Tamimi appeared in this TOD? post about the Israeli army criminalizing Palestinians having guests.. No word yet on the current excuses by Israeli Army, or how they intend to stop this from happening in the future, but these events are as good an illustration as any that the Israeli government learned nothing in 2011.

From the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

Mustafa Tamimi, a 28 year old resident of Nabi Saleh, was shot in the face yesterday, during the weekly protest in the village of Nabi Saleh. He sustained a critical head injury, under his right eye, and was evacuated to the Belinson hospital in Petah Tikwa. The severe trauma to Tamimi’s brain, caused by the shooting, left the doctors with little to do to save his life, and he eventually passed away at 09:21 AM today.

Tamimi’s funeral will take place tomorrow, leaving Ramallah at 10:00 AM towards Nabi Saleh, where it is expected to reach at around 11:00 AM.

Mustafa Tamimi (left) a moment before his injury. Circled in red are the barrel of the gun and the projectile that hit him. Picture credit: Haim Scwarczenberg

A photo of the incident shows Tamimi at a distance of less than 10 meters behind the semi-open door of an armored military jeep with the gun aimed directly at him. Clearly visible in the photo is also the tear-gas projectile flying in his direction.

The incident took place in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh today, when dozens gathered for the weekly demonstration in the village, protesting the theft of village lands by the adjacent Jewish-only settlement of Nabi Saleh. After the army dispersed the peaceful march, minor clashes erupted followed by a severe response from the Israeli forces. Several people were hit with rubber-coated bullets and directly shot tear-gas projectiles. Three were evacuated to the Ramallah hospital for further treatment, including a 14 year-old. One protester was arrested.

In complete disregard to the army’s own open fire regulations, soldiers often shoot tear-gas projectiles directly at groups of protesters or individuals. Rubber-coated bullets are indiscriminately shot at protesters from short distances on a regular basis. The Israeli army also resumed the use of high velocity tear-gas projectiles in Nabi Saleh, despite the fact that they have been declared banned for use, after causing the death of Bassem Abu Rahmah in the neighboring village of Bil’in, in April 2009, and the critical injury of American protester Tristan Anderson in Ni’ilin in March of the same year.

The demonstrations, which have been held regularly for the past two years have seen hundreds of injuries to protesters by Israeli forces, as well as dozens of arrests carried out by Israel with the aim of suppressing dissent.

If you are in New York City, there will be an emergency action.

TODAY, November 4
5 – 6:30pm
across the street from the Israeli Consulate
(800 2nd Ave, between 42nd and 43rd Sts, Manhattan)

Rami Hwayel on stage, "waiting for Godot or a Shin Bet decision" photo: Emily Smith

Freedom Theatre targeted again

 `Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

`No, no!’ said the Queen. `Sentence first–verdict afterwards.’
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Here’s an update about the latest arrest at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp. The previous arrests were covered here, but you can’t read about the latest on in Israel. The democracy has forbidden reporting on it within the country.

Acting Student Rami Hwayel Taken By Israeli Army

by: The Freedom Theatre

URGENT PRESS RELEASE

From The Freedom Theater Foundation, Jenin, Palestine

04.46 (gmt+2), July 27, 2011

Special Forces of the Israeli Army attacked the Freedom Theater in Jenin Refugee Camp at approximately 03:30 this morning.  Ahmad Nasser Matahen, a night guard and technician student at the theater work up by heavy blocks of stone hurled at the entrance of the theater.  As he opened the door he found masked and heavily armed Israeli Special Forces around the theater.

Ahmed says that the army threw heavy blocks of stone at the theater, “they told me to open the door to the theater.  They told me to raise my hands and forced me to take my pants down.  I thought my time had come, that they would kill me.  My brother that was with me was handcuffed.”

The location manager of The Freedom Theater, Adnan Naghnaghiye, was arrested and taken away to an unknown location together with Bilal Saadi a member of the board of The Freedom Theater.  When the general manager of the theater Jacob Gough from the UK and the co-founder of the theater Jonatan Stanczak from Sweden arrived to the scene they were forced to squat next to a family with four small children surrounded by about 50 heavily armed Israeli soldiers.

Jonatan says: Whenever we tried to tell them that they are attacking a cultural venue and arresting members of the theater we were told to shut up and they threatened to kick us, I tried to contact the civil administration of the army to clarify the matter but the person in charge hung up on me.”

For more information please contact: jacobllyr AT hotmail.co.uk

Her story continues…

After a while, my paramedic friend and a young man from the village led me once again through back-roads and fields back to Leila’s, where people were happy I hadn’t been arrested (and Nour was back to laughing). It sounded like soldiers might reappear, though, so the family and friends advised us internationals to hide in the bedroom in the back. Because I just about escaped arrest at this same house and had supposedly left the village, I took off my shoes and got in the bed (where Hala was trying to sleep to stop crying), and two other girls sat on the floor, listening to the sounds of soldiers nearby. Usaid came into the room and said “stay calm, they are coming into the house”.

