Only Arabs are Terrorists

‘Dwayat’s actions were heinous and murderous, but was he a terrorist?’

By Kim Bullimore – The West Bank

On 2 July, Husam Taysir Dwayat, aged 30, took the bulldozer he was driving and rampaged through West Jerusalem’s Jaffa St, killing 3 people and injuring at least 66 others. Dwayat, a Palestinian Arab, who had worked for a number of years as a part of a construction team, held a Jerusalemite ID, which gave him Israeli residential rights but not Israeli citizenship. Dwayat’s murderous rampage eventually came to an end when he was shot and killed by an off duty Israeli soldier, who is now being hailed a hero. Dwayat’s actions were heinous and murderous, but was he a terrorist? Israel’s media quickly labeled him one and continues to do so, as have the majority of Israel’s political establishment including the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, the Defense Minister, Ehud Barak and the Vice Premier Haim Ramon.

In 2007, the US State Department annual Country Reports on Terrorism defined terrorism as being the “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents”[1]. For the past 6 years, this is the definition that has been consistently used by the US State Department, with the key point being that “terrorism” is politically motivate, thus distinguishing it from murder or other aggressive acts.

According to the Israeli police, however, Dwayat had no record of being involved in political activity and that the announcements by a number of previously unknown political groups claiming that Dwayat was a member were false [2]. According to the Israeli police, his family, neighbours and his Jewish ex-girlfriend, however, Dwayat did have a criminal record, including charges and arrests for drug felonies, theft and physical assault.

Dwayat’s Jewish girlfriend of six and half years, with whom he had a child, informed the Israeli media that far from hating Jews, he had never shown any ill will to Jews and had no political affiliations. In an interview with Haaretz TV online, Dwayat’s ex-girlfriend said that he “didn’t have any problems with Jews”, going on to say “I don’t think the attack had any nationalist motivations” [3]

So if Dwayat’s murderous act was not politically motivated, if he was not acting as part of a “sub national groups or clandestine agents”, why is he being labeled by the Israeli media, politicians and other state officials “a terrorist”? Why if he acted alone, in what Israeli security forces and police believe to be an unpremeditated act, is Dwayat being marked as a terrorist?

The answer is, of course, simple. Dwayat was a Palestinian Arab, so quid pro quo, he must be a terrorist. This fact and this fact alone is the reason for him being labeled a terrorist.

The anti-Arab racism in this labeling of Dwayat is clearly evident when you ask two simple questions:

(a) If the person who had carried out the bulldozer attack had been identified as Jewish would he have been automatically deemed a terrorist? The answer is almost certainly no.

(b) If the person had been a non-Jewish but also non-Arab, would he have been labeled automatically a terrorist. Again, the likely answer again would have been no.

But Dwayat was a Palestinian Arab, and a Muslim to boot. So of course, he must be a terrorist.

In the days after the murderous act, all three Israeli political leaders, raised the flags of demagoguery and popularism, attempting to out do each other calling for the collective punishment of not only Dwayat’s family but also all the Palestinian people.

On Friday, July 4, Barak ordered the Israeli security forces to issue injunctions calling for the demolition of not only Dwayat’s family home but also the family home of Alaa Abu Dhaim who carried out the attack which killed 8 students studying at Mercaz Haray Yeshiva which conducted a joint religious and military training program.

The day before, on July 3, Olmert had reiterated his call to demolish Dwayat’s family home in East Jerusalem saying “This attack which came from within Israel, into Israel. It creates a string of scenarios we never thought we would have to deal with in the past. We have invested thousands in the construction of the security fence. While it has been effective, it turns out that a fence cannot give us the answer to the problem of terror which comes from our side” [4].

