7 aug 2019
|
|
Streets named 'Death Penalty for Terrorists,' 'Ismail Haniyeh' and 'Incendiary Balloons' appear in Israel's coastal city after an organization protesting Israeli government's 'weak' response to Palestinian terrorism launches another PR stunt
Israelis on Wednesday might have found themselves lost as the names of several Tel Aviv’s main streets had been changed to the names of Hamas terrorists and places where terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinians took place. The controversial signs were put up by the Israel Victory Project, a Middle East Forum initiative meant to steer U.S. policy toward backing an Israel victory over the Palestinians to resolve the decades-long conflict. |
The group has been protesting what they say is a “weak” Israeli response to Palestinian terrorism with various public relations campaigns that went viral.
For instance, Queen Esther Street was renamed to Dolphinarium Street (a night club where a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up in 2001, killing 21 young men and women) and Bnei Zion Street was renamed to Incendiary Balloons Street.
Several other streets were renamed to Death Penalty for Terrorists, Yasser Arafat Street and Ismail Haniyeh Street among others.
"The Israeli public is disappointed by the weak response of the Israeli government to Hamas and by the ceasefire reached after the latest round of fighting,” said the group in a statement.
“The Israeli Victory Project calls on elected officials, the IDF and the entire Israeli society to switch from a policy of appeasement to a policy of victory through military, economic and political means."
The Forum’s director Gregg Roman said the protest was born out of “great pain.”
“We must stop managing the conflict and decide that we need to end it … and do it on our own terms. This is the only way to end the conflict and this is what we’re demanding from the future Israeli government."
For instance, Queen Esther Street was renamed to Dolphinarium Street (a night club where a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up in 2001, killing 21 young men and women) and Bnei Zion Street was renamed to Incendiary Balloons Street.
Several other streets were renamed to Death Penalty for Terrorists, Yasser Arafat Street and Ismail Haniyeh Street among others.
"The Israeli public is disappointed by the weak response of the Israeli government to Hamas and by the ceasefire reached after the latest round of fighting,” said the group in a statement.
“The Israeli Victory Project calls on elected officials, the IDF and the entire Israeli society to switch from a policy of appeasement to a policy of victory through military, economic and political means."
The Forum’s director Gregg Roman said the protest was born out of “great pain.”
“We must stop managing the conflict and decide that we need to end it … and do it on our own terms. This is the only way to end the conflict and this is what we’re demanding from the future Israeli government."
5 aug 2019
Palestinians protest near the Gaza-Israel fence on 12 April
Proponents of settler-colonialism argue that Palestinian natives of Palestine are foreigners in their own land
Like all settler-colonial ideologies, Zionism has always been obsessed with race. Having emerged at the height of European colonialism and race science, it sought to learn from both.
Zionists understood that making racial claims was foundational and essential for their colonial project, a realisation that still informs Israeli colonial and racial policy today.
European racialism
In the late 18th century European philologists invented the category “Semitic” to describe the languages of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa - Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Amharic, among others - to distinguish them from Indo-European “Aryan” languages.
Since then European Christians began to consider European Jews, who did not speak Hebrew, as “Semites”, based on the religious Jewish and Christian claims that European Jews were the descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews.
What is remarkable, however, is that no one suggested then - or now - that European Christians were also the descendants of the ancient Palestinian Christians!
When antisemitism emerged as a political ideology, it latched onto the Semitic linguistic category that encompassed Jews, and antisemites converted this into a racial category. In 1879, German Wilhelm Marr, who popularised the term “antisemitism”, insisted that the hostility of antisemites to Jews was not based on their religion, but on their “race”.
Historical research has established for many decades that European Christians and Jews were native European converts to the two Palestinian religions of Christianity and Judaism, and not descendants of their ancient adherents, anymore than today’s Indonesian or Chinese or Bosnian Muslims are descendants of the ancient Arab Muslims of the Arabian peninsula.
But given the force of European racialism and its deeply racist culture then and now, the belief in the foreignness of Jews persisted. It is a belief that the Zionist movement espoused.
