A Palestinian man who was recorded last year in a shocking encounter where he was shot in the back while walking away from the camera with his arms stretched above his head has come forward with new allegations of abuse surrounding the incident.
The grainy video was made in 2018 by Israeli soldiers and films Karam Qawasmi in a tunnel as a sponge-tipped bullet strikes him in the back, he then falls to the ground. The clip picks up Qawasmi’s screams of pain as well as laughter, which Qawasmi says came from the Israeli soldiers off-camera who fired at him. The video was leaked to media earlier this month.
Among Palestinians, the footage was shocking. A spokesman for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem condemned the targeting of an unarmed man as “exceptional documentation [that] shows what, sadly, is an unexceptional event: Israeli security forces hurting a Palestinian for absolutely no reason.”
Israeli police have opened an investigation into the video. Qawasmi said he did not file a complaint at the time.
Now Qawasmi says that the entire event last hours, with Israeli soldiers detaining him, beating him and further abusing him after he was shot. Qawasmi was never charged with a crime and is unclear to him why soldiers stopped him in the first place. His injuries took one month to recover from, but the terrifying ordeal has lasting impacts.
it’s hard to fathom living like this
@eljay
“To Zionist Israelis the non-Jews of Palestine aren’t human beings.”
Indeed!!
Rabbi Perin, in an eulogy for mass murderer, Baruch Goldstein, in 1994: “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” (New York Times, Feb. 28, 1994)
In April, 2001, during his Passover sermon, Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party and former Israeli Chief Rabbi, described the Arabs as “serpents” and in his Passover sermon, he stated that “the Lord shall waste their seed, devastate them and vanish them from this world. It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.”
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir declared during an interview with the foreign editor of the London Sunday Times that “it was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine…and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.” (Sunday Times, London, June 15, 1969)
In the view of another prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Shamir, the Palestinians are of no more significance than insects when compared to Jews: “From this mountain top and from the vantage point of history I say that these people [the Palestinians] are like grasshoppers compared to us.” (The Independent, April 1988, from Reuter, Tel Aviv; quoted by Michael Rice, False Inheritance, Kegan Paul International, London and New York, 1994, p. 127).
While delivering a televised address to his Likud party in 1989, Shamir further maligned Palestinians by describing them as “alien invaders of the Holy Land…. They are brutal, wild alien invaders in the land of Israel that belongs to the people of Israel, and only to them.” (New York Post, February 6, 1989)
During a speech to the Knesset, Menachem Begin, Israel’s sixth prime minister, referred to Palestinians as “beasts walking on two legs.” (New Statesman, 25 June 1982)
Regarding Palestinians residing in the occupied West Bank, Raphael Eitan, then Israel’s Chief of Staff, declared: “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle…. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.” (New York Times, 14 April 1983)
Prime Minister Ehud Barak: “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more…” (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 30, 2002)
Rafael Eitan, Israeli Chief of Staff, stated:” When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” (N.Y. Times, 14 April 1988)
I had sent a Zionist friend the article about the rabbi who said Palestinians should be slaves of Jews, and she said that she supports Israel in general but not “oddballs” like him. I just sent some of these quotes to her. More “oddballs”?
It is clear that many Israeli Jews, probably most of them and perhaps especially the younger generation, regard Arabs (remember: they don’t distinguish Palestinians from other Arabs) as powerless (and not threatening) beings that it is FUN to hurt, humiliate, and torment. They boast about it and show off by sending their friends videos that they themselves make, so confident are they of not being penalized.
Another video that attracted some attention showed a young Jewess creeping up behind a Palestinian girl sitting on the bank of a water pool and pushing her in. You can see the victim floundering in the last few seconds of the video, which was apparently filmed by a confederate of the perpetrator. Great fun.
I wonder whether they are aware that this is how the Nazis used to treat Jews?
Lethal intifadas in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, hundreds shot dead in street protests, and at Mondoweiss, it’s quiet as a mouse pissing on cotton.
Who’s side are you on, Phil?