Claire Gilbert on last year's ravaging of Gaza

       Claire Gilbert wrote this article on the anniversary of the latest Israeli slaughter - a "mowing of the lawn" as Netanyahu and his thugs refer to it, in expectation of doing it over and over again- in Occupied Gaza for Grassroots International.  Grassroots International, an organization which works with Palestinian agricultural cooperatives and Haitian farmers, among others, will get donations directly to those who most need them, and is highly deserving of support (see below).  The words of Abu Al-Atta, Claire's associate from Nida, about hiding on the ground with her nieces and nephews during the firing one night in 2014, are particularly frightening.  

       AIPAC, Netanyahu and many in the Congress plump for war against Iran as a cover for further wars in Gaza of this kind - a criminal activity as a New York judge says below.  In addition,  an American aggression against Iran would be a crime.  In fact, the US has invaded the two countries surrounding Iran and has many military bases in the area; Iran has, however corrupt the regime,  invaded no countries - a real contrast - and has no military bases abroad...

   In addition, Shias are around 10% of Muslims, though Iran and now Iraq are majority Shia/Shia-ruled countries countries;  Sunnis are 90%, i.e. most of the Middle East - see here.  This is a distinction the American media, in its cultivated ignorance and demonization of Iran, repeatedly fails to draw.  And this fact makes Iranian domination of the Middle East - as a goal that Iran might set itself rather than providing some balance to Sunni and Israeli power - very unlikely.  

    For three recent piece on the Occupation, Gideon Levy on "What did you do at work today, dad?," and Amira Hass on the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh and the poem "Ghetto," see here, here and here.

    Alice Rothschild, a doctor who often goes to Gaza and the West Bank and lives in Boston, took the photos (she was a companion on my visit to the West Bank with he Dorothy Cotton Institute).  Her powerful book Broken Promises, Broken Dreams can be found here.

***

One Year after Assault, the Disaster in Gaza Continues

By Claire Gilbert
August 26th, 2015

One year ago today, the 51-day campaign of bombing, tank fire and all-out destruction by the Israeli military on Gaza finally ended. The 51 days of darkness euphemistically dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” were the third and most deadly round in a series of violent assaults on Gaza.

It is truly difficult, perhaps impossible to imagine life in Gaza, then and now, for the 1.8 million people who live there. First of all, there is the trauma.

“This is not about people who were killed, it is about us who were waiting for death every minute,” said Dr. Mona El-Farra to Grassroots International supporter and author Alice Rothschild during her recent visit to Gaza. Dr. El-Farra is the director of the Red Crescent Memorial Hospital that was bombed during the attacks.

On August 4, 2014 I received an e-mail from Nida’a Abu Al-Atta. Nida’a works with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees in Gaza, a longtime Grassroots International partner. She is always a pleasure to work with. This message though was not about grants, not about projects; this was a description of terror.

16 days ago, I fled my home with my family and about 185,000 people from where we used to live in Al-Shejayea neighborhood. The night of the 19th of July was like a hell. Israeli artillery shelled mercilessly and randomly everywhere. We were strong enough to stay the whole night on the ground with our three kids (my niece and two nephews—all under three years old), my parents, sisters, and their husbands. The artillery shelling intensified every moment, the sound of broken windows, trees, and smashed bricks flying everywhere over our heads was horrifying. We were hearing hits and bombarding everywhere and we thought that we would be next.

Nida survived the massive devastation of the 51-day assault, but 2,215 Palestinians were killed, and of those 556 were children. Some children were killed on playgrounds, three were gunned down while flying kites on the beach, and others died while taking shelter in UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools.

Numbers from the 51-day assault are stunning (and these are just a few):

• 10,850 Palestinians injured or maimed
• 2,215 killed
• 65 medical institutions bombed
• 9 water treatment facilities damaged or destroyed.
• 18 power plants hit.
• 23,669 homes partially or completely damaged.

Living in the Rubble

There is no way to sugarcoat the reality of life in Gaza today. The inhabitants of the tiny area are living through a burgeoning humanitarian catastrophe. The UN estimates that there will be no potable water in one year. Bombed water and sewer treatment facilities have left raw sewage pouring into the sea in Gaza, heightening a sanitation crisis that was already entrenched when the bombing started last July.