Racial purity
Zionism accepted the claim of a Jewish “race” separate from the race of gentiles, and proceeded to justify its colonial project based on this. Just as Europeans understood their “superior” race as the justification for their colonialism, Zionism, as a new member of the colonial club, used similar arguments to colonise the land of the Palestinians.
To further Zionism’s racial claims, Zionist Jewish scholars established in Berlin in 1902 the Association of Jewish Statistics to study, among other matters, the causes of the racial “degeneration” of European Jews. The very notion of racial “degeneration” had been invented a decade earlier by the second-most important Zionist leader at the time after Theodor Herzl: Max Nordau, whose 1892 book Degeneration popularised the term.
Zionist scholars focused on the concept of the Jewish race, the centrality of Jewish demography to the survival of the race, the physical health of European Jews, the rate of intermarriage with non-Jews, the Jewish birth rate, and rates of Jewish conversions to Christianity.
They diagnosed the situation of European Jews as one of “degeneration”, allegedly caused by their residence in the “diaspora.” The task for Zionism was to “regenerate” them by creating a settler-colonial state for European Jews in Palestine.
To Zionists, the decline in Jewish births signalled “degeneration”.
Some of their scholars were most concerned with the racial purity of Jews, arguing that the Enlightenment threatened this through mixed marriages, which introduced impure blood into the race - although they acknowledged that children of these marriages often remained outside Jewish communities, helping to preserve the racial purity of Jewish communities.
Newcomers to Palestine
In contrast, diasporic social conditions and antisemitism were viewed as the social causes of Jewish mental and physical “degeneration” - which, unlike racial degeneration, could be reversed through Jewish colonisation of Palestine, which Zionism was undertaking on their behalf.
Now that they had affirmed Jews were a race, Zionists needed to prove they were direct descendants of ancient Hebrews, as there seemed to be other contenders for this claim - namely, the Palestinians who had inhabited the land since time immemorial. Like neighbouring Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis, Palestinians are said to have mixed with peninsular Arabs after the peninsular Arab conquest of the region in the seventh century.
Zionists do not claim that today’s Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis are pure descendants of the invading Arabs, rather than indigenous peoples who mixed with them. Yet, Zionists, like Netanyahu, insist fantastically that all Palestinians are newcomers to Palestine from the Arabian peninsula.
While modern Egyptians non-controversially claim ancient Egyptians as their ancestors, and modern Iraqis claim the Babylonians and the Sumerians, the threat came from Palestinians, who would claim that ancient Hebrews alongside Canaanaites, Philistines and all other ancient inhabitants of Palestine as their ancestors.
The irony, however, was that even the founders of modern Israel, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, insisted in a 1918 book that Palestinian peasants - then the majority of the Palestinian population - were the descendants of ancient Hebrews.
The Palestinian peasants, the authors argued, had held on to their Hebrew ancestors’ traditions, most obviously through maintaining the same names for their villages, and that "in their veins, without a doubt, flows much Jewish blood – from the Jewish peasants who in the days of the persecutions and terrible oppression had renounced their tradition and their people in order to maintain their attachment and loyalty to the land of the Jews.”
Dangerous precedent
That the leaders of the Zionist movement would recognise Palestinians as the ancient inhabitants of the land, whose majority converted from Judaism and other local faiths to Christianity and later to Islam, was a dangerous precedent that had to be erased from the memory of official Zionism and Israel. And so it was.
This background terrifies Zionist ideologues and imperils their racialist claims. Here, the advances in genetic science in the last few decades and the baseless claims of many of its commercial practitioners have been a gift for Zionist racialism.
While the ongoing charlatan search for the “Jewish gene” has become the Holy Grail of race and racist scientists, especially Zionist ones, some in Israel have found immediate, practical uses to increase the number of Jews worldwide, and therefore increase the number of those that Zionism claims have a colonial claim to Palestinian land.