Olmert went on to say that Dwayat’s family should also be stripped of any social security benefits, saying “I think we need to be tougher in some of the means we use against perpetrators of terror… If we have to destroy houses, then we must do so, if we have to stop their social benefits then we must do so. There cannot be a case where they massacre us and at the same time they get all the privileges that our society provides”

However, far from destroying the family homes of all apparent terrorists with Israeli citizenship or residency and stripping their families of Israeli social security benefits, such punitive actions are only being directed at one ethnic group – Palestinian Arabs - revealing once again both the strident anti-Arab racism of the Israeli Zionist state and its apartheid nature.

This is starkly revealed when considering the Israeli state reaction to the terrorist attack carried out three years earlier, by Eden Natan-Zada, a 19 year old Jewish soldier.

On August 4, 2005, Natan-Zada, carried out a pre-mediated terrorist attack in Shfaram in Northern Israel. The attack resulted in the murder of 4 Israeli citizens and the wounding of at least 10 others before the terrorist was killed.

Natan-Zada, who was politically opposed to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan from Gaza, was an army deserter who had sought sanctuary in the illegal Israeli settlement of Tappauch in the Occupied West Bank. Natan-Zada was a member of the illegal Israeli settler group, Kach, who are followers of the anti-Arab racist, Rabbi Meir Kahane [5]. Kach, along with Kahane Chai founded by Kahane’s son, are the only two Jewish groups listed as terrorist organisations by both the US and Israeli governments. In Israel, Kach and Kahane Chai were outlawed in 1994 after another of Kach’s members, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 Palestinian men, women and children at prayer in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Occupied Hebron.

While at the time Ariel Sharon acknowledge Natan-Zada’s act as one of terrorism, there was never any call by Sharon or Olmert or Barak (who were elected politicians at the time) or any other Israeli politician for the demolition of Natan-Zada’s family home or for his family to be stripped of any of their social security benefits, despite the young soldier’s pre-mediated and politically motivated massacre of four Israeli citizens.

One of the reasons for this can be found in the simple fact that the Israelis killed by Natan-Zada were not (European) Jews but Palestinian Arabs who held Israeli citizenship. A little over three weeks after Sharon publicly stated that Natan-Zada was a terrorist, an Israeli inter-ministerial committee in the Department of defense declared that Natan-Zada’s murderous attack was not “terrorist” because he was a serving soldier (this was despite the fact that he was an army deserter)[6]. As a result, those killed by Natan-Zada were denied not only recognition of being victims of terrorism but also their families were denied the right to ongoing state compensation, which the families of Israeli Jews killed in terror attacks receive.

Nazia Hayek, the brother of one of the four people killed by Natan-Zada said at the time that financial compensation was not their main interest as it would not bring back his brother. Instead, according to Hayek, the ruling which stated that Natan-Zada’s act was “neither terror or an act of hostility” sent a message to all extremists that “it was permissible to kill Arabs and [it] does not count as terror”[7]

Like Baruch Goldstein, Natan-Zada far from being reviled as the terrorist he clearly was, instead like Goldstein before him, he was cannonised by the Israeli right wing. While Israeli police moved quickly to remove the mourning tent erect for Dwayat by his family in the wake of the Jerusalem bulldozer attack, in the wake of Natan Zada’s murderous attack it was reported that the illegal settlement of Tappauch built a library in his honour. Similarly, Goldstein was also honoured with celebrations in his names and shrines was built in his honour (which took the Israeli police more than 6 years to remove).

In addition, unlike the solider who shot and killed Dwayat, the Palestinian Arab Israelis who neutralised Natan-Zada, killing him in order to prevent him from killing more innocent people, were not hailed heroes by the Israeli state. Instead, they have been persecuted and hounded.

In June 2008, the Israeli Haifa District Prosecution subpoenaed 12 Shfraram residents to attend a pre-trailing hearing about the 2005 killing of Natan-Zada [8]. Previously in 2006, six Palestinians with Israeli citizenship had also been arrested for the murder of Natan-Zada and held under house arrest. It was only with threats of mass rioting by the residents of Shfraram and surrounding villages and towns that they were they eventually released.

Over the past decade, numerous studies conducted by Israeli organisations have revealed increasing levels of discrimination and racism against so-called Israeli Arabs by both the Israeli state and by Jewish Israeli citizens.

