Robert Mackey at the New York Times Lede blog has the story behind the video above. It is security camera footage of Israeli border police killing 17-year-old Mohammed Salayme at a Hebron checkpoint on December 12th. The Israeli military released a version of the video on December 17, and it was clear it had been edited. Allison Deger wondered at the time what had been edited out? Now we know.
Mackey:
On Wednesday, a correspondent for Israel’s Channel 10 uploaded what appears to be unedited video of the encounter at the checkpoint to his personal YouTube channel. According to the correspondent, Roy Sharon, the security-camera footage, which includes 19 seconds omitted from the edit posted on an Israeli military channel last week, was “raw material provided by the I.D.F. Spokesperson’s unit.”
The longer version displays a time stamp indicating that it was recorded on Dec. 12, from 8:09 p.m. to 8:10 p.m. The unedited recording includes about 14 seconds that was cut from the middle of the version released by the military last week and another five seconds that was trimmed from the end of the encounter.
The newly released video of the end of the incident appears to show that the Israeli officer fired at least three shots at the Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Salameh, after he had already retreated from the officer he had been fighting with when the first shot was fired. The officer’s final shot, which was omitted entirely from the military’s edited version, looks to have been fired from some distance, after the boy had doubled over, perhaps from the impact of the earlier shots. The boy was not close to any of the Israeli officers visible in the footage.
Here is the edited version the Israeli military released on December 17:
When assessed honestly, the word “murder” applies.
Think anyone will be punished??? I mean, after all, it was just a Palestinian, whats the big deal?
1. Now that this second video has appeared, it’s clear that the time and date in the first were airbrushed. It was also zoomed-in for some reason. Why did Israeli authorities find it necessary to airbrush the time and date on that video?
2. From the start, the female, clearly identifiable by the long hair, points the gun at the alleged Palestinian. Meanwhile, two — presumable — males attempt to subdue him. She, however, continues to shoot at the alleged civilian. Why didn’t she attempt to use physical force like her male colleagues and instead resorted to deadly force?
One can speculate, but this incident reminds me of the fear-induced racism that used to — and to some degree continues to — be directed at black males in the US. Protect your white females lest the black savages get them and rape them goes the racist trope. So it’s no wonder that a woman had the civilian in her gun sights from the very beginning for he, too, was a threat, not immediately, but certainly in the grand scheme of things. Much like the “Demographic Threat” and the threat that Gazan babies pose when they could very well grow up to become terrorists — as Israeli officials have often stated over and over, or the rabbis who have warned Jewish females of the menace of befriending or marrying Palestinian males. Heck, even NPR managed to produce a short report about what are known in Jewish Jerusalem as Decency Patrols. Meanwhile, her male colleagues were content with physical force instead.
It should also be noted that if the civilian is the same teenager in question, then he is hardly the muscular and physically threatening individual who would be seen as a threat to a female soldier of presumably smaller physique.
But this entire discussion is pointless, not because it will be difficult to determine what really took place that day, but because Israel’s track record of murdering innocent Palestinians is simply appalling. And even if, for the sake of argument, one assumed that the civilian was the culprit and was acting in a manner that justified his shooting, the thousands of well-documented cases of Israeli murder, assault, rape and mayhem are an overwhelming indictment of Israel’s criminality and violations of both international law, common decency and morality.
Any Hasbarists here care to revise their previous comments?
This is the problem with Israel. It gets caught out lying every time.
Retreating?
I see the youth moving away only after the initial shot fired by the officer.
But more important, Adam, you’ve omitted mention of the shiny gun from your report. That shiny thing in the kid’s hand from the first attack on the checkpoint soldier’s neck right through the entire assault and shooting.
BTW. As I see things, there was no ‘Israeli provocation’ edited out of the film clip, as suggested by Mondoweiss earlier.
Obsidian
“I see the youth moving away only after the initial shot fired by the officer” and then all the other shots… after he’d moved away … see them did you?
“But more important, Adam, you’ve omitted mention of the shiny gun from your report. That shiny thing in the kid’s hand”
Frame number?
” on the checkpoint soldier’s neck right through the entire assault and shooting”
Frame numbers ?
Say, can you see the soldier standing next to the settler as he shoots a Palestinian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ZVGJrIB3E
Armed settlers are a valid military target, deserving of more than stones, which they could have walked away from BTW
“As I see things, there was no ‘Israeli provocation’”
Of course of course…. Ever wonder what might have been said in order to provoke such an immediate reaction? Or can your super hearing tell us it was only kind words?