American citizen critically injured by Israeli military shooting teargas into Nil'in village

Dear friends,
some of you may have already heard the terrible news about the Tristan Anderson, a 38 year old American citizen, who is in critical condition after being shot in the head with a long range tear gas cannister.

According to the latest update from Israeli anti-occupation activists in Tel Aviv, Tristan's condition remains the same.

I have included below the reports issued by the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall and the International Solidarity Movement, whose members were also present in Nil'in when Tristan was shot.

Also included is a link to the video footage shot just after Tristan was hit (please note it may cause distress to some)

Since December last year, the Israeli military has been using a new type of tear gas cannister. The new tear gas is a black canister, labelled “40mm bullet, special/extended range” in Hebrew. According to AATW it has a range of over 400 meters and emits a very faint sound when fired and leaves hardly any smoke tail at all, thus making it extremely difficult to avoid. The older style cannisters emited a smoke tail and a whizzing sound when fired.

Despite it being illegal under Israeli military operations laws, the Israeli military often use teargas as a weapon rather than a "crowd control" agent. Under Israeli military operation regulations and law, tear gas cannisters should not be fired directly at the bodies of protestors as they can cause serious injury or death.

According to AATW, the Israeli military have also started to once again fire Ruger .22 bullets into peaceful demonstrations in the Occupied West Bank.

Israeli anti-occupation activists are currently organising demonstrations to take place in Tel Aviv and there have been calls for international demonstrations in support of Tristan and the people of Nil'in to also take place. Please consider if you can participate in or organise such a demonstration.

in solidarity, Kim

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American Protester Critically Injured by Soldiers in Ni'ilin
13/03/2009
Anarchists Against the Wall
http://www.awalls.org/tristan

Tristan Anderson, 38, an American citizen, was critically injured on Friday by Israeli troops during protests against Israel's Wall in the West Bank village of Ni’lin. He was hit in his forehead by a new type of high velocity, extended range teargas projectile, and has been transferred to Tel Hashomer hospital, near Tel Aviv. Tristan is unconscious, anesthetized and artificially respirated, has sustained life-threatening injuries to his brain (as well as to his right eye), and is expected to undergo several operations in the coming days, in addition to the one he underwent today.


Tristan Anderson

The impact of the projectile caused numerous condensed fractures to Anderson's forehead and right eye socket. During the operation, part of his right frontal lobe had to be removed, as it was penetrated by bone fragments. A brain fluid leakage was sealed using a tendon from his thigh, and both his right eye and skin suffered extensive damage. The long term scope of all of Tristan's injuries is yet unknown. It should also be noted that soldiers at the Ni'ilin checkpoint prevented the Red Crescent ambulance from taking Tristan directly to the hospital, forcing it to wait for approximately 15 minutes until an Israeli ICU ambulance (called by Israeli activists) arrived at the scene, after which he had to be carried from one ambulance to the other. This, of course, is standard procedure - in the extremely rare cases where the army allows patients from the occupied territories to be tranferred into Israel.

Tristan was hit while standing with a fellow protester inside the village, several hours after the army initially attacked a protest march of Ni'ilin's residents (joined by Israeli and international activists) who attempted to march onto their own lands in the vicinity of the wall. As opposed to previous demonstrations, this week protesters managed to actually reach the road on which the wall is currently being built, and even caused damage to parts of the razor-wire protecting the site, as well as to the newly erected fence segments of the barrier. Israeli troops dispersed demonstrators by using large amounts of teargas and rubber coated steel bullets, driving everyone back into the village. Soldiers then followed the crowd and proceeded to shoot concussion grenades, teargas canisters, rubber coated steel bullets and even live ammunition into the village, to which many of Ni'ilin's youth responded with slingshots, trying to drive the army away from the outskirts of the village.

Tristan Anderson, a few weeks before his injury, pictured during a jail solidarity demonstration in front of Jalameh prison

Anderson's injury is part of a recent escalation in the army's violent attempts to suppress Palestinian unarmed popular resistance to the occupation. Israeli troops have been using the new teargas canister since December 2008, coinciding with the beginning of Israel's ruthless assault on Gaza. The black canister, labelled “40mm bullet, special/extended range” in Hebrew, has a range of over 400 meters, emits a very faint sound when fired and leaves hardly any smoke tail at all – making it extremely difficult to avoid. Furthermore, and against the army's own regulations, soldiers routinely shoot it directly towards demonstrators, as opposed to in an arched trajectory. The combination of all these factors has led to numerous severe injuries from the projectiles, including a fractured skull and a broken leg suffered by Palestinians earlier this year.