Two years ago, a group of Israeli Jewish experts on genetics and Jewish religious law claimed that the so-called “Jewish gene” could help to prove “Jewishness” in line with Jewish religious law”, eliminating the need for the arduous process of conversion to Judaism by those whose Jewishness could not be ascertained by rabbis.
In line with this bogus race science, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently jumped on the findings of geneticists and archaeologists who uncovered the skeletons of ancient Philistines, whose genetic markers they attributed to southern Europe.
This was taken as proof by Zionist racialists that modern Palestinians are not linked to the ancient inhabitants of Palestine, and therefore have no claim to their own homeland.
Right of return
Zionism’s arguments are two-pronged: that European converts to Judaism and their descendants who were away for 2,000 years have the “right” to return to their ancient homeland and drive out the inhabitants of the land; and that the Palestinian natives of Palestine are foreigners to their own lands.
Unlike Jews, who can maintain a “right of return” after two millennia of domicile in Europe to an Asian land from which they did not originate, Palestinians, whom Israel expelled in 1948 and after, are denied the right to return to their actual lands after a mere seven decades of expulsion.
What makes this Israeli racist argument acceptable to most white Americans and Europeans is the very racism that has anchored it since the 19th century. We are still steeped in race science and colonial justifications, as we were back in the late 19th century.
The irony is that liberal and conservative supporters of Zionism and Israel among Europeans and Americans, Jews and gentiles alike - who claim to oppose racism and colonialism - find nothing unpalatable in Zionism’s insistent and continuing commitment to both.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Joseph Massad
Joseph Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan, Desiring Arabs, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated to a dozen languages.
Proponents of settler-colonialism argue that Palestinian natives of Palestine are foreigners in their own land
Like all settler-colonial ideologies, Zionism has always been obsessed with race. Having emerged at the height of European colonialism and race science, it sought to learn from both.
Zionists understood that making racial claims was foundational and essential for their colonial project, a realisation that still informs Israeli colonial and racial policy today.
European racialism
In the late 18th century European philologists invented the category “Semitic” to describe the languages of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa - Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Amharic, among others - to distinguish them from Indo-European “Aryan” languages.
Since then European Christians began to consider European Jews, who did not speak Hebrew, as “Semites”, based on the religious Jewish and Christian claims that European Jews were the descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews.
What is remarkable, however, is that no one suggested then - or now - that European Christians were also the descendants of the ancient Palestinian Christians!
When antisemitism emerged as a political ideology, it latched onto the Semitic linguistic category that encompassed Jews, and antisemites converted this into a racial category. In 1879, German Wilhelm Marr, who popularised the term “antisemitism”, insisted that the hostility of antisemites to Jews was not based on their religion, but on their “race”.
Historical research has established for many decades that European Christians and Jews were native European converts to the two Palestinian religions of Christianity and Judaism, and not descendants of their ancient adherents, anymore than today’s Indonesian or Chinese or Bosnian Muslims are descendants of the ancient Arab Muslims of the Arabian peninsula.
But given the force of European racialism and its deeply racist culture then and now, the belief in the foreignness of Jews persisted. It is a belief that the Zionist movement espoused.
Racial purity
Zionism accepted the claim of a Jewish “race” separate from the race of gentiles, and proceeded to justify its colonial project based on this. Just as Europeans understood their “superior” race as the justification for their colonialism, Zionism, as a new member of the colonial club, used similar arguments to colonise the land of the Palestinians.
To further Zionism’s racial claims, Zionist Jewish scholars established in Berlin in 1902 the Association of Jewish Statistics to study, among other matters, the causes of the racial “degeneration” of European Jews. The very notion of racial “degeneration” had been invented a decade earlier by the second-most important Zionist leader at the time after Theodor Herzl: Max Nordau, whose 1892 book Degeneration popularised the term.
Zionist scholars focused on the concept of the Jewish race, the centrality of Jewish demography to the survival of the race, the physical health of European Jews, the rate of intermarriage with non-Jews, the Jewish birth rate, and rates of Jewish conversions to Christianity.