In Gaza residents have little access to electricity and fuel. Agricultural output has shrunk in Gaza by 31% compared to 2013 leaving increasing numbers of Gazans insecure about where their next meal will come from. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights estimates the damage to the agricultural sector to be valued at $136, 575,776 and to livestock $51, 686, 350. Much of the fertile agricultural land is now contaminated from the shelling, farmers in the “buffer zone” up to 1.5 km into Gaza are shot at with live fire regularly by the Israeli military, and the UN Nations estimates that there are still 7,000 unexploded remnants of war scattered throughout Gaza creating constant danger for farmers and for everyone.

Meanwhile, aid to Gaza has been very little compared to promises. At a conference sponsored by Egypt and Norway for international donors in Cairo in October of 2014, donors pledged 3.5 billion dollars, but only 26.8 percent of that has been disbursed a year later. There have been no major rebuilding projects of any kind. All this is exacerbated, of course, by the strangle hold siege of Gaza now entering its eighth year which radically curtails the movement of supplies and people in and out of Gaza.

Real Impact of Emergency Funds

In the midst of this chilling picture the one positive thing I can say is that the compassionate gifts made to support Gazans last summer through Grassroots International’s emergency fund all reached our partners and allies in Gaza and offered very real support. The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) used the support to provide food and blankets throughout the assault to families whose homes were destroyed. Emergency funds enabled the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) to supply families with water tanks after the bombing stopped. These tanks mean that families can collect and store water for use during the long periods when no water is available to them.

During the assault, Nida’a from PARC was given a seat in an ambulance by staff at the Palestinian Medical Relief Society so that she could deliver emergency relief, food, water, and blankets, while PMRS staff attended to the injured.The Palestinian Medical Relief Society cared for more patients because of the money donors sent and the Gaza Community Mental Health Program staff, who suffer from the same trauma as everyone else in Gaza, continue to provide space for children to heal through art therapy. 

Finally, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights used the emergency grants as well as their regular grant to continue to document and press charges against Israel for human rights abuses.. During the assault, human rights monitors were living with the same terror as everyone else but the PCHR managed to unite with other human rights organizations, divide the area into zones so that staff and volunteers could stay near their homes (if their homes were still there) to continuously document the on-going destruction. Somehow during all of this, the PCHR even managed to train a new cadre of volunteers.

The best news is that in December of 2014 the State of Palestine ratified and joined the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which could mean that new avenues will open to hold Israel accountable for at least some of its violations. A report by the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry in the 2014 conflict found evidence of possible war crimes by both sides during 2014’s assault. This could at least be an indication that there is some willingness to hold Israel, as well as Hamas, to account for war crimes. “The extent of the devastation and human suffering in Gaza was unprecedented and will impact generations to come," said New York Judge Mary McGowan Davis, the chair of the commission.

“We have no right to give up,” Raji Sourani the Director of PCHR told us again recently. The courage he shows, the steadfastness, is hard to fathom – and earned him and PCHR the Rights Livelihood Award in 2013.

We are proud of the donors and supporters who stood with Gazans during and after the brutal assault last summer and grateful for the growing grassroots mobilization worldwide to end the Israeli occupation, the siege on Gaza, and the climate of impunity in which Israel operates. As Raji so succinctly stated, we have no right to give up.

Photos by Alice Rothchild. Drawings are photographed at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, featuring drawings by children at the program.

Poem: ghetto

                Nabi Saleh

Would the young

ma c hine

who threw

12  year old

 Mohammed

one arm

against a rock

   

have thrown a rock

would Jewish girls

like Nariman

have reached

in crumbling Warsaw

fiercely

for their son?

Amira Hass on the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh and the choking of a 12 year old by an Israeli "soldier"

      After I posted a piece by Gideon Levy this week on his powerful article "What did you do today, dad?" here, Amira Hass, the great reporter for Haaretz whom I met when she interviewed Vincent Harding in the village of Nabi Saleh, wrote of an Israeli soldier who choked 12 year old Mohammed Tamimi, who had a cast on a broken arm (I met Mohammed and Janna/Ahed - see Janna's song here - while visiting Nabi Saleh.  I was on the roof of Bassem and Nariman Tamimi's house while Israeli soldiers fired on nonviolent demonstrators.  I know Bassem Tamimi - jailed for 16 months for nonviolent protest, let out briefly, and who then had his ribs broken when he demonstrated by holding up a sign to end the Occupation inside the Rami Levy supermarket in the gleaming settlement up on the hill behind the wall and was jailed again for four months.  See "Bassem Tamim is at home in Nabih Saleh" (with photos of the family) here.

