[News] Victims of the field executions committed by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://english.palinfo.com/news/2019/9/26/Israel-s-excuses-for-shooting-unarmed-Palestinians-don-t-ring-true 



  Israel’s excuses for shooting unarmed Palestinians don’t ring true

By Hossam Shaker September 26, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Images of Palestinians girls or women lying in the middle of the road 
with blood seeping from their heads have become “normal” since the 
autumn of 2015. Women, children and men have all become victims to be 
added to the growing body of statistics that the global media never 
stops to consider when reporting on this most asymmetric of conflicts. 
They are the victims of the field executions committed by the Israeli 
occupation forces against Palestinians — women, children and men — at 
the humiliating and frequently fatal military checkpoints imposed across 
the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The tragedy of these victims does not end with the hastily-fired 
gunshots; the wounded and dying are left to bleed while the soldiers sip 
their coffee and go about their regular activities, after “neutralizing” 
the alleged threat. Images and videos circulated on social media 
demonstrate that Israeli soldiers and police officers do little to try 
to arrest suspected criminals; they shoot first and, maybe, ask 
questions later. It is obvious from the evidence that they are too keen 
to pull the trigger and shoot a target who could be as young as their 
own children or as old as their mothers.

It is even more of a tragedy that the victim is rarely named until hours 
or even days later, placing major psychological pressure on the 
community who have no real idea if a relative or friend has been shot 
and killed.

Last week, on 18 September to be precise, a Palestinian woman called 
Nayfa Ali Ka’abna, aged 50, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. She 
was named officially four days after she was basically executed at the 
Qalandiya checkpoint, north of Jerusalem. After she was shot, she was 
left on the side of the road in a growing pool of blood for some time. 
To understand what happened to Nayfa, it is worth looking at the growing 
phenomenon of field executions over the past four years.

Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun was crossing through an Israeli military checkpoint 
in Hebron on 22 September, 2015, when she was shot. The Israeli 
narrative claimed that the 18 year old did not comply with the order to 
stop and therefore posed a danger to the soldiers. The young woman was 
in her first year of university, and was known in the local 
neighborhoods for her solidarity with Palestinian families affected by 
settler harassment. She had to cross the checkpoints repeatedly for this 
purpose. On the day of the deadly attack, two soldiers ordered her to 
stop and then fired at least 10 bullets at her from their automatic 
rifles. Hadeel fell to the ground after being hit by the first bullet, 
but the soldiers continued to fire at her. Most of the bullets hit her 
chest and upper body.

The Israeli occupation army immediately claimed, as usual, that the 
young woman had tried to attack the soldiers with a knife, and that the 
heavily-armed soldiers acted “according to protocol” as their lives were 
in danger. Many pictures surfaced on social media proving the Israeli 
claim to be false. The reality of this heinous murder was documented by 
a passer-by; the two soldiers opened fire on Hadeel from a distance of 4 
meters and no knife was seen. The brutality of the attack was escalated 
by the fact that she was left on the ground for about half an hour after 
being shot. Journalist Amira Hass reported the details of the crime in 
Haaretz on 3 November, 2015, based on documented facts which disprove 
the army’s narrative.

Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun’s family took the case to court, but the Israeli 
judicial system ensured that the army and its soldiers were acquitted, 
as usually happens. The family appealed, but the result was the same. 
The case was closed in February 2019, with the soldiers acquitted of all 
charges. This was no surprise; the so-called Israeli “Defense” Forces’ 
story is normally accepted as the truth without question.

The world ignored the tragedy of Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun at the time, 
giving the occupation authorities a tacit green light to continue the 
field executions on the pretext that the victims “pose a danger to the 
lives of soldiers”. Killing Palestinians in this way has become a 
recurring fact of life protected by carefully woven justifications. 
However, the idea of a fruit knife held by a schoolgirl, shining from 
afar, actually posing a threat to the lives of a group of armed soldiers 
wearing body armour just doesn’t ring true. Moreover, firing numerous 
bullets at a girl, woman, man or boy and at a part of the body where 
death is almost certain to result suggests that Israeli soldiers have 
little or no regard for Palestinian lives.