They diagnosed the situation of European Jews as one of “degeneration”, allegedly caused by their residence in the “diaspora.” The task for Zionism was to “regenerate” them by creating a settler-colonial state for European Jews in Palestine.
To Zionists, the decline in Jewish births signalled “degeneration”.
Some of their scholars were most concerned with the racial purity of Jews, arguing that the Enlightenment threatened this through mixed marriages, which introduced impure blood into the race - although they acknowledged that children of these marriages often remained outside Jewish communities, helping to preserve the racial purity of Jewish communities.
Newcomers to Palestine
In contrast, diasporic social conditions and antisemitism were viewed as the social causes of Jewish mental and physical “degeneration” - which, unlike racial degeneration, could be reversed through Jewish colonisation of Palestine, which Zionism was undertaking on their behalf.
Now that they had affirmed Jews were a race, Zionists needed to prove they were direct descendants of ancient Hebrews, as there seemed to be other contenders for this claim - namely, the Palestinians who had inhabited the land since time immemorial. Like neighbouring Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis, Palestinians are said to have mixed with peninsular Arabs after the peninsular Arab conquest of the region in the seventh century.
Zionists do not claim that today’s Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis are pure descendants of the invading Arabs, rather than indigenous peoples who mixed with them. Yet, Zionists, like Netanyahu, insist fantastically that all Palestinians are newcomers to Palestine from the Arabian peninsula.
While modern Egyptians non-controversially claim ancient Egyptians as their ancestors, and modern Iraqis claim the Babylonians and the Sumerians, the threat came from Palestinians, who would claim that ancient Hebrews alongside Canaanaites, Philistines and all other ancient inhabitants of Palestine as their ancestors.
The irony, however, was that even the founders of modern Israel, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, insisted in a 1918 book that Palestinian peasants - then the majority of the Palestinian population - were the descendants of ancient Hebrews.
The Palestinian peasants, the authors argued, had held on to their Hebrew ancestors’ traditions, most obviously through maintaining the same names for their villages, and that "in their veins, without a doubt, flows much Jewish blood – from the Jewish peasants who in the days of the persecutions and terrible oppression had renounced their tradition and their people in order to maintain their attachment and loyalty to the land of the Jews.”
Dangerous precedent
That the leaders of the Zionist movement would recognise Palestinians as the ancient inhabitants of the land, whose majority converted from Judaism and other local faiths to Christianity and later to Islam, was a dangerous precedent that had to be erased from the memory of official Zionism and Israel. And so it was.
This background terrifies Zionist ideologues and imperils their racialist claims. Here, the advances in genetic science in the last few decades and the baseless claims of many of its commercial practitioners have been a gift for Zionist racialism.
While the ongoing charlatan search for the “Jewish gene” has become the Holy Grail of race and racist scientists, especially Zionist ones, some in Israel have found immediate, practical uses to increase the number of Jews worldwide, and therefore increase the number of those that Zionism claims have a colonial claim to Palestinian land.
Two years ago, a group of Israeli Jewish experts on genetics and Jewish religious law claimed that the so-called “Jewish gene” could help to prove “Jewishness” in line with Jewish religious law”, eliminating the need for the arduous process of conversion to Judaism by those whose Jewishness could not be ascertained by rabbis.
In line with this bogus race science, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently jumped on the findings of geneticists and archaeologists who uncovered the skeletons of ancient Philistines, whose genetic markers they attributed to southern Europe.
This was taken as proof by Zionist racialists that modern Palestinians are not linked to the ancient inhabitants of Palestine, and therefore have no claim to their own homeland.
Right of return
Zionism’s arguments are two-pronged: that European converts to Judaism and their descendants who were away for 2,000 years have the “right” to return to their ancient homeland and drive out the inhabitants of the land; and that the Palestinian natives of Palestine are foreigners to their own lands.
Unlike Jews, who can maintain a “right of return” after two millennia of domicile in Europe to an Asian land from which they did not originate, Palestinians, whom Israel expelled in 1948 and after, are denied the right to return to their actual lands after a mere seven decades of expulsion.