***

    Bassem is for mass nonviolence against the wall, and mobilizes the creative energy of villagers (and others) to stop Israeli violence and stealing with the thought that others have souls, that those who must be stopped, need not and should not be killed.  That is a thought frightening to the Occupying Israeli government, whose conquest, aggression and violence do much to provoke violence.

***

    There are 1500 villagers.  They resist a powerful army.  Children are often asked to take part in demonstrations, and in any case, Mohammed Tamimi was wounded - his arm broken - when soldiers fired into the Tamimi home.  As Nariman says in one of the articles below, there is no safety from attack day or night anywhere in Nabi Saleh; being at demonstrations is, for children, less traumatic...

***

     Nariman and Ahed, her daughter who are very courageous - along with an aunt Nawal and  other women from Nabi Saleh - saved her 12 year old son/brother.  They surrounded and jumped on the soldier.  Watch the very revealing youtube video here.

***

    Defeated by the women, saved from himself, the soldier, at the end of the film, still bitterly throws down a tear gas canister...

***

    I also know Bilal Tamimi, the courageous videographer of many struggles (and threatened and sometimes beaten or arrested by the IDF which lives off silence behind the Wall).

***

     Bassem, as Amira Hass rightly says, worked also to save the soul of the young soldier by contacting an officer (the souls of some Israelis she speaks of are as poisoned now as the souls of the racists in the segregated South or of many Germans under the Nazis). He was put in this horrific situation, one in which the Israeli stranglehold - his own -  must be kept firmly on each 12 year old's neck - frightened, primed to do horrors... 

***

    Interestingly, today, there are more Germans particularly soccer teams - the Bundesliga - and soccer fans who are reaching out to Syrians and welcoming them to Europe than there are racists freaking out about immigration and bombing the houses of those who welcome strangers.  See here.  This is a marked, self-aware, hopeful contrast with the sometimes racist conduct of soccer fans.  And Angela Merkel, having been insensitive to a Palestinian child several weeks ago, is today as good for decent treatment and immigration as she was awful to the Greek people (and is still) - see here, here, and here.  

      Would that there were mainstream party in Israel, currently unified on trying to get the US to aggress against Iran (neither the Arab coalition nor Meretz is quite mainstream) that today expressed themselves as forcefully against the Israeli government's racist Occupation and diversionary belligerence (Netanyahu's losing campaign to get the US to sabotage the world's nuclear treaty with Iran which the US negotiated - for which he will still accrue - already the second most effective military in the world, with some hundreds of nuclear weapons, running experiments of weapons in Gaza, training American police forces (!)  and receiving $3 billion in aid to purchase US weapons - even more weaponry.  Nonetheless, Netanyahu and AIPAC are no longer able to rule US foreign policy (as their neocon allies, backed by Democrats, arguably did in securing the perverse and counterproductive US  aggression against Iraq).  

 ***

    That Germans are welcoming Syrians is hopeful and, one may pray also, for Israelis to achieve the same compassion and accomplishment as some - for instance, Anarchists against the Wall - already exhibit.

***

Samuel Shropshire

German child awaits Syrian refugee children at airport. He brought toys for the children. ~ Sam

***

    Still, the US is complicit - the machine gun held by the Israeli soldier while pushing Mohammed against a rock - in every act of oppression in Palestine.

***

      Sometimes, young men (in Mohammed's case, a child with one arm in a cast), frustrated by the immense Israeli violence of the Wall, of its vast weaponry, of settlements built on Palestinian land, of children seized from their beds at 2:am and kept in prison for two weeks and tortured while settlers children thrown urine and shit on the bazaar in Occupied Hebron and are protected by the Israeli army (if by chance arrested for other "crimes," they are brought to court within 24 hours) throw rocks.

     That is not nonviolent.  And it takes away from the serious nonviolence of the village movement.    But it is understandable (a wanting to hit back against bullying and injustice). And it is not, as Ahed says, like the use of guns - what the IDF does, firing US tear gas canisters (made by Consolidated Systems Inc, with its phony name) and black rubber bullets (the Tamimis are also a larger family name for everyone in the village; Rushdi and Mustafa, a cousin and close friend of Janna had been murdered by the IDF in the month surrounding the time I was there).

***

   Killing by Israeli soldiers is common (Netanyahu wants to "loosen the rules," making more murders, including as these scenes too vividly show, of children who sometimes throw rocks...).

***

    In the American South, as Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Rights Initiative have traced, nearly 4,000 blacks were lynched by the local government/Ku Klux Klan nexus.  Racists would sometimes bring their children to a "picnic" at the murder... 