"extended range" teargas projectile, similar to the one fired at Tristan's head. Photo: ISM Palestine


New teargas canister used by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian civilians

In addition, Israel has resumed its use of sniper-fire, shot from a suppressed Ruger 10/22 rifle, as a means of crowd dispersal. This was forbidden by the army itself already in late 2001, after the Judge Advocate General at the time reclassified the Ruger as "live ammunition" for all intents and purposes, following numerous deaths of demonstrators as well as tests carried out in military shooting ranges.

During the Friday clashes in Ni'ilin, two other Palestinians and one international were lightly injured after being hit by teargas canisters, while a third Palestinian was shot in his leg with live ammunition by a sniper, and was evacuated to a hospital in Ramallah.

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American citizen critically injured after being shot in the head by Israeli forces in Ni’lin
March 13, 2009
International Solidarity Movement
http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324

Updates below Press Release

For Immediate Release

13th Friday 2009, Ni’lin Village: An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni’lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister.

Tristan Anderson from California USA, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on.

Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500m. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed.
– Teah Lunqvist (Sweden) - International Solidarity Movement

The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as “40mm bullet special/long range,” can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister’s high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009.

Please Contact:
Adam Taylor (English), ISM Media Office +972 8503948
Sasha Solanas (English), ISM Media Office - +972 549032981
Woody Berch (English), at Tel Hashomer hospital +972 548053082


Video footage of Tristan Anderson after being hit by tear gas cannister - please note this footage may be distressing to some.

Updates:
Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni’lin’s land. Another resident from Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.

Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.

Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29th July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital.

Residents in the village of Ni’lin have been demonstrating against the construction of the Apartheid Wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Ni’lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni’lin was 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after the construction of the Wall.

Updates:
Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital, tells Ha’aretz:

He’s in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests,” She described Anderson’s condition as life-threatening.

Israeli activist Jonathan Pollack told Ynet:

… the firing incident took place inside the village and not next to the fence. There were clashes in the earlier hours, but he wasn’t part of them. He didn’t throw stones and wasn’t standing next to the stone throwers.

There was really no reason to fire at them. The Dutch girl standing next to him was not hurt. It only injured him, like a bullet.

13 March: Anarchists Against the Wall reports on Tristan’s condition (volunteers with AWALLS were present when Tristan was injured and have been at the hospital to oversee his treatment):

The impact of the projectile caused numerous condensed fractures to Anderson’s forehead and right eye socket. During the operation part of his right frontal lobe had to be removed, as it was penetrated by bone fragments. A brain fluid leakage was sealed using a tendon from his thigh, and both his right eye and skin suffered extensive damage. The long term scope of all of Tristan’s injuries is yet unknown.

Standing at Baruch Goldstein's grave: Breaking the Silence with Shovrim Shtika

A visit to Hebron:

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in probably in the one place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I never thought I would ever be. But here I was standing at the graveside of the murder Baruch Goldstein in the illegal Israeli colony of Kiryat Arba, in the Palestinian Hebron hills. Goldstein, an American-Israeli doctor, illegal settler and devote Zionist follower of the racist religious fanatic Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1994 murdered 29 Palestinian men, women and children and wounded another 150, while they were at prayer in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. It was his murderous act during the holy Jewish festival of Purim and the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, that triggered the first Palestinian suicide bombing against Israeli citizens.

So how did I get to be in the one place I never thought I would visit in the beautiful country that I have come to love? The visit to Goldstein’s grave was the first stop in a tour organised by Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence), a group of ex- Israeli soldiers, many of whom served in Hebron. Shovrim Shtika, which formed in 2004 and which aims to “break the silence” about what actually happens in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and to lift the veil on the activities of the “most moral army in the world”.

Myself, my two housemates and another friend joined 45 other Israeli citizens and internationals on the twice monthly tour earlier that morning in Jerusalem. We were greeted warmly by Mikhael, former Israeli army commander who was wearing a yarmulke. For the next 40 minutes, as we drove to Hebron along the settler highways, Mikhael gave us a thumb nail sketch of the history of the holy land, Zionist colonisation, Palestinian resistance, as well as the religious significance of Hebron to Jews, Muslims and Christians. As we speed along the settler highway, I recalled how different and easy this journey was compared to my first trip to Hebron in 2004. In 2004, we had travelled from Haris to a demonstration just south of Hebron city. A journey that should have taken an hour and half was strung out to more than 5 hours. During the marathon journey (a regular occurrence for Palestinians), we were stopped at 8 checkpoints and we had no choice but to change vehicles 6 times, due to road blocks that prevented Palestinian vehicles from travelling extended distances. How different it was this time, sitting in an air condition Israeli number plated bus, hurtling down the settler freeway.