What makes this Israeli racist argument acceptable to most white Americans and Europeans is the very racism that has anchored it since the 19th century. We are still steeped in race science and colonial justifications, as we were back in the late 19th century.
The irony is that liberal and conservative supporters of Zionism and Israel among Europeans and Americans, Jews and gentiles alike - who claim to oppose racism and colonialism - find nothing unpalatable in Zionism’s insistent and continuing commitment to both.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Joseph Massad
Joseph Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan, Desiring Arabs, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated to a dozen languages.
2 aug 2019
On the 69th Great March of Return, 66 Palestinian civilians were injured due to the Israeli military’s continued use of excessive force against peaceful protests along the Gaza Strip’s eastern border. At least 28 children, 4 women and a paramedic were among those injured this Friday, 02 August 2019. Twenty-seven civilians were shot with live bullets and 2 children were deemed in a critical medical condition.
While this week’s protests saw a decline in the number of civilian injuries, PCHR fieldworkers documented many cases of live bullets targeting civilians’ upper bodies. Despite the absence of a real threat to Israeli soldiers’ lives; the occupation forces continued the systematic use of excessive force against protestors.
For the first time since the Great March of Return started in March 2018, there were no injuries reported in eastern Gaza City. The deployment of Palestinian security forces in official apparel along “Jakar” street, who denied civilians from approaching the border fence, contributed to the decline in injuries.
Today’s protest, which lasted from 16:00 to 19:00, was titled “Solidarity with Crimes against Wadi al-Humus,” and involved activities such as speeches by political leaders and theatrical performances. Dozens of civilians protested at varied distances from the border fence across the Gaza Strip.
To this date, PCHR documented 208 killings by Israel since the outbreak of the protests on 30 March 2018, including 44 children, 2 women, 9 persons with disabilities, 4 paramedics, and 2 journalists. Additionally, 13,391 were wounded, including 2,775 children, 413 women, 222 paramedics and 209 journalists, noting that many had sustained multiple wounds on multiple occasions. Among those wounded, PCHR documented cases where 196 persons have become with disabilities, including 28 children and 5 women, and were as follows: 149 amputees; 21 paralyzed, 26 blind or deaf and 9 sexually disabled.
The following is a summary of today’s incidents along the Gaza Strip border:
Northern Gaza Strip
1500 protesters participated in Abu Safiyah area protests, northeast of Jabalia; only tens approached the border fence and threw stones. Israeli forces, stationed along the fence, fired live and rubber bullets as well as teargas canisters at the protesters. As a result, 20 of them were injured, including 10 children and 2 women: 11 were shot with live bullets; and 5, all children, with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. Yasser Salah Mohammed al-Tanneh (16) sustained a bullet wound to his upper thighs severely damaging a main blood vessel. Also in norther Gaza, paramedic Wafaa Omar Khamis Jaber (24) was shot with a rubber bullet in her left ankle. At approximately 18:30, Israeli forces \ arrested a civilian who crossed the border fence; his identity has not been confirmed yet.
Gaza City
Protests set off Malakah area, east of al-Zaytoun neighborhood in eastern Gaza City. Speeches, theatrical performances and other segments were performed at the protest central encampment. Palestinian security forces spread along Jakar street and denied civilians access to the border fence; nonetheless, a handful managed to approach the fence at a 100 meters distance, threw stones at the border and Israeli soldiers responded with live ammunition. No injuries were reported for the first time since the outbreak of the protests.
Central Gaza Strip
Hundreds of civilians, including women, children and families, took part in the eastern Bureij refugee camp protests; tens approached the border fence at a range varying between 2 – 70 meters, and some of them attempted to throw stones at Israeli soldiers with slingshots. The Israeli soldiers, reinforced with 9 military SUVs, responded with live and rubber bullets in addition to teargas canisters at the protesters, wounding 16 civilians, including 4 children, a woman and a journalist: 8 were shot with live bullets and shrapnel, 5 were directly hit with teargas canisters and 3 were shot with rubber bullets. Most of the injuries were documented in the upper body. Israeli forces deployed a sewage water pump against the protestors. At approximately 17:50, while present 200 meters away from the fence, journalist Usama Sharif Mohammed al-Kahlout (35), from Deir al-Balah, received a call from a number starting with 04. As soon as he took the call, he was shot in his left leg and was transferred to the hospital for treatment.