     In Occupied Hebron, the IDF and settler parents celebrate children who throw shit on the bazaar. 

     Had this soldier killed Mohammed - who has a cast, who struggles and screams but could not fight - the IDF would wink at it.

***

      As Amira Hass's puts it about Nabi Saleh,     

     "The real problem is not the rocks but the fact that the burden of holding demonstrations, the same modest and determined weekly reminder that the armed robbery continues, falls on the shoulders of so few. The raids of their houses, the arrests, the tear gas, the fear of being injured and killed take their toll, said Nariman, who almost four years ago lost her brother (a Palestinian police officer, who by the way did not throw rocks and did not fire): An Israeli soldier shot him in the back, killing him.

At the demonstration in his memory, a soldier shot her with live
ammunition and wounded her seriously in her leg, while she was filming.

She admits the individual struggle is tiring. 'We did not choose this 
publicity or this status. It is clear that if more people would join us,the struggle would be heard more and gain strength.'"


***
     Ahed led the way.  Nariman, who was on crutches and aunt Nawal, and the other women soon rushed in to save Mohammed.  Nariman realized, as she told Amira Haas, the frightened young man with a gun inside the mask.  “He is a victim of the policy; he himself is a child,” she observed, “but he should ask himself why he is being sent to our home to harm us.”

***
       Bassem Tamimi reached out to calm the situation: 

        "Bassem, who saw the other soldiers far from their comrade, became afraid that some of the Palestinian youngsters would get closer, the soldier would try to shoot them, someone would get hurt and the youngsters would try to take revenge on the soldier. 'I was caught up in the tension between concern for my son and for what was liable to happen,' he said. He shouted to an officer who was standing 70 or 80 meters away to come. 'I shouted in Hebrew, in English, in Arabic. If I knew any other language I would have shouted in that too.' The officer came and held the soldier who was sprawled on the ground. When he stood up, the soldier kicked the women and the girl, hit Bassem with his rifle butt and threw a stun grenade."

***

   Mass nonviolence in the village - shown in repeated, weekly demonstrations - altered the course of the Wall, permitting villagers to reach and water more of their olive trees (some were cut off; the IDF "promised" people could cross the barricade to water them, but then allowed them but once a year...)

***

    What Amira Haas describes - the diversion of the spring to the settlement Halamish was a crime that occurred three years before we visited but among the plethora, we weren't told.  In general, Israel takes all the Palestinian's water and one can tell Palestinian houses because they have black water tanks on the roofs - to collect rain - as well as that they are comparatively meager and the sidewalks beside them broken. Walking in Jerusalem by the last playground before reaching the Wall, full of fancy new equipment for Israeli children onto the rubble sidewalk for Palestinians is a genuinely shocking experience, that of imprisonment in ghettos (as someone who has spent much of my life fighting Nazism,  neo-Nazism and diverse forms of racism, this is, sadly, all too recognizable...).

    But Nabi Saleh had its own spring...

***

     Amira Hass names the Occupation armed robbery.  Some in Israel like to content themselves with "not being as bad as the Nazis." (Avraham Burg)  But was not German policy in the ghettoes also armed robbery?

***

    As a Jew, Amira Haas chooses to live in Occupied Palestine and tells the truth.

***

    After the demonstration, Nariman and Ahed went to the hospital.  So did Bassem and Nariman's other son Salam who had been shot with a rubber bullet in the foot.

    The day after Bassem and Nariman were arrested by the IDF.  Nawal has been threatened (see the +972 article by Natasha Roth below).

***

    In Amira's second article - the third below - Nariman cites the Lockean,  that is, self-defense response to Israeli violence (the Second Treatise underlines this point about Occupation\Tyranny). The Israeli papers, except Haaretz, accuse the women of violence for stopping the soldier.  For he with his big machine gun grabbed the 12 year old boy with a cast on his arm and  initiated the danger (and while he was wrestled off, nothing happened to him or his big gun...).  He later said he did not realize he had grabbed a child (the film does not lie; perhaps, he is blind...):

   "In the days since then [Bassem and Nariman]  have hosted masses of journalists and friends. No official of the Palestinian Authority came. Between all the visits Bassem repeatedly read in amazement the reports in Hebrew about 'the Palestinian women who attacked a Golani fighter.' His wife Nariman refuted this version of events. 'Now, when there are social networks, all the lies won’t help. The videos clearly show who the attacker is. We have the right to defend ourselves from the attacker.'