In 2007, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) released a report which revealed that the incidents of anti-Arab racist attacks had increased by 26% and that the expression of anti-Arab views had doubled in the last couple of years. The poll conducted by ACRI revealed that 50% of Jewish Israelis did not believe Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights and that the Israeli government should encourage “emigration” of Palestinian Arabs from Israel. According to the poll, almost 75% of Jewish Israeli youth also believed that Palestinians and Arabs were less intelligent and less clean than Jews [9]. ACRI noted that media played a significant role in “intensifying the Arab image as negative and terrorising”. At the time of the report, Arab Knesset member, Mohammed Barakeh, from Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) said the poll was “the natural outcome” of the anti-Arab policies held by successive Israeli governments

A similar poll conducted by Geocartography Institute.in March of 2007, revealed that 75% of the 500 Jewish men and women who participated in the poll would not live in the same building as an Arab, while 60% would not allow an Arab into their home and 50% believed marrying an Arab was “national treason” [10].

The automatic declaration of Dwayat as a terrorist by Olmert, Barak and the Israeli media, simply because he was a Palestinian Arab rather then because he carried out a politically motivated act reveals that the “us” that Olmert spoke about on July 3 does not include the Palestinian Arab citizens or residents of Israel. This along with Olmert and Barak’s immediate call to conduct punitive collective punishment (which is illegal under international law) against Dwayat’s family reveals starkly the apartheid nature of the Israeli state.

If Palestinian Arabs were part of Olmert’s Israeli “us” and Israel was not engaging in widespread apartheid policies, then Dwayat would not have been automatically labeled a terrorist and the punitive policy against his family would also not been enacted, just as such punitive punishment was never enacted against the Jewish family of Eden Natan-Zada.

It seems in Israel, however, only Palestinian Arabs can be terrorists in the eyes of the Israeli Zionist state and many of its Jewish citizens.

-Kim Bullimore is currently living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where she is a human rights volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (www.iwps.info). She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit her blog: www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com.

Notes

[1] 2007 Country Reports on Terrorism, US State Department
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2007/103715.htm

[2] Haaretz service (2 July, 2008) Barak: Israel must respond immediately to Jerusalem attack, Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998330.html

[3] and [4] Haaretz, Barak orders demolition of Jerusalem, yeshiva terrorist’s homes, 4 July, 2008, Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998668.html

[5] Cook,J., (14 June, 2006) For Arabs only: Israeli law and order http://www.counterpunch.org/cook06142006.html

[6] and [7] Khoury, J., Eldar A., and Sinai, R., (30 August, 2005) MK submits bill to include Jewish attacks under terror law, Haaretz, http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=7659

[8] Raved, A., (15 July, 2008)  Haifa prosecution considering new indictments in the death of Eden Natan Zada, YNet http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3555829,00.html

[9] Israeli anti-Arab racism ‘rises’ (10 December, 2007, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7136068.stm
and
Zino,A., (8 December, 2007) Racism in Israel on the rise, YNET
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3480345,00.html

[10]Nahmais, R., (27 March 2007) Marriage to an Arab is national treason.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3381978,00.html

tarboush tip to Mazinx

You Don’t Mess with the Racism

I had wathed Adam Sandlers newest movie and for the past week or so tried to coherently justify the comedy to myself. I had a few conversations on other blogs about the stereotypes and what should and should not have been said. Poet and Blogger  Remi Kanazi wrote a piece that I feel clearly illustrates the views of most Palestinians who would watch the movie.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan , Sandler’s new flick, takes Hollywood chicanery and stereotypes that denigrate Arabs to an unprecedented level–surpassing hit flicks like the Kingdom, the Siege, and every Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris movie that came before it. I group Zohan with other shamelessly racist action movies because a film should at least be minutely funny to be categorized as a comedy. For the Sandler diehards and hilarity-loving skeptics, I should clearly state: using race and prejudices to engender laughter is not the problem. Mel Brooks and the creators of South Park exploit stereotypes far beyond anything Sandler has ever done, but unlike Zohan, I don’t think insidious propaganda and underlying racism drive their comedy. After all, if this hebetudinous clunker was just comedy, Sandler and company wouldn’t have, as the New York Times reported, sought out Arab actors to give the movie “legitimacy.” Their search was successful and a few token Arabs showed their presence to innocuously inform the public that it is okay to vilify the crazy towel-headed terrorists once again.

