Israeli settlers, who have been behind most of the violence and terrorism between Israel and Palestine, this week are threatening retaliation against the Palestinian man who videotaped an Israeli soldier who casually and brutally walked up to an injured Palestinian suspected in an attack against another Israeli in Hebron and then shot him in an act of cold blooded murder.
By Dezeray Lyn
On Thursday, March 25th, Palestinian videographer, Imad Abu Shamsiya (also Emad, Shamsiyya) captured the violent Israeli forces execution of young, wounded Palestinian, Abed Fatah al-Sharif, 21 in the streets of Tel Rumeida which have remained under Closed Military Zone orders, against the cries of the human rights community since November 1st of 2015.
The 19 year old Israeli soldier’s identity is being guarded by the Israeli government, although images of him coldly approaching a wounded al-Sharif and executing him with a bullet to the head has been widely circulated, as settlers, against every legal and social sensibility, were allowed to freely roam through the crime scene, empowered and enabled to confer with Israeli soldiers who are policing the region as an illegally occupying force.
What is not being guarded is the family of Abu Shamsiya, whose family has received threats of violence from both Israeli soldiers and settlers who have made it clear that there is no one to protect him in the Tel Rumeida section where the Settler/Soldier dynamic leaves a growing body count of Palestinians.
Abu Shamsiya told Human Rights Watch that Israeli forces had threatened him, both at the scene and later, when he went to give a statement to the military. This threat was followed up on by Israeli forces who raided the Shamsiya family home last evening, intimidating the family and arbitrarily identifying the human rights monitors who were in the family home at the time.
Worse, Ilan Katz, prosecution for al Sharif’s 19 year old murderer stated to RT recently that, an autopsy of the Palestinian man could prove vital for his client, noting that the soldier could be saved from murder and manslaughter charges if the man was already fatally injured from his earlier wounds.
Here is the gruesome video taken of the Israeli soldier murdering the injured Palestinian who was suspected but not convicted of committing a crime.
Quite simply, after the Israeli shooting of a Palestinian, if it can be proven that the first shot would have been fatal, they are then freed from threat of prosecution if they take egregious action and continue shooting into the body of the dying. These are the policies allowing for the continued, violent ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
According to a recent poll, more than half of Israeli’s support the actions of the soldier, who is being investigated by the Israeli military police for al-Sharif’s murder. What chance do the Palestinians have for peace when the breathtakingly extrajudicial slaughter of a young, incapacitated man in the streets is not met with a unified call for an intensive examination of Israeli military protocol and independent, critical review of such a horrendous act?
Despite the poll, the killing- not rare, not unusual, not stand alone, has sparked bitter world-wide political debate. Again, the eyes of the world swing towards a nearly 7 decade spanning occupation birthed through genocide and mass forced displacement. A catastrophe.
For abu Shamsiye, father of a beautiful family who is staring down the occupation as it manifests, most recently, into Israeli settler made wanted posters calling for his murder, threats and intimidation for his filming and dissemination of video showing the crimes that engulf and shape life in the occupied West Bank, the world still attached to their humanity must stand at his back and ensure his safety.
The Closed Military Zone stratagem has, among other Palestinian suffered ramifications, effectively worked to vacate the presence of human rights monitors from the area which routinely flash spirals into surges of Israeli on Palestinian violence, as well as resurrecting national socialist era tactics of enacting a system of numeric registration/identification of all Palestinians living inside the Tel Rumeida neighborhood which is located in H-2, Area C Hebron, under full Israeli military control.
You can help by supporting the Palestinian call for the UN to review this latest criminality and by tearing open the vacuum of the closed military zone in Tel Rumeida and demanding international intervention into a widely reported but under supported occupied populous who has yet to give up hope.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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