How many of you have seen the video of the shooting of 24-year-old Haroun Abu Aram in a village near Hebron on New Year’s Day? We can’t watch it through it is so deeply upsetting. What you see is an unarmed working person very much like any construction worker or homeowner in America trying to keep Israeli soldiers from stealing a generator that is being used by builders.
Soldiers surround him and his friends and drag the generator away. Haroun grabs it back. Then he gets shot in the neck at close range with a rifle. He is reported to be paralyzed from the neck down.
This simple tableau of a working person protecting his property against armed Israeli thugs is being viewed around the world. “The video has been widely circulated by Israeli human rights organizations and in Israeli and Palestinian media.” CNN reports.
Parliamentarian Ahmad Tibi is very upset by it. The IMEU has condemned it. Al-Shabaka is disturbed by the shooting. So is the liberal Zionist organization J Street.
Abu Aram’s family’s house was reportedly demolished by occupying Israeli authorities a month ago, and he was shot trying to protect a neighbor’s property from similar destruction.
The Israeli dissenters’ group Breaking the Silence says that Abu Aram lives in an area designated for military exercised.
In November soldiers demolished Abu Aram’s house. He lives in ‘Firing Zone 918’, an area that has been designated for IDF training—meaning Palestinian residents, many of whom have lived there since before Israel even existed, are on the verge of eviction.
The human rights group B’Tselem says this shooting is part of a policy of ethnic cleansing, on Twitter:
“This is part of a policy designed by the Israeli government to create a hostile environment for Palestinian communities, in order to force them out and take over their land,” B’Tselem said.”
The horrifying video is putting more pressure on US Democrats to finally do something about conditioning aid to the occupying Israeli military, which has been an issue in the Senate races in Georgia.
One thing we know about Israeli politics: Unless the US puts pressure on Israel, these atrocities will continue. Liberal Zionists keep talking about the good people in the Israeli political system; but there is no leftwing alternative in the next election. Only pressure from outside will change that society.
Gideon Levy wrote a column in Haaretz that focused on the impunity of the Israeli military.
“A shocking crime took place two days ago in al-Rakiz – watch the video, available online. When the IDF Spokesperson covers up for the army this way, it is an accessory to a crime. When the IDF Spokesperson whitewashes this way, soldiers know that nothing terrible happened. They can rely on the collaborators – most of the military reporters – not to make a fuss. After all, nothing happened. Nothing.”
So what will the American supporters of Israel do? Of course, the New York Times has had no report on this horrifying case. Just as it has ignored the killing of the unarmed boy Ali Abu Alia, 15, in occupied territory on December 4– part of the same policy of ethnic cleansing.
US liberal Zionist organizations have come also up short on the case. Americans for Peace Now did a year end post on Facebook lamenting racism– “We won’t stand for the casual racism, misogyny and islamophobia that so often go unchecked and unchallenged because people are afraid to speak up” — but it has had nothing to say about this shooting.
Dylan Williams of J Street has tweeted angrily about the report that the shooting was a “routine operation to evacuate an ‘illegal building.'” And J Street is obviously distressed by the shooting. Its youth branch tweeted: “This is the day-to-day violence of the occupation. This is why we fight to end it.”
But that’s not good enough. How do you fight such evils without turning off the money? Jewish Voice for Peace has repeatedly responded to atrocities like this by calling for sanctions on Israel, removing its military support.
J Street has called the BDS campaign antisemitic. It firmly opposes limiting US military aid to Israel, even as it bewails the expansion of settlements and demolition of Palestinian lands.
American progressives have an important role to play here, demanding change to these murderous policies. The Israeli military doesn’t care about tweets lamenting the occupation. It cares about American government support for these atrocities.
From the B’Tselem report on the killing of 15-year-old Ali Abu Alia three weeks before the shooting of Abu Aram:
The killing of Abu ‘Alia reflects the real open-fire policy that Israel employs throughout the West Bank. Live fire is permitted even when there is no justification, in blatant disregard of the predictable injury or death of persons who pose no danger.
Remember, they are doing this with your tax dollars!
The November 2020 Demolition and Displacement Report from ICAHD –
https://icahd.org/2020/12/04/november-2020-demolition-and-displacement-report/
186 demolished structures in November alone – the report contains details of demolitions on each day in November.
Not that it’s needed, but the “Israeli atrocity” further proves that Zionists are fascists and racists.
Also:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/12/31/israel-orders-wave-of-new-house-demolitions-in-silwan-jerusalem
“Residents fear Jerusalem municipality is preparing to raze many Palestinian homes over the coming weeks.” Al Jazeera, Dec. 31/20 by Ibrahim Husseini.
EXCERPT:
“East Jerusalem – Fakhri Abu Diab, 59, may soon have to decide whether he should contract a crew to demolish his family’s building.
“Diab is a community activist & one of several Palestinian residents of the Al-Bustan neighbourhood in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem, served with demolition orders by Jerusalem’s Israeli-run municipality in December.
“He built his property – in which 13 family members live across three units – without permission, having been denied permission four times since he first applied in 1987.
“If the municipality carries out the demolition order, served on December 9, the cost could be $30,000.
“Diab says that, if he loses his home, “I have no alternative at the moment but to put up a tent”.
“He says 21 demolition orders were issued in Al-Bustan in December alone.
“Homeowners & observers fear that the municipality, with the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is preparing to raze a significant number of Palestinian homes in the city over the coming weeks.
“New Israeli parliamentary elections set in March & outgoing US President Donald Trump’s last days in the White House could hasten such a move.”
It seems to me that given the details of how the “spigot of aid” is procured, we might also call it a “spigot of extortion”.
Does it have to be said again that designating an area a military zone is one of Israel’s favourite methods of ethnic cleansing? That’s why all of a sudden people’s homes are “illegal structures.”
The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective
“While there has been recent criticism of those taking the position that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, there is a long history of human rights scholarship and legal analysis that supports the assertion. Prominent scholars of the international law crime of genocide and human rights authorities take the position that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian people could constitute a form of genocide. Those policies range from the 1948 mass killing and displacement of Palestinians to a half-century of military occupation and, correspondingly, the discriminatory legal regime governing Palestinians, repeated military assaults on Gaza, and official Israeli statements expressly favoring the elimination of Palestinians.
Genocide is a term that has both sociological and legal meaning. The term genocide was coined in 1944 by a Jewish Polish legal scholar, Raphael Lemkin. For Lemkin, “the term does not necessarily signify mass killings.” He explained:
https://ccrjustice.org/genocide-palestinian-people-international-law-and-human-rights-perspective