The official Israeli version of field executions is simply not credible. 
It is now a fact, though, that any Palestinian going about their lawful 
business can expect to be shot at random if they are on foot at a 
military checkpoint. Make a wrong move or display any “unusual behavior” 
— a very loosely-defined term — and they can face a lethal volley of 
bullets.

This poses an even bigger threat to those with hearing or visual 
impairments, or those who do not understand the gestures or orders 
yelled by soldiers and police officers, not least due to the different 
language and means of expression. Israel’s military checkpoints may now 
be rooted deeply in Palestinian life, but they remain a threat to those 
with mental health issues or other communication difficulties. If 
someone has a seizure or fit at one of these checkpoints, they could pay 
for it with their life.

Given the number of these incidents, the Palestinians are convinced that 
the occupation authorities do not hesitate to justify any field 
execution committed by their security forces even before any 
investigation can take place — if it takes place at all. The killers are 
not above planting a knife next to the victims lying on the ground to 
“prove” their dishonest narrative.

Furthermore, even if a schoolgirl is holding a knife with the intention 
of attacking the fully trained and armed soldiers, why are they 
incapable of disarming her? Shooting her when she is well beyond arms’ 
reach looks like an extremely disproportionate response. As the list of 
“knife-wielding attackers” shot dead grows longer, how many of their 
intended victims were actually killed? None whatsoever.

What is certain in all of this, is that the Israeli occupation forces 
are able to kill Palestinians at will, and get away with it. The 
uncomfortable truth absent from the propaganda pushed out by Israel and 
its supporters is that the killers of dozens of indigenous Palestinian 
men, women and children in field executions across the occupied West 
Bank and Jerusalem in recent years are actually members of an occupation 
army violating international law; they don’t deserve our sympathy. It is 
their victims who live — and die — under military occupation and 
oppression and are deserving of whatever we can do to help them.

Field executions are one of the “sovereign manifestations” that the 
Israeli occupation forces have monopolized at their many checkpoints 
intended to disrupt Palestinians in their daily lives. They impede 
freedom of movement, cause humiliation and provide opportunities for 
arrest and, as we have seen, murder.

Such serious violations led a number of anti-occupation Israelis to form 
a human rights group a few years ago to monitor what the security forces 
are doing at the checkpoints. It is called Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, 
but the Israeli government is busy cracking down on groups like this 
one, claiming that they are “working against the state” and discrediting 
them.

Before we accept the Israeli excuses for the killing of Palestinians at 
the checkpoints, we must acknowledge the presence of occupation forces 
in the Palestinian territories; and that the deployment of heavily-armed 
troops to direct and disrupt everyday life poses a real and present 
threat to ordinary Palestinians of all ages, male and female alike.

No reasonable human being, let alone a member of a brutal occupation 
army and oppressive regime, can expect people who are deprived of their 
liberty, independence and control of their land and resources to pass 
around flowers to the soldiers who spend their days humiliating, 
torturing and killing them. The Palestinians don’t need anyone to incite 
them to act against the occupation forces; Israel’s policies and 
practices in the occupied territories do that job perfectly well without 
any need for any input from anyone else. The dozens of children and 
young people shot and killed by the occupation forces at checkpoints 
were eyewitnesses to the murder, arbitrary arrests, intimidation and 
humiliation of their families, friends and fellow citizens.

Ignoring the field executions that have taken place encourages the 
Israeli occupation soldiers to carry on shooting at will; we all appear 
to be immune to the sight of a Palestinian lying in a pool of blood for 
no apparent reason other than the ongoing Israeli propaganda about 
“incitement” and “knife attacks”. Nayfeh Ka’abna was the latest in a 
growing line of victims like Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun whose blood was shed 
and allowed to flow into the gutter so callously by young men and women 
armed to the teeth with the latest weapons and ammunition. These women 
were yet more victims of Israel and its ongoing occupation that the 
world does not care about.

/- Hossam Shaker is a journalist and an author who has extensively 
covered the topic of migration in Europe and Middle East issues. His 
article appeared in MEMO./

-- 
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