene or arrest her, and instead threatened to arrest the teacher. The teachers tried to reason with the soldier, telling him that he allowed them to harvest before, and now clearly takes his orders from Anat, and assured him that they would leave if he has an official order stating that the harvest in this area is not allowed. As a reply, the soldier that communicated just fine in English before, suddenly stated that he does not speak any English. The soldier proceeded to grab, push and pull students himself, all the while Anat was cursing and harassing the group. He then pulled a student, that was held up to reach the olives by the director of Qurtuba school, almost causing him to fall down from great height.
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This is just another in a string of attacks of Anat, for which she never has to feel any consequences. This impunity provided for by the Israeli army and civil police only emboldens her in her vicious attacks. The collaboration between the Israeli forces and settlers, together against the Palestinian civilian population of the area is obviously geared towards the ehtnic cleansing of this area, in order to instead create a ‘sterile’ continous illegal settlement.
24th October 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Imagine being an eight-year old boy, walking to school,
and as you come close, close to the roadblock you have to pass every day,
army jeeps are everywhere, blocking the roadblock and the gate.
You have to squeeze past the jeeps on one side, or squeeze between the two,
just to pass the roadblock, just one of the obstacles installed by Israeli forces,
as an everyday reminder that you’re the occupied, the ‘less human’,
the people the occupying army is trying so hard to displace.
Your only fault: being born Palestinian.
Or the boy, that lives near the settlement, used to the ubiquitous presence,
of settlers from the nearby illegal settlement, built on your family land,
of heavily-armed occupying soldiers, with the only duty to protect the settlers.
The military tower on top of your family home, your ‘safe place’,
a daily reminder of the vicious occupation.
Your only fault: being born Palestinian
Growing up under occupation, nothing is normal.
Everything is normal. A foreign army waking you up at night,
the day before an important exam, dragging your brother away,
into the dark of the night. Normal.
Normal is not normal, unnormal is normal. Occupation is ‘normal’.
Given this normalcy, on the way to school, two dozens soldiers,
army jeeps and military gates blocking the way. Normal.
Happily walking to school, looking forward to meet friends.
Your only fault: being born Palestinian
Imagine being a first-grader, the way to school, scary.
Settlers from the illegal settlements, they’ve already beaten up your big brother.
His fault: being born Palestinian,
daring to play outside his own home on a Jewish holiday.
The ever present occupying army: watching. Preventing an ambulance to reach your brother.
“No Palestinian cars on this road”.
With many settlers and soldiers on the street, the way to school seems impossible to do.
The way to school, just two minutes, suddenly seems like an hour.
Still standing in the door, unsure whether the way is do-able today.
All the army presence – leaving as soon as the first tunes of the national anthem sound,
marking the start of the school-day. The army presence, just for intimidation?
To intimidate school-children, on their way to school,
to achieve an education despite the occupation.
The national anthem, sounding the resistance, the steadfastness of the Palestinian people.
Sounding the illegallity of the Israeli land-theft, blatant human rights violations and war crimes.
Sounding the unwillingness of the Palestinians to be de-humanised, destroyed, dissapeared.
For generations, stones have played a significant role in both Palestinian society and within resistance movements. For this reason, it should be no surprise that the Israeli state has historically targeted the use of stones in a variety of ways, and continues to today.
The significance of stones within the Palestinian context is deeply-rooted. For centuries stones and boulders have been used across Palestine in agricultural lands to give structure and strength to the soil holding the olive and fruit trees that feed and sustain Palestinian society. Homes in many areas of Palestine are also built from these materials which are of the earth, of the land that is so sought after by imperialist powers. The connection between physical home, and homeland is grounded partially in the stones of the earth.
Within Palestinian resistance movements, stones have played a crucial role. They are often used to barricade roads from Israeli military jeeps entering Palestinian areas. In the first Intifada, masses of Palestinians took to the streets to fight the Israeli occupation and colonial forces using the only ‘weapon’ available to them: stones. Perhaps one of the most iconic photos from the first intifada was that of a young boy throwing a stone at a monstrous military jeep with precision and purpose. These practices extended through the Second Intifada and into today, as we continue to see children and youth fighting for their communities against Israeli colonial and violent practices, with stones.
Israeli soldiers entered the Palestinian market roads in Al Khalil Friday, met with a front of stones.
Last Friday in Al Khalil, seven Israeli soldiers came through the Palestinian market roads; a nearly daily practice and demonstration of Israeli entitlement. It seems to have become normalized in many ways as a part of living under Israeli occupation. But some days, like this past Friday, it is met with a statement of strength that reflects a history of Palestinian liberation movements. A handful of Palestinian children from ages eight to ten, defended their streets with stones in hand. The soldiers, suited up in helmets and military gear including their ever present M-16s, seemed to laugh at the front the young boys held. But in the end, the soldiers left. These few boys, with so much righteous anger and frustration, held their ground, and fought for their community in a small, but powerful show of resistance.
One day prior to this in Beit Ummar, a village in northern Al Khalil, yet another Palestinian youth, Khalid Bahr Ahmad Bahr, 15, was shot and killed by Israeli forces for alleged rock throwing. According to Ma’an News, Bahr became the 235th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers since a wave of violence spread across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel in October 2015.
The sobering number of Palestinians killed are what you might expect when you look at the policies supported by the Israeli parliament, such as the shoot-to-kill measure introduced in September of 2015, legally allowing the use of live-fire against Palestinian protestors. This tactic has been common practice, but like so many other unconscionable Israeli policies, has now been ushered into legal practice under the occupying state. This measure has been used by the Israeli government continuously over the past year as a rationalization for the unjustifiable killings taking place in large numbers, including against youth who participate in throwing stones.
These intentions are further echoed in the policies around arrests and imprisonment for stone throwing. Palestinians can be imprisoned for up to twenty years if charged with throwing stones with intent to harm. The testimony of one soldier is all that the Israeli court often deem necessary to charge and sentence Palestinians for throwing stones, whether or not this actually took place, and with no regards to if anyone was harmed in the process. The absurdity of a sentence such as this is not only used as a tactic to imprison thousands of Palestinians, often children and youth, but is targeting the symbolism of resistance that continues to drive Palestinians fighting for freedom, fighting for liberation, and fighting for their homeland.
Each stone thrown today, holds the significance and weight of each thrown before it. As Israeli colonialism continues to spread, the stones of the earth continue to build a foundation for Palestinian resistance to stand on. They have acted as this from the beginning of the occupation and will continue to for as long as the oppressive policies of the Israeli state persist.