As we entered the illegal Israeli colony of Kiryat Arba, Mikhael explained Hebron is the only place in the OPT that has illegal Israeli settlements located in the centre of a Palestinian city. Mikael went on to explain how since 1997, Hebron has been divided into to two sectors, know as H1 and H2. Approximately 160,000 Palestinian residents live in H1, while around 40,000 live in H2. Also living in H2 are around 600 illegal Israeli settlers. H1 is supposedly under the control of the Palestinian Authority, while H2 – including Al Shuhada St and the Old City and Palestinian markets (Casbah or Souq area) - is under the control of the Israeli military. The reality, however, is that the Israeli military also control H1 and the illegal settlers are the real ones in control of H2, not the Israeli military or police.

Due to the location of the illegal settlers inside the city boundaries, the situation for Palestinian residents in both H1 and H2 is particularly horrendous as they are constantly under violent attack from the illegal Israeli settlers. According to the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem “Over the years, settlers in the city have routinely abused the city's Palestinian residents, sometimes using extreme violence. Throughout the second intifada, settlers have committed physical assaults, including beatings, at times with clubs, stone throwing, and hurling of refuse, sand, water, chlorine, and empty bottles. Settlers have destroyed shops and doors, committed thefts, and chopped down fruit trees. Settlers have also been involved in gunfire, attempts to run people over, poisoning of a water well, breaking into homes, spilling of hot liquid on the face of a Palestinian, and the killing of a young Palestinian girl”.

B’Tselem notes that neither Israeli police nor soldiers do anything to protect Palestinians from illegal settler attacks and as a result, are in effect, sanctioning the violence of the illegal settlers. In addition, both Israeli police and soldiers are responsible for excessive violence against Palestinians carrying out arbitrary house searches, seize of Palestinian homes for observation points (often for years on end), detention, humiliation and beating of Palestinians. Both Israeli security forces and settler violence is designed, as B’Tselem notes, to force “a quite transfer” of Palestinian residents out of the old city.

I found it not a little disturbing as we made our way to the mass murder’s grave which was located in the park celebrating the life of another racist advocate of Palestinian and Arab genocide, Meir Kahane (the leader of the Kach movement which Goldstein was a member). More than anything else in Hebron and perhaps in the whole the occupied Palestinian territories, Goldstein’s grave represents clearly the racism of Zionist ideology. In the aftermath of his murderous act, Goldstein was and continues to be held up as a hero to be emulated by many illegal Israeli settlers and other Zionists. In the weeks and years after his death, a shrine had been erected around his grave celebrating him and the murder of 29 Palestinian men, women and children. The tiled shrine remained in existence for 6 years until 2000 when the Israeli government under intense pressure, finally forcibly dismantled it.

From where we stood near the murder’s grave, we could down into the hills and streets of Hebron city, where we would soon be visiting. From where we stood, the city looks so peaceful but for those of us who had been to Hebron before, including the former Israeli soldiers leading us, we knew we were about to enter a place which was, for the Palestinian residents who lived there, a veritable hell on earth.

When we reached the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is sacred to all three faiths and where Goldstein carried out his massacre, we alighted from the bus. From here we would spend the next few hours on foot walking through the streets of Hebron city. Mikhael and Yehuda, the founder of Breaking the Silence, led us up Shuhada St, the main thoroughfare which ran though the city.

Anywhere else in the world, the main street of a city would be teeming with pedestrians, cars, shops and shop keepers hawking their wares. But the street in front of us was deathly silent. Except for an occasional army jeep or car belonging to an illegal Israeli settler passing by; the street was devoid of life. Mikhael explained to us that during the first three years of the intifada, the Israeli military imposed a round-the-clock curfew on the Palestinians in the city center of Hebron for more than a year (377 days in total), including a consecutive period of 182 days, with short breaks to obtain provisions.

Although, now not under around-the-clock closure, Israeli military restrictions are still severe with the many streets in Hebron city, including Shuhada St, being no-go zones for Palestinians residents. The Israeli military had created what B’Tselem calls a “contiguous strip of land in the City Center along which the movement of Palestinian vehicles is forbidden. The middle of the strip contains many sections of road that the army forbids even Palestinian pedestrians to use. The strip blocks the main north-south traffic artery in the city, and therefore affects the entire city”.