What makes this movie even worse than many of the unfavorable movies made post-9/11 is Zohan’s disarming presentation; it is a comedic approach to understanding the inner workings of the substandard Arab people. Like the job stealing Mexicans, the liquor store robbing Blacks, and the HIV infested gays, negative stereotypes in Zohan strip down the Arab people to RPG wielding animals that senselessly thirst for Jewish blood.

From the start of the film, Sandler’s character, Zohan, is positioned as the altruistic hero–an Israeli Mossad agent who reluctantly kills Palestinian “terrorists,” while forgoing his real dream: to cut hair in the US for Paul Mitchell. Zohan is “brave,” “lovable,” and “funny,” and even his stereotypical chauvinism is eaten up by women (and men) throughout the movie–including his eventual Palestinian love interest, Dalia.

Compounded with played out, corny penis gags, the Israeli narrative is interwoven into the fabric of the film, including propagandistic reminiscences by Zohan’s father who recalls the oft-repeated myth of being surrounded “on all sides” by powerful enemies during the Six Day War—a war in which Israel preemptively struck and dominated those “enemies.” In line with Israeli and Western intelligence, Israel won the war in six days (and five hours, as Zohan’s father dutifully reminds us)–so much for existential threats and heroic narratives. Other historical revisions include a reference in a verbal battle between a Palestinian and Israeli shop owner, in which the Palestinian proclaimed, “Give it up, like you gave up the Gaza Strip!” This biting taunt, while not as blatant as the common stereotype, infers that Israel “gave up” the Gaza Strip and further insinuates that Israel had claim to it. The “humorous” jeer glosses over the glaring reality: Israel still occupies Gaza’s borders, airspace, imports and exports, and has economically strangulated and suffocated 1.4 million Palestinians in the world’s largest open-air prison.

But rewriting history (and regurgitating jokes from 1996) is hardly the movie’s worst crime. The portrayal of Palestinians as ugly, dirty, incompetent, stupid, goat loving terrorists was jammed down the viewer’s throat more times than Zohan’s lame hummus jokes. It becomes obvious to the audience why these good looking, suave, kindhearted Israelis have to kill these evil Palestinian “terrorists”–because they hate Jews more than they hate soap. The most egregious grievance by a Palestinian “terrorist” throughout the film was the stealing of a pet goat. Israel has killed more than 4,000 Palestinians since the start of the second intifada, including nearly a 1000 children, yet the main gripe of these rabid “terrorists” is a stereotypical love for hillside animals. This “inoffensive” scenario is the equivalent of a scene in a Hollywood “comedy” made by a Palestinian filmmaker stereotypically portraying Jews as pissed off about being sent to Auschwitz because they found out that Hitler was going to make them pay for the train ride.

A particular scene in Zohan went beyond comprehension: Sandler’s casting agency rounded up a handful of children to play Palestinians throwing rocks at Zohan. What does Zohan do in response to the actions of these soon-to-be terrorists? He gleefully catches the stones and turns them into the equivalent of a balloon animal. One is supposed to toss aside any arising sensitivities and overlook the many instances Israeli snipers and soldiers have shot Palestinian children in the head or taken their eyes out with rubber bullets because of these rocks Zohan takes with a smile. The posturing of the noble and affable Mossad agent is a slick attempt to humanize Israel and make the Mossad (an outfit that has engaged in countless operations of state terrorism) look like the valiant GI Joe force in the Middle East combating jihadi thugs in the name of good. But Sandler’s character is not only a hero, he’s also a humanitarian. There are multiple scenes where Zohan informs the audience that Israelis do their best to minimize the loss of innocent Palestinian life, when an examination of the conflict by Israeli human rights organizations exposes quite the opposite.