While the women stood up to the soldiers and tried to prevent them from coming in, Usaid sat next to me on the bed, typing on a laptop. We heared the commander asking if there was anyone in the house, and the women yelling there wasn’t and that they should leave (very strong, these women). Suddenly the room filled with soldiers, the women managing to stand between them and us as shields and continuing to argue with them. We had not turned on the light, and the army took this occasion to make use of the strong lights on their rifles, pointing them at our faces. The commander screamed at the women “You lied to me! You lied to me“ (like they had cheated on him) and threatened the two girls with arrest unless they leave (so they left). I was pretending to be sick, so I barely reacted to the scene around me – which REALLY feelt shitty.

When the two girls leave, more lights and rifles are pointed at me (I don’t turn my head to look), I am ordered to leave, I tell them I can’t, the women say I am sick, and suddenly the soldiers turn on Usaid!

They corner him against the cupboard next to me, the women still try to shield him, the commander asks for Usaid’s ID, and suddenly and for no reason at all, they arrest Usaid (who is 19 years old, I think). They drag him away, the women are screaming hysterically and trying to get him out of their grips, while still protecting me, telling the soldier to let me sleep.

I am left lying in bed, with an even more shitty feeling, let me tell you. When I dare to go out, the family is trying to calm down (again!) and we speculate if they are going to release Usaid soon or keep him for months, and what could have been done differently to prevent the arrest. The father is angry at Usaid for not having stayed on the porch, as he had told him. He thinks he might not have gotten arrested had he not been in the back room with us. In Usaid’s case, it is very clear that his arrest was random, and I am thinking he was arrested because of us, because he was hiding us. To keep myself busy, I guess, I write angry text messages to friends while I’m sitting with his now very distressed parents – who’ve seen two of their sons and a nephew arrested from their homes in the last few hours and are still waiting for their other son to get out of prison and for his jaw to heal – and I’m feeling the familiar mix of disbelief, powerlessness, guilt, worry, sadness, and whoknowswhatelse. We don’t speak.

I heard later that one of the best-equipped armies of the world had also stormed another house in what sounds like a military operation, pointing rifles and a hand-gun at the heads of internationals and Israelis who were sitting around, to violently arrest Sami, another young man (in this case, it sounds like the arrest was not random).

In the course of the evening and night, all but Nidal got released (Nidal was released Sunday evening), none of them charged with anything. Amir and Mustapha had been beaten very badly, ordered to kneel in the sun for hours, and refused water to drink. Sami got subpoenad and has to present himself on Monday (at the military base, if I remember correctly – we can’t really make out what that is supposed to mean).

When she wasn’t running after soldiers who were arresting her family members, Hala, Nidal’s wife, tried to sleep in order to stop crying. While it was getting dark, the army was still shooting tear gas, including into homes with little children. During the entire day, people kept running in and out of houses to take cover from tear gas (while cooking, while chatting, while resting, while…) Only the night before, soldiers had invaded the village and shot life ammunition at the protest tent.

By night-time, we were all invited to dinner in one or more of the various homes out of which the sons had been arrested (I ended up eating three dinners), the families, Nour, Hala, Leila, and later even Usaid, Mustapha, Sami, Amir, Ibrahim and Qasim hosting us, joking, urging us to eat more, making us feel comfortable, again.

There seems to be no end to the Israeli army’s sick creativity, and Nabi Saleh in particular seems a favorite target. I am not sure how many are currently in jail, but over 10% of the villagers have been detained over the past year and a half for exercising their right to protest against the ongoing illegal annexation of their lands. Like so many communities in Palestine, the inhabitants of Nabi Saleh have seen family members arrested and looked away for weeks, months or years in unproportionately threatening and violent night raids on their homes; during demonstrations, their sons (and sometimes daughters) were detained, and occasionally released the same day without charges. Yet, raiding and storming houses in the middle of the day, in the presence of tens of international and Israeli activists, to arrest young men at gun-point without arrest warrants and only to release them hours later without charges – this seems unusual even for the Israeli army’s regular aggression towards this village. I imagine that the next weeks will show what this means.

In the meantime, I keep thinking of something I said jokingly:„Maybe next Friday, you should send your sons away from the village“. I keep thinking:„Are the inhabitants of the village not allowed to have visitors any more?“, „Is there ANYthing the sons daughters of Nabi Saleh can do to stay safe from arrests?“ and „Is there NOTHING their friends and family can do to protect them?“ Rethorical questions, of course, but in my mind, I keep asking them, keep shaking my head in disbelief.