'I don’t understand,' added Ahed. 'A rock is violence and a rifle is not violence?'”

***

     An Israeli activist who was present trying to protect the lives of the Palestinians testifies that Mohammed did not have a rock (see the +972 article by Natasha Roth, fourth below).  And the armed and masked Israeli soldiers, as Nariman too underlined,  were hidden - setting out to trap demonstrators (from my own observations three years ago, the demonstrators are often spread out, when attacked, and very few throw rocks...).

***

      As a Jew - along with Amira Hass, Anarchists against the Wall and many other decent Israelis - it is necessary to stand up for - stand with - the courageous nonviolent activists.  The Occupation is odious.  It reeks to heaven.  As many young American Jews are, we all must stand with Boycott and Divestment (BDS)- note that the campaign just won a great victory with the withdrawal, after 7 years, of Veolia from its last investment in the Jerusalem rail line which links the Occupied Territories - East Jerusalem - to the West "for Jews only" - and supports all of the Israeli violence and ethnic cleansing - see here. We must use every nonviolent method to break the hold of Israel on American politics and fight for a decent solution, one that recognizes the Palestinians as fully human and not, as they are now, prisoners in a large open air concentration camp (h/t Tom Farer and Amira Hass)

***

"Armed robbery: The Israeli army's policy in the West Bank

The much publicized video of an Israeli soldier choking a 12-year-old
boy show just one way in which the army terrorizes residents of
Palestinian villages in order to steal their land.

By Amira Hass | Sep. 2, 2015 

The soldier who choked 12-year-old Mohammad Tamimi last week belongs
to the organization that carries out and ensures the continued armed
robbery of land in Nabi Saleh, employing various methods to terrorize
the residents. He is not the first and not the last; the armed robbery
is not conducted solely on the lands of this village, and the spring
at Nabi Saleh is not the only one in the West Bank taken over by
Jewish settlers.

The praise the soldier received from his father and the media over the
“restraint” he showed mostly teaches us something about what has
happened to Israeli society. In the eyes of Israeli society, the
courageous behavior of a civilian confronting an armed soldier is
mutiny. To Israeli society a uniform and military ID card are
retroactive justification for firing, injuring and killing civilians,
including children. The noteworthy exception (both positively and
negatively) is he who “shows restraint.”

For the sake of the soldier and his parents we must hope that it was a
conscious decision to refrain from seeking the trigger of his rifle,
and not the numerous cameras around him that led to his restraint.
Nariman Tamimi, who like every sane mother struggled with him using
her fists to try to free her son, also discovered the child in the
soldier, and felt sad for him. The father, Bassem Tamimi, who saw the
soldier grab hold of his son and choke him, said about the theory of
restraint that it is “proof that everyone is appalled by the absence
of humanism. Therefore [the soldier’s father] is trying to present his
son’s behavior as the opposite of what it is — violence.”

Tamimi is the one who alerted the officer so that he could rescue the
soldier, and pull him out of the swamp in which the policy of armed
robbery had cast him. The Palestinian father worried about the life of
his own son, and at the same time worried about the wellbeing of the
soldier. He did not want any of the angry youths in the village to try
to harm the soldier who was, at that moment, the weakest link of this
same armed organization.

It was apparently the blondness of the family that triggered the
memory of the Israeli media, which recalled that the sister,
14-year-old Ahed, had “confronted” soldiers in the past. That time
they arrested her older brother, and her cries and screams did not get
him released. Israelis see seriality (a synonym for criminality) in
the family’s actions. Israelis have eyes but cannot see the true
criminal seriality in the theft of the spring and the land for the
good of the settlement “Halamish,” and the ban which prohibits the
village from building on a large part of its lands.[in fact, one should 
add, the Occupation - an act of aggression and conquest - is, every 
bit, illegal.]

The Israeli media dealt a lot with the rocks the boy threw, or did not
throw. “I don’t understand,” said Ahed, who has experience with
journalists who cannot take their eyes off her blond curls. “A rock is
violence and a rifle is not violence?”

If there were no land theft and no settler-lords, there would be no
need for a rifle to enable the settlements to blossom and expand,
while the Israel Defense Forces’ Civil Administration disseminates
demolition orders and stop-work orders for houses in the Palestinian
village on whose land the settlements are built. And if there were no
rifles and soldiers to block access to the spring, there would not be
rocks. So simple really, just like it sounds.