Other stereotypes saturate the movie. The Palestinian salon that Zohan gets a job at is described as a dump, Palestinians constantly cheer for the “terrorists,” a crowd of Palestinians applaud the death of “heroic” Zohan (which he faked), and the “terrorists” are so stupid and illiterate that they purchase Neosporin instead of liquid nitrogen to make their bomb to kill Zohan. There is no distinction made between Hezbollah, Hamas, jihadists, and terrorist sexcapading sheiks. Furthermore, the film conveniently illustrates how Israelis in the US, as “fellow” natives of the Middle East, suffer the same discrimination and tribulations as Arabs in a post-911 world. Oddly, Israelis are passed off as “brown” and “other” like the Arabs in the film, yet Zohan’s parents look like European Ashkenazi Jews. Moreover, while Israelis are shown as native hummus loving Middle Easterners, Zohan’s family is portrayed distinctively differently from the backwards Arabs. Zohan’s parents are sweet, comforting, reasonable and accepting from beginning to end, not rigid like their Arab counterparts. Even when Zohan finally captures Dalia’s heart, his parents show up in America and warmly embrace their relationship without question–while Dalia and others resist the notion of a courtship between the two and tells Zohan that her family would never accept him. Ah, if only all Arabs could just get to know Israelis and see how kind, generous, and amorous they all are, the sooner we could all sit in a circle singing Kumbaya over s’mores and unfunny Zohan hummus jokes.

The worst dialogue throughout this 102 minute laughless action flick is made by Dalia (played by Emmanuelle Chriqui), Zohan’s eventual Palestinian love interest. She serves at the omnipotent propagandist—blaming the troubles of the conflict on “extremists” and “hate” on both sides. She endlessly and vaguely laments about how much “hate” there is “over there,” and describes to Zohan that things are “different here.” As any knowledgeable American knows, Palestinians and Israelis love each other here in the US; they frequently have bake sales together; they form sit-ins for blind coexistence on college campuses; and have Palestinian/Israeli karaoke nights where they sing their favorite Beatles tunes like Give Peace a Chance. What Sandler, and co-writers Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel, fail to understand is that before there was Hamas, Yasser Arafat, Fatah, the PLO, or any resistance movement, there was the dispossession of the Palestinian people, whereby 780,000 indigenous Palestinians were displaced from their homeland by Jewish gangs and terror groups. Flash forward 60 years and the Palestinian people are living in squalor in demolished towns and refugee camps enduring a 40 year occupation that strangulates their economy and diminishes any semblance of normalcy or a proper life. What we are to believe by watching this film is that if everyone would just stop “hating” (which Israelis are depicted as clearly willing to do, while Palestinians resist it vehemently) Israelis and Palestinians could effortlessly live together in harmony. But “hate” has little to do with a conflict rooted in a people’s desire for basic human rights and an end to oppression.

In the end, everything ends up happy and joyful: Zohan gets the girl, he saves the block from a conniving mall developer, and the “terrorists” stop terrorizing. But the jovial ending left a sour taste in my mouth. As nearly a dozen “nameless” Palestinians were killed by innocent and heroic Israeli soldiers last week and another report of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza went unnoticed in the US press, people were laughing all over the country at how stupid, feeble, violent and backwards Arabs are. A diehard Sandler fan proclaimed: “He’s making it for 13 year old boys. It’s Critic Proof.” That’s what scares me most of all.

 

Settlers in the West Bank don’t honor truces

Israeli security officials said Friday that students from a far-right Jewish theological seminary at a West Bank settlement recently built a crude rocket and fired it at a nearby Palestinian village, although it failed to reach its target.

The officials said troops in the area heard a loud explosion and initially thought Palestinians were attacking the settlement of Yitzhar, where the seminary is situated. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident, which occurred about two weeks ago, is still being investigated by police and agents of the Shin Bet security agency.

