by Scott Creighton
An Israeli peace organization B’Tselem has released a video of a shooting that took place this past Saturday in the Palestinian village of Asira al-Qibliya.
According to witnesses, Israeli settlers had come from their neighboring Izhar settlement to throw rocks at village houses and Palestinians and to set fires. Two of the settlers were armed and one seemed to be carrying a strange bottle of liquid which could have possibly been a Molotov cocktail. A spokesman for the settlement later called them “firefighters” there to “put out fires” so clearly fire was indeed an aspect of this incident though not included in the video below.
Settlement spokesman called these guys “firefighters” there to help Palestinians put out some fires…. hmmm
Palestinian youths then start throwing rocks back at the settlers and the settlers shot a 24-year-old Palestinian, Fathi Assayara. It is reported by B’Tselem that the young man is recovering in the hospital in stable condition.
The IDF soldiers seen standing around the settlers doing nothing while they throw stones and shoot at the Palestinians.
“From the footage of the incident, it seems that the soldiers that were present didn’t take any measures to stop the settlers from throwing stones, lighting fires, and firing live rounds at the Palestinians. The soldiers didn’t try to get the settlers to leave and in fact stood by them while they threw stones and shot at the Palestinians,”
Spokesman for the settlers spun it this way. They said that the group of settlers was actually a “firefighting crew” who were there to extinguish the fires, not to set them and that the IDF soldiers were standing around like that to shield the firefighters from the barrage of stones.Can’t you see them shielding the firefighters from the stone in the video below?
Yet in a still image captured from the video by the Haaratz news service, you can clearly see one of the settlers (the one with the automatic weapon) has a bottle of something in his hand. Is that typically what Israeli “firefighters” use to put out fires? One little bottle and an automatic weapon? Or does it make more sense that the Palestinians were correct, the settlers were there starting fires, and what is seen in the image is a Molotov cocktail?
Filed under: palestinian rights, Scott Creighton, West bank, What Our Intersests in the Region Did This Week
A few years back, I stood with a couple of Palestinian men at a demonstration against this kind of shit. There were five of us, altogether. The three of us guys had a corner each of a busy intersection, and two women had the fourth. We could tell they knew we were there, but most people wouldn’t even look at us–not even when they were stopped for the red.
It was in Sioux Falls, or Sioux City–can’t remember which, but still, even now, I’m glad I was there, stood where I did.
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