On the long run, of course, what we can do to protect the people of Nabi Saleh and of Palestine as a whole is to step up our efforts to expose Israel’s past and ongoing crimes and to pressure organisations and political institutions/governments to sanction Israel until it respects international law and the human rights of all Palestinians.

Click here for  a critical post on the trend of internationals coming to Nabi Saleh. 

We received this account from the same protest our anonymous  source A., an international activist living in Palestine.  She explains:

This account is edited from a chat conversation describing events that took place on July 21st during and after the weekly demonstration in Nabi Saleh against the illegal settlement on the village’s land and against Israel’s Apartheid policies and unlawful occupation and colonization of Palestine as a whole. It might sound like I was upset at the violence directed at me or you could have the impression that I was very brave, but neither is the case. I have been at many demonstrations that certain kinds of attacks (stun grenades for instance) do not unsettle me that much (untill I get hit by one one day, I imagine). What I did and do find very upsetting is the insane level of abuse of rights that the army exhibited this Friday, even for Nabi Saleh’s standards in detaining four young men, one a 14 year old and three of them from the family I was hanging out with. (Unfortunately a shocking amount of army violence towards civilians including small children has become the rule in that village).

Also I feature so much in this account because in the chaos and while hiding I missed most of what others did, much of which was REALLY impressive (such as the amazing young paramedics, the children, youths, and the mothers and fathers from Nabi Saleh, as well as the Palestinian youths from elsewhere who have been organize a strong and motivating solidarity campaign). I changed names of people.

I arrived early because the army closes off the roads to Nabi Saleh on Fridays, so I hung out at the house of the uncle of a friend.

I really like her family and was glad to see them again. The family and I joked around for a while, drank coffee, ate young grapes off the vine. I hadn’t seen them for bit, so the girls (late teens, very early 20s) and I were mostly being really silly (tried out different ways to wear a kuffiyeh and headscarfs, pretended to be old men or resistance fighters between clouds of tear-gas that kept drifting onto the porch and into the house. The army had already been shooting, but it was still “only occasional”.

Nour and Leila used to go to demos and were very much up front, but haven’t been going for a while. They decided to go with me that day, though, just to be together.

The actual demo only lasted a short while. Please note that ALL of this is happening INSIDE the village, in the middle of Palestinian territory. The Israeli Army shot like crazy and people dispersed. I got separated from the girls.

Earlier, when two Israeli activists and I were standing in a small road, alone, and talking, they shot a cluster of rubber-coated steel bullets directly at us, out of nowhere. An indication of what was to come, I guess.

There were many many people, including internationals and Israeli activists as well as the aforementioned Palestinian youths from Ramallah and elsewhere in addition to the amazing people of Nabi Saleh.

I was sitting with two Israeli actists and a young men from the village in the yard of a house where we’d hidden for a while from the first massive round of tear gas. The air seemed ok again and things seemed to have calmed, so we sat on the stairs and were chatting, taking an early break, when a commander appeared from around a wall and immediately threw a stun grenade at us while screaming “What are you doing here?”

I ran after the two Israeli activists and we ended up hiding in another house, talking to others in the village by phone, trying to find out what was going on. It got to a point where almost everyone/most were forced to hide inside as the army attacked anyone they saw. It look liked a ghost town outside.

After a bit, I followed an activist through backroads to the main square. Things seemed to have calmed down again. By the time I arrived at the square, soldiers had taken over the roof of a house and a number of activists (mostly internationals) were taking cover/resting in the front room of a shop directly in the line of fire, but shielded by grates.

The army remained stationed on the roof, around the square and who knows where else, and armored jeeps kept driving past, but seemed to have stopped shooting. The corner of the square where the shop was located very slowly came back to life with the guns pointed at people, things still tense, but no more tear gas in the air.

Four or five jeeps positioned on the road next to the shop and soldiers lined up in front but we couldn’t see what that meant. Nour got up and went around the corner (where the jeeps were stationed), said “shit, army at our house” and ran to look.

I followed Nour, who slipped through between the soldiers trying to stop her and down to the house where even more soldiers were massing. A soldier stopped me. I said “my things are there”, “it’s my friends house“, etc., emphasizing the banality of the act they were trying to prevent – me going to my friend’s house. He turned his back to me, with another soldier shielding him as if there were sharing some classified secre, and suddenly threw a stun grenade at me, a young woman standing in an almost empty square, surrounded by soldiers. It was rather ridiculous and yet quite typical and therefore predictable, I could react in time and the thing went off somewhere in front of me. We were laughing at the soldiers and joking about this “anti-terror” maneuver when Nour came running back, and threw herself into my arms and crying “They arrested Amir!” [I heard later that a bunch of international and Israeli activists had been sitting in the house when it was suddenly raided by soldiers who arrested Amir and a friend of his Mustapha (both men in their early 20s) from Leila's family's house! People sitting around, probably drinking tea, and out of nowhere, insane soldiers enter and arrest the hosts without any warrant or reason, just because they can.]