Police spokesman Danny Poleg said detectives searched the settlement Thursday and questioned residents but made no arrests and found no explosives. He would not comment further.

The Israeli daily Maariv, which reported the incident Friday, said police believe the perpetrator probably found rocket-making instructions on the Intern

Yitzhar is a known hotbed of ultranationalist Israelis who believe that the West Bank is part of the biblical land of Israel promised to the Jewish people by God. They oppose any concessions to the Palestinians.

An instructor at the seminary was arrested in 2006 on suspicion of inciting violence against Arabs.

Yitzhar residents have repeatedly fought farmers from the Palestinian villages that surround their hilltop settlement and have clashed with police sent to supervise demolition of unlicensed buildings in the area.

In 2006, the Israeli army withdrew troops stationed at Yitzhar for its protection, citing repeated settler attacks on soldiers and destruction of military equipment.

In other news from Yitzhar

LIVELIHOOD GOES UP IN SMOKE

Palestinian olive trees burn after being set ablaze by Israeli settlers from the Yitzhar settlement on Thursday June 19 , in the West Bank village of Burin (AFP/Getty Images)

The Neo-Nazi Israeli Thugs(settlers)

Israeli settlers from the Yitzhar settlement watch after a Palestinian olive tree field was set ablaze by a group of Jewish settlers on June 19, 2008 in the West Bank village of Burin.(AFP)

A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli settlers (unseen) from the nearby Yitzhar Jewish settlement try to set ablaze her olive tree field on June 19, 2008 in the West Bank village of Burin.(AFP)

They pay taxes but see no services

Citizens of Israel who live in the recently blocked off parts of Jerusalem are being denied basic services. It also happens that these citizens are Arab.

“We are residents of Jerusalem. We pay all the taxes, but since they surrounded us with a fence, no one is willing to come here any more. There are 40,000 people living here, and they do not receive any services - not from the city and not from the Palestinian Authority. When a house here caught fire a few days ago, we called the East Jerusalem fire department but they told us that for security reasons they cannot enter the neighborhood. If municipal employees are not willing to come the city must hire a private contractor to do the work, but no one is doing even that,”

Taxation without representation, or in this case: basic governmental services. How is it this democracy, how is this allowed. Well, Israelis responded to an article in Haaretz by calling the residents terrorists and claiming that it was the fault of the residents. This is the racism that permeates Israeli culture.

Israeli Kills Arabs, Arabs put on trial.

Eden Natan-Zada, 19, a Jewish extremist who was AWOL from the Israel Defense Forces, opened fire on Israeli Arabs in a bus in the Galilee town of Shfaram in August 2005, killing four. He was subsequently lynched by an Arab Israeli mob.The incident occured several days prior to Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip. 

12 survivors were instructed yesterday to appear before the Haifa District Court on July 13, where they will be indicted for attempted murder. Israeli’s believe that the court and prosecutor are going easy and should be trying the 12 Israeli Arabs for murder.  Most of those suspected of involvement in the attack against Natan-Zada will be charged with aggravated assault

A senior source in the State Prosecutor’s Office said yesterday that the case involves 600 testimonies from eye witnesses, and that some 60 suspects were questioned under caution. Moreover, the source said that that 12 suspects were very carefully identified as a result of the evidence.

Natan-Zada, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Tapuah and affiliated with members of the extreme right and outlawed Kach movement, had been disarmed by civilians and held on the bus.

The source at the State Prosecutor’s Office said that notwithstanding the gravity of Natan-Zada’s actions, the prosecution believes the killing was a serious violation of the rule of law.

Man kills civilians, civilians stop larger massacre, civilians become criminals. Does this logic only apply if the civilians are Arab Israelis? Let us be serious for a moment. If a man were to break into your home and kill your children and you kill this criminal before he gets to your wife are you guilty? Should you be put on trial?