In 2000, in complete disregard for international law, the Israeli military forcible closed all Palestinian shops along the H2 section of Shuhada St and sealed the entrances of the Palestinians houses which opened on to the street, by soldering (welding) the doors closed. The purpose of the shop closures and the soldering (welding) of the residential doors were to ensure that only the illegal settlers had access to Shuhada St.

As we walked up the streets, we could see Palestinian children playing in caged balconies above us. The cages around every Palestinian balcony and window were to prevent the illegal settlers from throwing stones or rubbish at the Palestinian residents. As we stood outside the home of one family, we could hear them going about their daily routine inside. We could hear children playing and the parents busily doing household chores. As we stood there, looking at the bronzed lumps of solder which prevent the family inside from every being able to open the door to greet us, Mikhael told us how what we saw here had a profound effect on him as a soldier.

“What opened my eyes”, he said, “was that the people living in the house behind me have not been able to walk on the streets for years, but I as a Jew, I have the privilege to do that”.

As we stood outside the welded door, Mikhael asked us to image what it must be like for the Palestinian family we could not see. As he spoke, I no longer was standing with our group, instead, in my mind I was traversing the roofs of the houses behind us. Imagine, he said, to leave this house, the family must do so by the roof tops. It may not seem that arduous, he said, but imagine.

Imagine having to carry your groceries or one of the huge heavy gas bottles that all Palestinian homes used for cooking. Imagine having to carry that over the tiles of the roofs, the guttering and up and down make shift stairs made of rubble and brick.

Imagine, he said, if you were old and/or sick. Imagine trying to get to hospital. Imagine, he said, if your loved one had died and you must carry that person on your back, out of the house, across the roofs. Imagine, he said, to live your life like that every day.


Video: The Rooftops of Hebron

And as I visualised and put his words into images, how could I not want to cry and shout out at the injustice and the inhumanity and immorality of forcing another human being to live that way. But I bit down on my words and swallowed them whole

As our journey continued through out the day, this reaction was to take hold of me again and again – when we visited the once thriving meat and whole sale markets, now desolate, which had been destroyed by the illegal settlers and now lay in rubble, when we witnessed the illegal invasion of Palestinian homes and shops by the settlers and when we visited the homes of Palestinian families living under siege below the illegal Israeli colony of Tel Rumeida in the centre of Hebron city.

“There are lives at the end of this story”, said Mikhael. “People are caged because of me and every Israeli should see this and claim responsibility”, he said.

As we walked around the markets, we could see what looked like empty closed Palestinian shops, but upon further inspection we realised that in fact there were illegal Israeli settler families living in the shops. Yehuda, who guided us during this section of our tour, explained that the settler would keep the fronts of the shops in tact, while breaking into the shops from behind and quietly establishing residence in them. He explained while the Israeli army had finally moved to evict some illegal families from the market area a few weeks ago (after they had been there for over 5 years), this was pretty much a staged drama, as hundreds of other settler families remained illegal in Palestinian homes and residences. The IOF and the Israeli state, he explained, were quite aware of the settler’s illegal actions but nothing to prevent the settlers from continuing such actions.

Soon we were standing outside of Beit Hadassah, the first of the illegal Israeli settlements to be established in Hebron city itself. Here it was Silvana’s turn to guide us. A tiny blonde international human rights activist who works with Breaking the Silence, she explained to us the role of the international peace teams, such as the Christian Peace Makers, the Ecumenical Accompaniers and the International Solidarity Movement, who work in Hebron.

Silvana explained that the one of the main role of the international teams was to accompany Palestinian school children to and from schools and to try and prevent both settler adults and settler children from attacking the Palestinian school children.

She went onto tell with chilling factuality, how one day when she was standing duty at the bottom of the stairs that the children must walk down, a settler youth attacked her from behind with a brick. The youth hit her with such force that he not only knocked her unconscious but also severely fractured her skull. Hearing Silvana’s story, I recalled how when I was in Palestine last time, two members of the Christian Peacemaker teams were attacked by an armed group of illegal settlers wielding chains, steel pipes and guns. Kim Lamberty, a CPTer from the US had her leg and arm broken, while her team mate Chris Brown had his lung punctured and his skull fractured. They were not the first or the last peace activists to be brutalised by the illegal settlers.


