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Israeli police ransack homes of 40 Palestinians during al-Shaludi home demolition

Israeli police ransacked seven apartments and urinated inside one while demolishing the Silwan apartment of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, 21, the Palestinian motorist from East Jerusalem who killed a three-month old Israeli-American Chaya Zissel and one Ecuadoran tourist in a light rail attack in Jerusalem on October 22, 2014.

“They urinated on the mattresses in my brother’s apartment,” says Enas al-Shaludi, 43, the mother of the deceased driver. “You can see the urine on the mattresses.” In addition to the demolition, which the family  expected after receiving a demolition order last Friday, all of the other apartments in the four-story residential building were raided. The residents were evacuated overnight to a flimsy plastic tarp tent across the street.

Blown out windows of the apartment of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi. (Photo: Allison Deger)
Blown out windows of the apartment of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi. (Photo: Allison Deger)
Relatives of Abdel al-Shaludi assess the interior of his home, demolished by explosives. (Photo: Allison Deger)
Relatives of Abdel al-Shaludi assess the interior of his home, demolished by explosives. (Photo: Allison Deger)
Enas al-Shaludi in her living room, hours after Israeli authorities demolish her son's home and ransack hers. (Photo: Allison Deger)
Enas al-Shaludi in her living room, hours after Israeli authorities demolish her son’s home and ransack hers. (Photo: Allison Deger)

Just before midnight on Tuesday evening scores of Israeli border police arrived outside of Enas al-Shaludi’s house. Her apartment is on the floor below where her son and three grandchildren lived. “At one o’clock in the morning they [border police] came and took all of the families and all of the people in this building and the next building. They moved us out to the tent, maybe 50 or more people, there,” she explains. The neighbors, all from the al-Shaludi family waited overnight while police affixed incendiary devices to the ceilings of the destroyed apartment.

Enas al-Shaludi waited outside in the cold from 1:00 am to 5:00 am as border police conducted searches throughout the building. When the family returned they found shards of glass everywhere. Children’s bedroom furniture was overturned and broken, toys and clothes littered broken wardrobes. In many of the rooms, not even a centimeter of floor was visible because of the piles of dumped personal items. The building resembled that of Amer Abu Aisha and Marwan Qawasmeh, the two accused abductors and killers of three Israeli settlers last June from a hitchhiking spot in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem. In that case, the Israeli army demolished a unit in each of the buildings with explosives, and trashed all of the other apartments with hammers.

“When they demolished, with the bomb, I felt like I can’t stand on my legs. Until now I can’t stand,” sys Enas al-Shaludi seated from a sofa in what was once her living room. A hutch in her hallway is cracked. Her bedroom is unusable. She is planning to spend the night with other relatives, once the paralysis of shock faded and she was able to walk again.

“The other houses, you can see inside all of the bathrooms, everything. They broke many doors, glass and windows throughout the building,” says Abdel Karim al-Shaludi, 62, a relative of the family and engineer who came his Shuafat home to view the aftermath shortly after sunrise. Droves of relatives and neighbors gathered after daybreak to help assess the damage. Peering at concrete rubble that lined the floor of al-Shaludi’s one-time home, Karim al-Shaludi laments, “I feel that this situation will push the people.” For him, if his nephew’s home is demolished than so too should the house of the confessed Jewish-Israeli killer of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year old youth from Jerusalem who was kidnapped and then burned to death last June.

Abdel Karim al-Shaloui stands in the former salon of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi's apartment, hours after Israeli authorities demolish it by explosion. (Photo: Allison Deger)
Abdel Karim al-Shaloui stands in the former salon of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi’s apartment, hours after Israeli authorities demolish it by explosion. (Photo: Allison Deger)
Apartment of Enas al-Shaludi, mother of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi. (Photo: Allison Deger)
Apartment of Enas al-Shaludi, mother of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi. (Photo: Allison Deger)
house.07
(Photo: Allison Deger)
(Photo: Allison Deger)
(Photo: Allison Deger)

Since al-Shaludi’s October 22, 2014 attack in Jerusalem, the family home has been a site of clashes with police and is now the first case of Israel’s return to a regular use of punitive home demolitions for Palestinians thought to have committed nationalistic crimes against Israeli citizens. Netanyahu announced on Sunday the policy would return in earnest after the military said they would abandon the practice in 2005.