Nour went crazy, kept trying to stop to the soldiers who were forcing the two across the square to the house they had occupied, she kept standing in their way, crying, cursing and screaming „why are you taking him?“Amir was smiled at us and made the peace/victory sign, someone behind me shouted to Mustapha some Palestinian male equivalent to „I love you“.As soon as the soldiers shoved Amir and Mustapha into the house, before they even closed the door, they started beating them.

A few of us had followed them to the stairs, including some activists filming, and were screaming at the soldiers not to beat the two when soldiers both inside the building and threw more stun grenades at us. And they kept throwing them even as people moved away. They also looked about to shoot more tear gas canisters at the shop.

Nour kept crying and screaming angrily (when not dodging grenades). We sat down on the steps of another building in the square in sight of the house, and I kept hugging her and kissing her head, feeling pretty useless and rather upset myself at this point.

An army transport vehicle arrived and Nour knew it was to take Amir and Mustapha away, so she ran back across the square to the building, still crying, frantically trying to come up with SOMETHING to prevent them from driving off with her brother. A few others also gathered in front of the door and continued videotaping, and I continued to try to hold Nour and feel useless. I don’t remember what exactly happened, I think some commander gestured to some of us, indicating they were going to arrest, anyway, for some reason, Nour ran back to her uncle’s house and I followed. There, her mother, father, aunt, uncle, cousins and friends were walking frantically around on the little porch. Both Nidal and Amir had been arrested from under their noses from inside these homes in the past few hours.

Once again, a bunch of soldiers appeared and (suprisingly to me) singled me out and made as if they were about to arrest me. While other soldiers surrounded me, exhibiting some of their repertoire of threatening macho gestures, the commander threatened to arrest me, unless I gave him my ID or walked with him to the military tower. He claimed the whole village was a closed military zone (without showing an order) and questioned me. I eventually managed to get out, pretended I was leaving the village (aka “closed military zone“) and hid (again!) in someone’s house. And once again, I learned through phone-calls they had confiscated IDs of any non-Palestinian they saw and taken them to the military base, from where people had to retrieve their ID’s and then leave the area (was pretty obvious that the policy was to get all human rights observers out). Everyone they hadn’t gotten seemed to be hiding.

It felt strange, let me tell you, since we ostensibly come in solidarity and as human rights observers, and here it was Palestinians protecting us from arrest, looking out whether soldiers were coming, hiding us, signaling when we could come out etc. – which is how it SHOULD be seeing as we are the guests in THEIR land, but because the internationally-backed occupation grants foreigners more rights in Palestine than Palestinians, and Palestinians are the Israeli soldiers’ chosen target, it is often international/Israeli activists that try to prevent (at least document) the arrest/abuse of Palestinians. Which, this Friday, we really failed to do.

Tomorrow: A. takes refuge again in a Palestinian home.

Source: Reuters

From Ha’aretz,

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud ministers for their opposition to a bill calling for parliamentary investigations into left-wing organizations. Speaking during Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Lieberman said the bodies slated for investigation were not left-wing groups but terror organizations.

Fascinatingly, Netanyahu refused to support the bill because of “Delegitimization,” which either means he argues that for everything he does, or he recognizes that repressive laws are what delegtimizes Israel, while the human rights groups it mentions are among its last hopes.

One of the group’s on Lieberman’s slander list, New Profile, responded in an emailed press statement.

New Profile Denounces Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman

New Profile rejects and denounces Minister Lieberman’s choice to call New Profile and other human rights organizations “terrorist organizations”.

New Profile is a civil feminist movement active against institutionalized violence and for dialogue and peace, for demilitarizing Israeli society, for freedom of conscience, equality and justice for all – Arabs and Jews, women and men, including those choosing not to serve in the IDF.

New Profile persists in its commitment to non-violence and encourages true, open civil discourse in Israel. Minister Lieberman kindles and leads incitement against human rights and civil society organizations in this country.

The attempt to slur as “terrorist” any view critical of the ruling power’s ideas expresses a basic misunderstanding of democracy and presents any controversy as an existential threat that must be eliminated.

We call upon the public in Israel to ask itself and its elected representatives why criticism and independent thinking threaten them as much as terrorist actions.

Inflaming fear and trembling of real and imagined foes perpetuates the situation whereby war, inequality and racism are regarded a must, manifest destiny. It is not. The choice is in our hands, we the citizens – choosing to live in an egalitarian, non-violent, civil and democratic society.