The real problem is not the rocks but the fact that the burden of
holding demonstrations, the same modest and determined weekly reminder
that the armed robbery continues, falls on the shoulders of so few.
The raids of their houses, the arrests, the tear gas, the fear of
being injured and killed take their toll, said Nariman, who almost
four years ago lost her brother (a Palestinian police officer, who by
the way did not throw rocks and did not fire): An Israeli soldier shot
him in the back, killing him.

At the demonstration in his memory, a soldier shot her with live
ammunition and wounded her seriously in her leg, while she was
filming. She admits the individual struggle is tiring. “We did not
choose this publicity or this status. It is clear that if more people
would join us, the struggle would be heard more and gain strength.”

***

For the full video, see http://www.imemc.org/article/72838 or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh8cD__wnC0

Video: Women of Nabi Saleh unmask, remove Israeli soldier as he attacks an injured child

 Saturday August 29, 2015 23:53 by Annie Robbins - Mondoweiss.net 

A radical scene unfolded Friday after Israeli forces intercepted the weekly protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, Palestine against the illegal confiscation of their land and spring. The courageous actions of the Tamimi women of Nabi Saleh rescuing their captured child spread immediately on social media after the UK’s Daily Mail published a series of breathtaking photographs taken at the scene. The event was captured on video by Bilal Tamimi and Royal News TV.

Soldier attacking injured child (image from video by Bilal Tamimi)

As a masked and armed Israeli soldier chases down a hillside you can hear voices yelling, then the unmistakable sound of a screaming child. The boy appears in view as he turns to face the soldier. Screaming, the boy pivots then rushes past the soldier and up the hill through a mass of boulders as the soldier finally catches up with the boy and captures him. Placing the boy in a chokehold the soldier forces the struggling child over a bolder as cameras close in on the scene and record what’s happening. What follows, captured on video and camera, is a sight to behold.



The boy has a cast on his left arm. The soldier briefly loosens his chokehold before tightening his grip again.

The struggling continues over the wild screams of the boy. The soldier, ironically gasping for breath, yells out at the top of his lungs – calling for assistance from his comrade forces – unable to pull off this arrest of the boy on his own. He adjusts his rifle, pulls back the boy’s good arm and shoves the boy’s face towards the boulder, then stands and tries lifting the boy up from under the child’s armpits as the boy’s arms and cast fly into the air he lets out a painful scream. The soldier struggles to contain the squirming writhing boy who’s wildly kicking his legs into the air.

And then the Tamimi women of Nabi Saleh descend on the soldier.

They plunge down on the soldier, pulling him off the child (2: 05). He thrusts them off and struggle ensues, he tackles the boy again as women and girls proceed yanking his limbs, beating his head, biting him, slapping him (while the soldier is yelling for backup), mounting his back, putting a chokehold on his neck, ripping his mask and finally tearing it off his face, unmasking him completely (2:52). Other soldiers enter into the scene and rescue him from the Tamimi women of Nabi Saleh. The boy is fighting him off the whole time.

Note the last scene of the video. The humiliated, defeated soldier draws a teargas canister, arms it, and throws it to the ground.

Many more photos here.

  ramallah | non-violent action | news report  news at imemc dot org

***

Amira Hass :The Palestinian Family That Fought a Soldier to Save Their Son

 :

The Palestinian family that fought a soldier to save their son

HAARETZ.COM

On Sunday afternoon Nariman Tamimi repeated her answer for probably the thousandth time, telling yet another journalist that she had done the natural thing when on August 28 she ran to rescue her 12-year-old son Mohammad from the grip of an Israel Defense Forces soldier at the demonstration in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. To say she “ran” is an exaggeration, as she was hobbling on crutches.

On November 21 of last year, an IDF soldier shot her, wounding her left shin as she was filming soldiers dispersing the weekly demonstration in the village. That same demonstration marked the second anniversary of the death of her brother, Rushdie, whom an IDF soldier shot in the back and killed. An IDF investigation found that on that day the soldiers had fired about 80 bullets, with no justification, to disperse a protest in the village.

When Nariman heard her son’s screams and began limping towards him as fast as she could between the boulders and the thistles, she was thinking about one thing only: What would happen to his broken arm? Last Wednesday, military jeeps drove into the village. Youngsters threw stones at them in protest, the soldiers fired tear gas and people, among them Mohammad who was shopping at the grocery store, fled the gas. He tripped, breaking his left arm.