A scathing condemnation of the prosecution’s decision was issued by Faiza Turki, whose daughters Dina and Hazar were killed in the shooting attack. She said that the Israeli government and the IDF should be the ones to stand trial for allowing Natan-Zada to move around freely

Hadash chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh, slammed the court’s decision to charge the suspects with any sort of crime. “The whole world knows that the citizens of Shfaram were the victims and targets of an abominable massacre,” Barakeh said. “I emphasize the need to indict those same military officials that knew of the danger of the terrorist as well those who allowed him a warm home as a army deserter.”

Balad MK Jamal Zekhelaka accused the government of blaming Israeli Arabs for their own tragedy.” Again they are blaming the victim… the police did not invest the effort to investigate what help that criminal Natan-Zada received, and is harassing those who protected themselves and prevented mass murder. If they do try these people, we won’t let it happen quietly. There will be a huge protest.”

And now a word from the Israeli public:

Eden Natan-Zada reacted to understandable frustration with the continuing Arab occupation of the Jewish homeland

What we need is to train our terrorists to have better aim

These pigs would never get convicted for murder, so the best that can be done is to put them on trial

Imprison these Arab murderers!!!

Of course the arabs would never think of a trial…to civil for them…they head right for the knife and if that is not available a rope will do. Savages behave like that….the murders were terrible and he should have been tried….the response was that of people acting like animals in the jungle…but then what can you expect.That is the difference between civility and barbarism

Those Arab lynchers are murderers plain and simple and deserve the death penalty. Shame on *newspaper name* for calling this poor Israeli a terrorist when he was a hero

 

 I guess its time for this savage to get back to his barbaric work. How uncivilized of me.

Local support for Palestine

Last night I went to an event at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center in which two locals were to convey their experiences about going to Hebron. 

When I first entered the room I could quickly tell that it was an odd group of people who were there. They appeared to be the typical tin-foil hat wearing types who at the drop of a dime would protest anything and everything. Maybe it was just me. The first person to greet me was one of the speakers that night, Mary Anne Grady Flores, and she quickly move from “Where are you from?” to “This is my mother” and “Do you speak Arabic?” Many of them were really looking forward to practicing their newly learned language skills.

As I grabbed a chair and sat down I was able to notice the demographics. The group that had assembled were almost all women and mostly over the age of 50 (I’m being nice). An older gentemen was operating the powerpoint slide show on a laptop while wearing an end the occupation tshirt. I over heard a women speaking to Mary Anne about how they smuggled two posters of ‘Palestine’ out of the region. Of course to them, the entire region was Palestine. I sat next to a Jewish woman who was eager to talk about her daughter who is now working/volunteering with the Ma’an News Agency.

The room is humid, some windows had been opened and a fan was on, but their effects were not felt until late into the presentation. Immediately before Beth Harris, an Ithaca College professor, began speaking about the fragmentation of Palestinian geography and culture the younger crowd came in. Again, mostly young women. There are almost 30 people when things get settled and it would balloon to 45 by the end. Almost all know each other, this appears to be a dedicated group.

Beth starts out with some very bad Arabic. “A lawn wah salon.” Oh I should have seen the signs. Beth mentions something about Native Americans and African Americans before quoting “The Meaning of the 4th of July for the Negro” by Frederick Douglas.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour

For a professor she seems nervous, shaking with anxiety it seems while speaking to this group of like-minded citizens. She emphasizes the fragmentation of the geographic area. I was waiting for her to use terms like apartheid and segregation, but was left wanting. She spoke of ‘Jewish only’ settlements and ‘Jewish only’ roads built in the West Bank. The information she put forth was not anything that was not known by the crowd. I was disappointed with her lack of thought, she simply repeated the same words in different order.

Mary Anne was next to speak and the religious overtones became more apparent. She had worked with the CPT - Christian Peacemaker Team. She had mentioned drinking water from “Jacob’s Well” and looked at her mother sitting directly in front of me and began to cry over her words. She obviously cares about her religion, but I was wary of her support for the Palestinian cause. As she continued it became apparent that her viewpoints were formed through a ‘love they neighbor’ type aspect. While I do not doubt that her semester in Hebron gave her a first hand view of the people, the culture and the oppression it simply came off to me as a missionary type event.