Video: Settler children attacking Palestinian school girls and their teachers

Silvana, along with Mikhael and Yehuda, explained that attacks by both settler adults and children were not uncommon, as under the age of 12 years, Israeli children can not be held responsible criminally for their actions. As a result, settler adults often would encourage and direct their children to attack Palestinian children and adults. Yehuda and Mikhael explained that soldiers did nothing to stop the settler children in their attacks because the role of the IOF was to protect the illegal settlers, not to protect the Palestinians the settler youth were attacking.

When we reached the section of Shuhada Street, where the Israeli checkpoint between H1 and H2 was established, we could hear the hustle and bustle of the Palestinian community on the otherside. While H1 was only a few metres away, it in reality was in fact a different world compared to the one we were standing in. Not far from this checkpoint was the illegal settlement of Tel Rumeida, which was located directly in the heart of Hebron city.

Before walking to the streets that marked the beginning of Tel Rumeida, Mikhael and Yehuda introduced us to Hisham, a tall Palestinian man in his mid 40s, who welcomed us warmly into his home. As he showed us around his garden, he explained that the settlers above him regularly dumped their rubbish and threw rocks at his family. He explained the derelict washing machine in his garden was courtesy of settler neighbours, who had thrown it down deliberately one day when he was in the garden, narrowly missing him at the time. Like many other Palestinians, his family home had been shot at by the illegal settlers and it had been invaded and its contents destroyed. The illegal settlers had also cut the electricity, the phone line, and the water pipes, ensure that at times his family would have to go for months without water or electricity.

The worst times, however, Hisham explained was when his father died and when his wife was about to give birth to his son. When his father died, the illegal settlers and the IOF would not allow an ambulance to come to the house. So he had to carry the body of his deceased father several miles on his back, through fields and checkpoints. A harrowing journey for anyone in a time of grief.

Later that same year, Hisham was forced to carry his wife who was about to give birth to the hospital. When he reached the checkpoint, however, the Israeli soldiers on duty refused to let him pass, despite the fact he had medical documentation. Instead they told Hisham to take his wife back to his house and “let her die there”. Several hours later, they attempted the journey again. This time a new commander was on duty when Hisham and his wife reached the checkpoint. This solider was more compassionate and let them through, however, it still took Hisham 3 hours on foot to get his wife to hospital and to the medical attention she needed.

Before we left the house, Hisham and Mikhael screened a series of videos taken by Palestinian residents and human rights workers. One showed young settler girls, aged abut 12 years attacking terrified Palestinian school children and pushing a 70 year old human rights worker to the ground. Another showed a settler woman taunting and threatening a Palestinian family caged in their own home, calling the women “sharmouta” (whore) The video of the settler woman was screened across Israel, bring home for one of the first time the viciousness that Palestinians in Hebron have to endure on a daily basis.


Illegal settler woman attacking Palestinian family who are forced to live in a cage.


The final video was of the 2003 settler rampage, which saw hundreds
of settlers break into Palestinian homes, destroy them and attack the families inside. Just watching the video sent shivers down me not only as the terror of the family filming the settler actions was palpable but also because of the joyful singing and dancing of the settlers as they carried out their bloody rampage.

Upon reaching Tel Rumeida, the IOF refused to allow us to enter the colony, saying that there were new arbitrary laws in place which prevented us from doing so. As we walked around Tel Rumeida colony, Yehuda and Mikhael, who had avoided throughout most of the trip making the journey about themselves and their Break the Silence colleagues, gave us an insight into the minds of Israeli soldiers serving in Hebron and how they came to form Breaking the Silence. Yehuda told us how when he first arrived in Hebron as a grenade machine gunner, he was shocked to be ordered to fire indiscriminately into Palestinian civilian areas. A grenade machine gun, he explained has a kill range of 8 metres and an injury range of 16 metres, it was not an accurate weapon, so often you would have to fire it 5 or 6 times before you could get an accurate fix on your target. This meant, he said, that often they would hit Palestinian houses, schools and hospitals.

Yehuda went onto explain, how despite his initial shock, within a week he had grown comfortable with the morality of firing into civilian residential areas. After he finished his service, he and a number of his comrades realised that they all shared such a common experience and that they could not speak with their family or friends about what they had seen or done in Hebron and how they had all so quickly succumbed to be part of a campaign to terrorise and collectively punish a whole Palestinian city in the name of “security”.

Shovim Shtika, he said, was formed so that they could “break the silent agreement between Israeli soldiers and Israeli civil society that ‘we know something is going on but we don't want to know’”. They wanted to “tell our daily life, so that other Israelis would understand what happened in the occupied territories” and how they “had become part of it”.