Because of Nariman’s difficulty walking she cannot join the weekly demonstrations in which Nabi Saleh inhabitants demand their right to return to their fresh water spring, which the settlers from Halamish took over. She was standing on the hilltop overlooking the spring, the road and the settlement. From there she was watching the demonstration.

About 25 people participated in it, among them several Israelis and solidarity activists from abroad. The soldiers blocked their path halfway there, fired tear gas grenades at them and locked the iron gate at the entrance to the road. They drove in jeeps towards the spring and the soldiers who emerged from the vehicles started climbing the hill and from there continued to fire tear gas at the demonstrators, related Bassem Tamimi, Nariman’s husband.

Youngsters from the village gathered at the top of the hill and threw stones at the soldiers (Nariman was standing some distance away from them and was filming with her mobile phone). “Suddenly,” she recalled, “more than 20 armed and masked soldiers appeared near the youngsters. They were lightly dressed, without flak vests or helmets.”

People assume that the soldiers had secretly stationed themselves in a nearby villa on the hilltop late the night before. “There was chaos, people started dispersing in every direction. And then we saw the soldiers assaulting and beating up an Italian citizen who was filming,” related Bassem.

He and others ran to rescue the Italian (who was under arrest until last Monday). And then they noticed that they were also arresting Nariman’s cousin Mahmoud Tamimi (who is still under arrest). Suddenly they heard the sound of a boy screaming and the voice of their relative, Bilal, shouting at them to come quickly.

Ahed, the 14-year-old daughter of Bassem and Nariman, was the first to reach the source of the screaming. She saw a masked soldier gripping her brother Mohammad and wrapping an arm around his neck.

“I was there and I was watching the soldiers and the youngsters,” related Mohammad. “Suddenly I saw a soldier coming to grab me. I tried to run away but he caught me. He strangled me with one arm, held my head and pushed it down on the boulder. Of course I was afraid.”

Ahed, his sister, says she wasn’t afraid when she ran towards the soldier in order to detach him from her brother. “When things are happening,” she said, “you don’t feel fear.”

After Ahed arrived at the scene, her mother, aunt and father followed. “I saw the soldier strangling my son, shoving him onto the boulder, holding his head and beating it on the boulder. Violence that’s hard to describe,” said Bassem. Together the mother, sister and aunt grabbed the soldier from all sides in order to tear him off the frightened boy. When the armed soldier held out a hand to push Ahed away, she grabbed it and bit it.

Nonetheless, Nariman felt sad for the soldier. “He is a victim of the policy; he himself is a child,” she observed, “but he should ask himself why he is being sent to our home to harm us.”

Bassem, who saw the other soldiers far from their comrade, became afraid that some of the Palestinian youngsters would get closer, the soldier would try to shoot them, someone would get hurt and the youngsters would try to take revenge on the soldier. “I was caught up in the tension between concern for my son and for what was liable to happen,” he said. He shouted to an officer who was standing 70 or 80 meters away to come. “I shouted in Hebrew, in English, in Arabic. If I knew any other language I would have shouted in that too.” The officer came and held the soldier who was sprawled on the ground. When he stood up, the soldier kicked the women and the girl, hit Bassem with his rifle butt and threw a stun grenade.

The parents feared that Mohammad’s broken arm had been hurt again and started to move down towards the center of the village to find transportation to a hospital. “The soldiers fired rubber-coated metal bullets at us,” related Bassem. “Suddenly Salam [their younger son, seven years old] screamed. It turned out he had been injured in his leg. I carried him and Yonatan [leftwing activist Jonathan Pollak] held Mohammad and Naji [another relative]carried Ahed, who because of the beating from the soldier couldn’t walk. We looked for an ambulance.” At the hospital in Ramallah it turned out that Salam’s toe was broken, but Mohammad’s broken arm had not been further injured. Everyone suffered a bit from bruises.

In the days since then they have hosted masses of journalists and friends. No official of the Palestinian Authority came. Between all the visits Bassem repeatedly read in amazement the reports in Hebrew about “the Palestinian women who attacked a Golani fighter.” His wife Nariman refuted this version of events. “Now, when there are social networks, all the lies won’t help. The videos clearly show who the attacker is. We have the right to defend ourselves from the attacker.”

“I don’t understand,” added Ahed. “A rock is violence and a rifle is not violence?”

***

+972

By Natasha Roth

 |Published August 29, 2015 

WATCH: Palestinian women 

and children prevent arrest 

of minor in Nabi Saleh

An Israeli soldier attempts to detain a 12-year-old 

Palestinian boy during a demonstration in the West 

Bank village. His mother and sister make sure that

doesn’t happen.