On the street just below al-Shaludi’s flat, mounds of concrete crushed a parked car. The explosion shot the cement bindings out to the street.

Back up in the destroyed al-Shaludi apartment, Fadi, a 13-year-old cousin of the deceased, regains his footing inside the blown out home. It’s the third demolished house he has seen belonging to a member of his family. When asked how many demolished homes he’s visited in his East Jerusalem neighborhood, he thinks for a moment, and then settles on “a lot. Maybe eight.”

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RE: Peering at concrete rubble that lined the floor of al-Shaludi’s one-time home, Karim al-Shaludi laments, “I feel that this situation will push the people.”

MY COMMENT: The motivation for one recent attack in Jerusalem may have been revenge for the Israeli authorities having just demolished the house of a relative.*

SEE: “US condemns terrorist home demolition directive”, timesofisrael.com, November 13, 2014
State Department calls controversial practice ‘collective punishment’ after Netanyahu reinstates policy

[EXCERPT] The US government condemned Thursday the scheduled demolition of homes belonging to Palestinians who carried out terror attacks in Israel, with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki contending that such a move amounted to collective punishment and would only heighten tensions in the region.

Psaki’s statement came hours after the Home Front Command issued an order to demolish the home of the Palestinian man who carried out a terrorist attack in central Jerusalem in August.

The terrorist, East Jerusalem resident Muhammed Naif El-Ja’abis, was shot dead by police shortly after running over and killing a pedestrian and ramming his stolen excavator into a bus. Following the excavator attack, security officials told Channel 2 news that Ja’abis may have been motivated to carry out the attack by revenge, after his cousin’s home was demolished by Israeli authorities a short while earlier.

In light of the surging violence in Jerusalem and across the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the full reinstatement of a policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinians who perpetrate terror attacks against Israelis, during an emergency cabinet meeting last week. The policy had rarely been implemented in the past ten years. . .

ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-condemns-terrorist-home-demolition-directive/

so now they bomb the houses of innocents in Jerusalem, too. and then the uniformed human animals urinate on a mattress to add further insult.

your pictures are haunting– but the one of the mom has haunted me since I saw it earlier today, and her words, “When they demolished, with the bomb, I felt like I can’t stand on my legs. Until now I can’t stand,”, do too.

I am sorry for the loss of Mohammed Siam~ RIP little child. I read about it yesterday, Allison, and remember your story here:

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/jerusalem-hospital-children

Surely this is a Holy Land, and Jerusalem is the holiest of holies within this land – doesn’t trashing apartments and pissing on mattresses desecrate that holiness and insult the divinity that supposedly resides there? Increasingly one can only regard the state of Israel as suffering fro Tourette’s Syndrome (“an inherited neuro-psychiatric disorder with onset in childhood characterised by multiple motor and phonic disorders”.) Unfortunately there is no cure, but certain therapies prove helpful: ” Education is an important part of any treatment plan, and explanation and reassurance alone are often sufficient treatment”. Keep up the good work Mondoweiss!

Hopefully these disgusting images will one day put these perpetrators of war crimes behind bars with their leaders.Collective punishment is a war crime .Maybe they will urinate on their own beds and be forced to endure the smell of their own p–s.And maybe the prison guards will regularily toss their their cells and dump them out in the cold for hours.

One can live in hope.

It is hard for me to understand the level of contempt with which the Israelis Jews view the Palestinians. I cannot understand this degree of hatred for other human beings. Why do they feel no compassion towards other people ?

I remember reading about how the Jewish Germans were treated by their compatriots in the period leading up to WW11 and I remember having this same feeling of dismay at how ordinary people could come to hate so much people, who in most ways, other than religion, were just like them.

This is what appals me most, how ordinary people can be indoctrinated so much as to hate others who are essentially their brothers and sisters. It’s a sad reflection on the evolution of human consciousness and bodes ill for the future of mankind on planet earth.