“We don’t shoot women”, a Lieutenant in the Israeli army said yesterday, when asked why they shot a Norwegian activist in Kafr Qaddum Saturday last week, shortly before shooting her again.
Israeli activist Matan Cohen posted this exchange and occurrence yesterday on his Facebook with photos from the scene.
This time Kristin was not shot in the abdomen, but in the foot, by a rubber-coated steel bullet. I was alerted to Kristin’s injury by her Facebook update from the clinic:
“Went back to Kufur Quaddum to show that solidarity, is stronger than fear! Very nervous though, so kept right at the back, up against the wall. Thought I was safe-ish. But they shot me again!! The protest has been on for 2 minutes. Israeli activists at the front talking to the soldiers earlier… so yeah… I just go shot twice in a week…”
It was deja-vu. Again I called Kristin, again we talked on Messenger while she was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, on that long and winding bypass road which the Kafr Qaddum residents are forced to drive on, because their access to the main road leading to Nablus had been barred, to serve the Jewish settlement of Kedumim (typical Hebrewization of the Arabic name) and other settlers.
The settlement is the cause of the regular demonstrations in the village since 2011. Kristin was sitting in front of a man who had been shot in the back of the head by a rubber-coated bullet. This ammunition can be lethal. Ahed Tamimi’s cousin, 15-year-old Mohammed, was struck in the head by one of these bullets in December, and only miraculously survived. Kristin tells me that the man who brought her to the clinic was himself shot in the head by a rubber-coated steel bullet a few months ago, which caused him blindness in one eye and made him unable to shut his jaw.
But the lieutenant said that “we don’t shoot women”, and we already know that to be a brazen lie, if it were only for Kristin’s own video from last week, where she was clearly targeted while posing no danger whatsoever and with hands in the air.
Kristin’s story from yesterday was voiced in Norwegian press (here, here), and here the Israeli Ambassador to Norway, Dan Poraz, was continuing the hasbara shamelessly:
“I don’t know the details in this case. I must say that it is impressive to be shot for a second time within few days. What we know is that the first time she was shot, she was part of a violent demonstration. She has no doubt provoked. Soldiers do not shoot without a reason, even if Kristin Foss tries to say they do”.
Let’s just try to dissect that, shall we?
“I don’t know the details in this case” – Poraz doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about, but that doesn’t bar you from disseminating boilerplate hasbara, just press the ‘on’ button and you’re good.
“I must say that it is impressive to be shot for a second time within few days” – oh, it’s “impressive”, huh? Is it impressive that soldiers do that? It’s not like she was threatening them in any way. It’s not impressive – it’s shameful.
“What we know is that the first time she was shot, she was part of a violent demonstration.” No, what we know is that the first time she was shot, she was violently and deliberately targeted by an Israeli soldier, while posing absolutely no danger – as we saw in the video.
“She has no doubt provoked” – and how do you know this, Poraz? After all, you do not know the details of the case, and we have no evidence of it. But you assume it, it’s safe to assume. After all, solidarity with Palestinians is in itself provocative…
“Soldiers do not shoot without a reason, even if Kristin Foss tries to say they do.” Well, this is really taking things far. I mean, I know Netanyahu said that “our soldiers are not murderers” just before and just after Elor Azarya shot Abdel Fattah al Sharif in the head at point-blank range in 2016, when the reason was that “he needed to die”. And I know it’s not always a lethal shot, like when the Israeli snipers shot the motionless unarmed Palestinian protester across the Gaza fence, filmed it and celebrated, on which occasion Defense Minister Lieberman thought they should get a medal for their military action. But still, to assume that Israeli soldiers never shoot without a reason? Oh, sure, there’s always a reason, but what kind of reason? Have you seen Kristin’s video of last week?
As she wrote on Facebook yesterday:
when in Palestine, you get shot, it fuxking hurts, but you get up again… everyone has been shot at some point …. And 9 people got shot today. Including an 8 year old. And a man to his head. They are ok too. Hope they are also with friends!
Foss has begun posting some of the videos from the scene. In this one, filmed just a few minutes before she was shot the second time, she is standing at the spot where she was shot. She notes how the demonstration hadn’t even begun, and the Israeli soldiers had already invaded the village. An Israeli activist, Shaul Hanuka, goes up to speak with the soldiers. She notes that the Israeli activists are “somewhat protected by their nationality”, but that a few weeks ago an Israeli activist got shot in the buttocks. “Nothing is sacred, nothing is sacred if you oppose the occupation of Palestine,” she concluded – and then got shot.
Indeed, Foss’s nationality is not helping her either. It has been part of the point of the International Solidarity Movement of which Kristin is a part, to provide some protection for Palestinian people who are otherwise hardly shielded from Israeli criminality. But the Norwegian Government has been very quiet and is apparently fine with the Israeli “explanations”, which hasbara literally is.
Shame on the Norwegian government.