See update below.

The weekly demonstration in the West Bank village of Nabi 

Saleh took a particularly violent turn on Friday after an 

Israeli soldier tried to detain 12-year-old Mohammed Tamimi, 

leading to a fierce scuffle with his mother, sister and aunt. 

Eventually the soldier was led away by another soldier.

The incident was captured on video by Bilal Tamimi, a local 

Palestinian journalist. The soldier can be seen running 

down a hill chasing Mohammed, who had his arm in a cast 

after breaking it during clashes in the village a few days 

earlier. He eventually catches up with Mohammed, puts 

him in a headlock and pins him against a rock. The 

soldier then sits on Mohammed, preventing him from 

moving.

An Israeli soldier holding Mohammed Tamimi, 12, in a headlock during a demonstration in Nabi Saleh, August 28, 2015. (Karam Saleem)

Others can be heard yelling at the soldier that Mohammed is 

a child, and that his hand is broken. The soldier calls out 

for someone to come and help him, and turns to the activist

 standing next to him and mutters something about 

“leftists being trash.” He then drags Mohammed 

forward and pins him down again. At this point 

Mohammed’s 15-year-old sister, Ahed; his mother

 and his father, Nariman and Bassem; and his aunt 

Nawal arrive, along with other activists.

Mohammed’s family tries to pull the soldier off the 

boy, tugging at his arms and head. The 

soldier responds by flailing his arms wildly at t

hem, trying to hit them, and putting his hand 

around Ahed’s throat. They continue trying to 

pull him away until another soldier arrives

 and leads him away. As he is walking off, the 

soldier throws a stun grenade into the 

middle of the crowd.

Ahed (left), Nawal (right) and Nariman Tamimi (behind the soldier) try to stop Mohammed, 12, from being arrested by an Israeli soldier at a demonstration in Nabi Saleh, August 28, 2015. (Karam Saleem)

At the same time, two other soldiers were busy arresting a 

Palestinian and an Italian activist with the International 

Solidarity Movement, both of whom are currently still in 

detention.

“The soldiers came out of nowhere, and no one realized 

what was happening. They were masked and had no 

gear, only a rifle,” Karam Saleem, a photojournalist who 

witnessed the event, told +972.

Bassem Tamimi, Mohammed’s father, told +972 that 

Ahed and Nariman had to be taken to hospital after 

the demonstration in which they were assaulted by the 

soldier. Bassem’s other son, Salam, was also shot 

in the foot with a rubber bullet.

Family members Nariman and Ahed Tamimi reiterated 

that the village is struggling for humanity, justice, 

peace and dignity, and that they need their 

freedom.

In a statement, the IDF claimed that Mohammed had 

been throwing stones, a claim denied by an Israeli 

activist who was present. The statement also claims 

that the soldier did not realize he was dealing with a 

minor.

The day after the incident, Manal Tamimi, a prominent 

activist in the village, received a message online 

threatening that her home would be burnt down 

in a “price tag” attack (link contains graphic language).

Nabi Saleh has seen a sharp increase in violence in recent 

months over Israeli settlers’ annexation of the village well. 

Manal Tamimi was shot in the leg with live ammunition 

during a recent demonstration, and Nariman Tamimi 

was on crutches for a number of months after being 

shot in the leg with live ammunition last November.

Related stories

• IDF falsely arrested photographers during Palestinian protest, court rules
  By Activestills | August 23, 2015 
• PHOTOS: Showing Israeli soldiers the red card in Nabi Saleh
  By Natasha Roth | May 29, 2015 
• PHOTOS: Soldiers fire live ammo, wound two in Nabi Saleh protest
  By Activestills | April 5, 2015 

Bilal Tamimi, the journalist who recorded yesterday’s events, was arrested last week along with two Israelis and eventually released without charge after a judge ruled the arrest should never have occurred.

A house in the village was recently demolished and IDF soldiers stationed at the village have also been caught on camera throwing stones at photojournalists and firing tear gas canisters directly at protesters–at the same spot where Mustafa Tamimi was killed four years ago when a gas canister struck him in the face.

UPDATE (Aug 30): On August 29th, the day after the incident, the IDF filed a complaint with the Israeli Police. Officials from the Samaria and Judea District police force told the Hebrew-language news website 0404 that “the attackers are well-known and will be arrested soon.”