Khan Younis
Protests took place in Khuza’a, where Ahmed al-Qarra and Hany Abu-Selmy, who were killed by Israeli forces this week were commemorated. Dozens approached the border fence and threw stones at it, Israeli soldiers shot back; as a result, 17 civilians were injured, including 10 children and a journalist: 4 were shot with live bullets and shrapnel and 4 were directly hit with a tear gas canister and 9 were shot with rubber bullets. The injured journalist is Hatem Saadi Saleh Omar (39), from Rafah, and he was wearing a flak jacket with “PRESS” clearly imprinted on it. Mr. Omar is a reporter for Xinhua News Agency and he sustained two rubber bullet wounds in his legs while videotaping the events at least 130 meters away from the fence. Furthermore, dozens of civilians, suffocated due to teargas inhalation.
Rafah
Hundreds participated in the eastern Shokah protests, where folklore shows, and speeches were held. Dozens approached the border fence and threw stones. The Israeli soldiers used live and rubber bullets and teargas canisters against the protestors. As a result, 13 civilians were injured, including 4 children: 3 were shot with live bullets and shrapnel, 3 shot with rubber bullets and 7 were hit with tear gas canisters. Mohammed Zaher Wassel Abu-Zaid (15) sustained serious wounds after being hit with a tear gas canister directly to the head.
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)
While this week’s protests saw a decline in the number of civilian injuries, PCHR fieldworkers documented many cases of live bullets targeting civilians’ upper bodies. Despite the absence of a real threat to Israeli soldiers’ lives; the occupation forces continued the systematic use of excessive force against protestors.
For the first time since the Great March of Return started in March 2018, there were no injuries reported in eastern Gaza City. The deployment of Palestinian security forces in official apparel along “Jakar” street, who denied civilians from approaching the border fence, contributed to the decline in injuries.
Today’s protest, which lasted from 16:00 to 19:00, was titled “Solidarity with Crimes against Wadi al-Humus,” and involved activities such as speeches by political leaders and theatrical performances. Dozens of civilians protested at varied distances from the border fence across the Gaza Strip.
To this date, PCHR documented 208 killings by Israel since the outbreak of the protests on 30 March 2018, including 44 children, 2 women, 9 persons with disabilities, 4 paramedics, and 2 journalists. Additionally, 13,391 were wounded, including 2,775 children, 413 women, 222 paramedics and 209 journalists, noting that many had sustained multiple wounds on multiple occasions. Among those wounded, PCHR documented cases where 196 persons have become with disabilities, including 28 children and 5 women, and were as follows: 149 amputees; 21 paralyzed, 26 blind or deaf and 9 sexually disabled.
The following is a summary of today’s incidents along the Gaza Strip border:
Northern Gaza Strip
1500 protesters participated in Abu Safiyah area protests, northeast of Jabalia; only tens approached the border fence and threw stones. Israeli forces, stationed along the fence, fired live and rubber bullets as well as teargas canisters at the protesters. As a result, 20 of them were injured, including 10 children and 2 women: 11 were shot with live bullets; and 5, all children, with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. Yasser Salah Mohammed al-Tanneh (16) sustained a bullet wound to his upper thighs severely damaging a main blood vessel. Also in norther Gaza, paramedic Wafaa Omar Khamis Jaber (24) was shot with a rubber bullet in her left ankle. At approximately 18:30, Israeli forces \ arrested a civilian who crossed the border fence; his identity has not been confirmed yet.
Gaza City
Protests set off Malakah area, east of al-Zaytoun neighborhood in eastern Gaza City. Speeches, theatrical performances and other segments were performed at the protest central encampment. Palestinian security forces spread along Jakar street and denied civilians access to the border fence; nonetheless, a handful managed to approach the fence at a 100 meters distance, threw stones at the border and Israeli soldiers responded with live ammunition. No injuries were reported for the first time since the outbreak of the protests.