Shame on the rest of the governments that do nothing when their kind, determined, and peaceful activists get beaten, tasered, incarcerated, interrogated, wounded, killed by the IOF and the GOI. ISM is comprised of good human beings who give of themselves to try and protect the Palestinian people from their brutal Occupiers and their illegal settlers.
I saw this today:
… “Four activists from the Israeli-Palestinian anti-occupation group Ta’ayush were attacked Saturday in the South Hebron Hills. The activists were documenting illegal construction in the unauthorized Jewish outpost of Mitzpe Yair.
According to the Israeli police, settlers are suspected of the attack and an investigation is accordingly being opened. The activists were evacuated to Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, suffering from bruised ribs, arms and ankles. …”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-settlers-attack-left-wing-activists-filming-illegal-construction-in-wb-1.6412546
~~~and~~~
“Israeli Arabs Say Assaulted by Eight Men Who Asked if They Were Arabs …
Police on Saturday arrested a suspect who was allegedly among a group that attacked three Israeli Arabs, reportedly after asking whether they were Arabs.
A resident of the Arab-majority city of Shfaram said that on Thursday, he and two friends were assaulted at a beach in Haifa’s Kiryat Haim neighborhood.
The eight assailants were armed with chains, sticks, and knives, one of the men, who asked to be identified by the initial M., who is a resident physician at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, told Haaretz. According to M., a man approached him and two friends on the beach and asked if they were Arabs. After M. confirmed that they were, the man walked away and called the police, telling them that he felt threatened, M. said.
M. quoted the attackers as saying that Arabs should not be at the beach and that they should go to their “own places.” He could not recall how long the assault lasted, which he said only stopped when two Jewish passersby approached to assist the three men. “I thought one of my friends was dead,” M. recounted. “They beat his head and he wasn’t responding.” The passersby called police and emergency services, he said. …”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-arab-my-friends-and-i-were-assaulted-for-being-arabs-1.6412456
Some of MW wonderful contributers served with ISM. I have the greatest respect for their service. It’s truly a miracle that Kristin Foss is still alive to tell her story after being shot twice by the IOF. How is the 8 yr old child and the man who was shot in the back of his head?
How is it possible that the governments remain silent and complicit with this violent apartheid ‘state’? Why hasn’t Norway kicked Dan Poraz out? Here’s what he said wrt to the seizure of the Karstein that is a Norwegian vessel:
…”The Israeli Embassy in Oslo denied the accusations.
“It’s actually exactly the opposite: The ones that were acting against international law were those activists who were attempting to breach an internationally recognized legal naval blockade over the Gaza Strip,” Dan Poraz, a diplomat at the embassy, told AFP.
“There was definitely not a use of excessive violence. There was use of a minimal and reasonable amount of force simply because the crew members … were reluctant to cooperate and to follow orders from the [Israeli] navy,” he added.
Meanwhile, Norway has yet to receive an answer from Israel to shed light on the incident.
“We’ve asked the Israeli authorities to clarify the course of events and on what basis they think they are entitled to intervene on the ship,” Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Frode Andersen told AFP in an email. …”
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2018/Aug-03/458904-captain-of-seized-norwegian-ship-accuses-israel-of-breaking-law.ashx?utm_source=Magnet%26utm_medium=Entity%20page%26utm_campaign=Magnet%20tools
How about doing your job, Frode? Where’s the follow- up??? What about your citizen who has been shot twice by the IOF? Do you care at all?
Thank you, Jonathan. All the best healing thoughts to you, Kristin Foss. Thank you for your service.
Although, he added, if we encounter them in the dark, without witnesses and cameras, there’s no telling what price we might collect from them.
‘We don’t shoot women’, medics, children, the elderly, pregnant woman, babies….oh, wait a minute, yes we do. There’s literally nothing stopping us either.
@Marnie
‘We don’t shoot women’, medics, children, the elderly, pregnant woman, babies….oh, wait a minute, yes we do”
You forgot defenceless American navy personnel = USS Liberty. No you are quite right they don`t shoot them – they fire rockets at them , drop napalm bombs on them and fire torpedos at them.
The USS Liberty incident was an accident. The CIA and the Joint Chief of Staffs and all investigations into the incident concluded that it was an accident. Israel first reported that the ship was Egyptian and that is why they attacked the ship. It was in the middle of the Six Day War, so a ton of confusion was going around as that happens during war time. It was only a day before that an Egyptian ship launched attacks against Israel from the coast. The U.S announced a few days earlier that it had no naval forces within hundreds of miles of the battle front to the U.N. The US tried messaging the Liberty to not approach within 100 miles of the fighting, but those messages were never received by the Liberty, so the Liberty kept going and got too close. Once Israel realized what it had done they reported the incident to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and offered to provide a helicopter for the Americans to fly out to the ship and any help they required to evacuate the injured and salvage the ship. The offer was accepted and a U.S. naval attaché was flown to the Liberty.