They spoke about their work with orphanages and they spoke of how they are getting their churches involved. How we should pass resolutions on the local level and how people can get involved.

They were idealists and I was not in a place to crush their dreams. They care about the causes, they care about the people they met. That in itself is more than the average citizen can claim, but sitting in that room I could not help by feel out of place.

Kidnapping Couples : Israels attempt at forced segregation

The Israeli army invaded the village of Hussan located near Bethlehem city in the southern part of the West Bank. During the invasion on Thursday morning the soldiers kidnapped a Palestinian man and his wife that is from Jewish origins.

Mohamed Hamamerh, 25, met his wife Melissa, 23, several months ago when he used to work at the settlement of Bitar Illit, an Israeli settlement built illegally on the land of Hussan village.

When the young couple decided to get married, they came to Bethlehem city were Melissa converted to Islam. They were married last month during a large wedding at Hussan village, Hamamerh’s family reported.

The settlers of Bitar Illit attacked the village of Hussan, demanding that Melissa was kidnapped and forced to get married, which the family of Hamamerh denies.

The village told media sources in Bethlehem that the settlers threatened to send the Israeli army to get Melissa out using force, which was done today. Witnesses said that the army surrounded the couple’s home and then kidnapped the two, and took them to an unknown location.

The Hamamerh family said that the settlers are using the army forces as a tool to force their son to divorce his wife.

Translated by: Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News

BBC obtains video of settlers beating shepherds

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7451691.stm

Footage from a video camera handed out by an Israeli human rights group appears to show Jewish settlers beating up Palestinians in the West Bank.

An elderly shepherd, his wife and a nephew said they were attacked by four masked men for allowing their animals to graze near the settlement of Susia.

The rights group, B’Tselem, said the cameras were provided to enable Palestinians to get proof of attacks.

A spokesman for the Israeli police said that an investigation was under way.

So far, no-one has been arrested.

Baseball bats

For the past year, B’Tselem has handed out video cameras to Palestinians as part of its “Shooting Back” project.

The Palestinians said they were attacked after refusing to move

The BBC has been given exclusive access to the footage of this particular attack, which happened earlier this week. The date and time on the camera footage shows that it is Sunday afternoon.

Over the brow of the hill walk four masked men holding baseball bats. To the right of the screen, in the foreground, stands a 58-year-old Palestinian woman.

Thamam al-Nawaja has been herding her goats close to the Jewish settlement of Susia, near Hebron in the southern West Bank.

Within a few seconds, she, along with her 70-year-old husband and one of her nephews, will be beaten up.

As the first blows land, the woman filming - the daughter-in-law of the elderly couple - drops the camera and runs for help.

‘Ten-minute warning’

Mrs Nawaja spent three days in hospital after the attack.

Returning to the small Palestinian encampment close to the red-roofed houses of Susia, she stepped slowly and unsteadily out of the minibus.

They don’t want us to stay on our land, but we won’t leave - we’ll die here Thamam al-Nawaja

A dark stain showed through the white gauze covering her broken right arm. Her veil was lifted gingerly away from her lined face. A bloodshot eye and intersection of scars revealed a fractured left cheek.

“The settlers gave us a 10-minute warning to clear off from the land,” she told me, her voice a tired, cracked whisper.

She and her husband had stood their ground. It is at this point that her voice grows louder.

“They don’t want us to stay on our land. But we won’t leave. We’ll die here. It’s ours,” she added.

Indeed, the rest of the world regards Jewish settlements in the West Bank such as Susia, as illegal, built on occupied territory.

Those settlements have been a large part of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis for the last 41 years. The daily confrontation is not often caught on camera. That, now, is beginning to change.

Video proof

The attack near Susia was filmed with one of 100 video cameras that B’Tselem has handed out to Palestinians in the region.