Central Gaza Strip
Hundreds of civilians, including women, children and families, took part in the eastern Bureij refugee camp protests; tens approached the border fence at a range varying between 2 – 70 meters, and some of them attempted to throw stones at Israeli soldiers with slingshots. The Israeli soldiers, reinforced with 9 military SUVs, responded with live and rubber bullets in addition to teargas canisters at the protesters, wounding 16 civilians, including 4 children, a woman and a journalist: 8 were shot with live bullets and shrapnel, 5 were directly hit with teargas canisters and 3 were shot with rubber bullets. Most of the injuries were documented in the upper body. Israeli forces deployed a sewage water pump against the protestors. At approximately 17:50, while present 200 meters away from the fence, journalist Usama Sharif Mohammed al-Kahlout (35), from Deir al-Balah, received a call from a number starting with 04. As soon as he took the call, he was shot in his left leg and was transferred to the hospital for treatment.
Khan Younis
Protests took place in Khuza’a, where Ahmed al-Qarra and Hany Abu-Selmy, who were killed by Israeli forces this week were commemorated. Dozens approached the border fence and threw stones at it, Israeli soldiers shot back; as a result, 17 civilians were injured, including 10 children and a journalist: 4 were shot with live bullets and shrapnel and 4 were directly hit with a tear gas canister and 9 were shot with rubber bullets. The injured journalist is Hatem Saadi Saleh Omar (39), from Rafah, and he was wearing a flak jacket with “PRESS” clearly imprinted on it. Mr. Omar is a reporter for Xinhua News Agency and he sustained two rubber bullet wounds in his legs while videotaping the events at least 130 meters away from the fence. Furthermore, dozens of civilians, suffocated due to teargas inhalation.
Rafah
Hundreds participated in the eastern Shokah protests, where folklore shows, and speeches were held. Dozens approached the border fence and threw stones. The Israeli soldiers used live and rubber bullets and teargas canisters against the protestors. As a result, 13 civilians were injured, including 4 children: 3 were shot with live bullets and shrapnel, 3 shot with rubber bullets and 7 were hit with tear gas canisters. Mohammed Zaher Wassel Abu-Zaid (15) sustained serious wounds after being hit with a tear gas canister directly to the head.
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)
31 july 2019
A protester is treated by paramedics during Great March of Return protests in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on 12 July
A Palestinian man died after being shot in the stomach by Israeli occupation forces during Great March of Return protests in southernmost Gaza last week.
Ahmad Muhammad Abdallah al-Qarra, 23, was fatally injured during demonstrations east of Khan Younis on 26 July, Gaza’s health ministry stated.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed during the protests along Gaza’s eastern and northern boundaries since their launch last year.
There has been a sharp drop in the number of protest fatalities in the last few months.
Israeli forces fatally injured four Palestinians during Great March of Return protests in May, including Muhammad al-Judaili, a paramedic who succumbed to his wounds in June.
Al-Qarra is the first Great March of Return fatality since al-Judaili’s death.
Israel changes open-fire orders
Last week it was revealed that the Israeli military has decided to change its open-fire regulations, acknowledging it killed dozens of protesters without justification.
Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, reported that the regulations were changed “after it emerged that firing at the lower limbs above the knee led, in most cases, to death, despite the fact that this was not the objective.”
Soldiers are now instructed to shoot below the knee “and then at the ankle,” according to the report.
A senior Israeli military officer told Kan: “At first, we told them to shoot at the leg. We saw that this can result in fatalities, so we told them to shoot below the knee, then we fine-tuned the regulations to shooting at the ankle.”
The classified open-fire regulations had been approved by Israel’s high court, which declared “there can be no doubt regarding their legality.”
“Both the military and the [high] court bear the responsibility for this criminal policy,” B’Tselem, a human rights group, stated this week.
An Israeli military document published by Adalah, a human rights group, earlier this year states that snipers are permitted to “shoot a key instigator” as he “temporarily moves away from the crowd or rests before continuing his activity.”
The military defines “key instigators” as individuals who “direct or order activities” during the protest, such as “tactical placement” and setting tires on fire.
An independent UN commission of inquiry found that Israel’s use of lethal force against protesters warrants criminal investigation and prosecution and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“[Israeli forces] have intentionally shot children, they’ve intentionally shot people with disabilities, they’ve intentionally shot journalists, knowing them to be children, people with disabilities and journalists,” Sara Hossain, one of the investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, said earlier this year.
Journalists injured
Israeli occupation forces continue to injure Palestinian journalists while they cover the protests.
A rubber-coated bullet fired by soldiers hit photojournalist and cameraman Sami Jamal Taleb Misran in the left eye as he covered demonstrations on 19 July. He was wearing a vest marked “Press” when he was injured east of al-Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza.
At the same location that day, Israeli forces fired a rubber-coated bullet that hit reporter Safinaz al-Louh in the back. She was also wearing a vest marked “Press.”
It was not al-Louh’s first injury while covering the protests. She was hit in her right leg with a tear gas canister on 5 April.
A Palestinian man died after being shot in the stomach by Israeli occupation forces during Great March of Return protests in southernmost Gaza last week.
Ahmad Muhammad Abdallah al-Qarra, 23, was fatally injured during demonstrations east of Khan Younis on 26 July, Gaza’s health ministry stated.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed during the protests along Gaza’s eastern and northern boundaries since their launch last year.
There has been a sharp drop in the number of protest fatalities in the last few months.
Israeli forces fatally injured four Palestinians during Great March of Return protests in May, including Muhammad al-Judaili, a paramedic who succumbed to his wounds in June.
Al-Qarra is the first Great March of Return fatality since al-Judaili’s death.
Israel changes open-fire orders
Last week it was revealed that the Israeli military has decided to change its open-fire regulations, acknowledging it killed dozens of protesters without justification.
Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, reported that the regulations were changed “after it emerged that firing at the lower limbs above the knee led, in most cases, to death, despite the fact that this was not the objective.”
Soldiers are now instructed to shoot below the knee “and then at the ankle,” according to the report.
A senior Israeli military officer told Kan: “At first, we told them to shoot at the leg. We saw that this can result in fatalities, so we told them to shoot below the knee, then we fine-tuned the regulations to shooting at the ankle.”
The classified open-fire regulations had been approved by Israel’s high court, which declared “there can be no doubt regarding their legality.”
“Both the military and the [high] court bear the responsibility for this criminal policy,” B’Tselem, a human rights group, stated this week.
An Israeli military document published by Adalah, a human rights group, earlier this year states that snipers are permitted to “shoot a key instigator” as he “temporarily moves away from the crowd or rests before continuing his activity.”
The military defines “key instigators” as individuals who “direct or order activities” during the protest, such as “tactical placement” and setting tires on fire.
An independent UN commission of inquiry found that Israel’s use of lethal force against protesters warrants criminal investigation and prosecution and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“[Israeli forces] have intentionally shot children, they’ve intentionally shot people with disabilities, they’ve intentionally shot journalists, knowing them to be children, people with disabilities and journalists,” Sara Hossain, one of the investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, said earlier this year.
Journalists injured
Israeli occupation forces continue to injure Palestinian journalists while they cover the protests.
A rubber-coated bullet fired by soldiers hit photojournalist and cameraman Sami Jamal Taleb Misran in the left eye as he covered demonstrations on 19 July. He was wearing a vest marked “Press” when he was injured east of al-Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza.
At the same location that day, Israeli forces fired a rubber-coated bullet that hit reporter Safinaz al-Louh in the back. She was also wearing a vest marked “Press.”
It was not al-Louh’s first injury while covering the protests. She was hit in her right leg with a tear gas canister on 5 April.
Page: 23 - 22 - 21 - 20 - 19 - 18 - 17 - 16 - 15 - 14 - 13 - 12 - 11 - 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2