Collecting photos that they had taken, the ex-soldiers decided to prepare a photo exhibition, which was to send shock waves through Israeli society. In 2005, when the soldiers first put their exhibition one display at a college in Tel Aviv, it was raided by the Israeli government and the military police. The soldiers were detained and interrogated for more than 7 hours. This, however, did not deter them and the soldiers have sought to repeat their exhibition throughout Israel, the West Bank and internationally. They have continued to speak out, collect testimonies from other soldiers serving in the OPT and to “break the silence” to expose what the “most moral army in the world” is really doing in the OPT and to the Palestinian people.

As we made our way back to the bus and I looked over the Hebron hills towards where early that day I had stood beside Goldstein’s grave, I tried to take in all that I had seen this day. As I stood there, the words of Malcolm X came to my mind, that you did not need anything else except the truth as “truth is on the side of the oppressed”.

In Hebron, as in every other place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the truth is that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people is brutal, cruel, violent and racist. It is only in raising our voices and speaking the truth about the brutality and racism of the Israeli occupation, like the ex-soldiers of Shrovim Shitka, that we break the silence. In Hebron, as in every other place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the truth is on the side of the Palestinian people and that its the duty of all of use who believe in freedom, justice and equality to raise our voices against the brutal and Israeli occupation and demand freedom, justice and equality for Palestine and the Palestinian people.



Video: (30 mins) Israeli soldiers talk about Breaking the Silence

To read the testimonies of the soldiers from Shovim Shtika and what really happens in the OPT: http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp

To hear testimonies of soldiers from Shovim Shtika http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=breaking+the+silence%2C+hebron%2C+soldiers

When it's a friend...

Living in Ramallah for an extended period of time, to an extent, in errs you against what is happening in the rest of the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. In Ramallah, it is possible, even given the Israeli occupation to obtain a degree (just a degree mind you) of normalcy.

Ramallah is a busy, bustling city that never seems to sleep. And inside its surrounds, the worst aspects of the occupation are not always visible. Last week, I travelled to Occupied East Jerusalem, via Qalandia checkpoint, for the first time in about 6 weeks. As I approached the checkpoint in the service, the apartheid wall suddenly appeared before me. I was stunned that I felt quite shocked when I saw it. It made me realise that I had adjusted, at least a bit, to the occupation and having spent the last month mainly in central Ramallah and its surrounds, I had developed a degree of "normalcy".

Sure there were PA soldiers on the streets everywhere, yes every few weeks the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) would enter the city, carry out an attack and just as quickly leave, yes I was still outraged every time I read about what the IOF were doing in Salfit or Nablus or Jenin but now that I was in Ramallah, I was not having to witness every single day the worst aspects of the occupation. And without realising it I had become somewhat complacent.

Seeing the apartheid wall suddenly appeared before me last Saturday and having to traverse Qalandia checkpoint once again soon dispelled that complacency. Just as today it was once again dispelled.

This morning, the IOF entered the northern city of Qalqilya to conduct a military raid, supposedly against Palestinian resistance fighters. Qalqilya, a once thriving city of 50,000 people, is close the Green Line and perhaps only and hour from Tel Aviv and as a result it became one of the first Palestinians cities to feel the bitter bite of the apartheid wall. In 2004, I visited Qalqilya many times and I remember the horror I felt the first time I saw and experienced this completely walled city. (see my 2004 blog: The Wall: a land grab that creates violence http://redapril.blogspot.com/2004/11/wall-land-grab-that-creates-violence.html).

When I read about the military assault today on the Palestinian Maan News Agency website, I thought to ring my friend M, who is from Qalqilya (but now lives in Ramallah) to see if his family was okay. But then I didn't, thinking to myself, that Qaliqilya is regularly raided and I was sure that there was nothing to worry about and his family would be fine. Without realising it my complacency had once again raised its head.

When I did finally ring him two hours later to see if all was okay, I was horrified to hear that the houses of two of his uncles had been demolished by the IOF during the invasion and that two rooms of his parents house had also been demolished. M told me that the IOF had seized one of the house belong to another family member and set up an interrogation base and they were interrogating all the men in the local area. He told me that his father and brother, along with all the other men in the neighbourhood, had been detained.

CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE

He was in regular contact with his mother and was waiting on the latest news to make sure that his family were all okay. When I rang him back 30 minutes later to see if he was okay and if his family okay, the answer was no. During that short 30 minutes since I spoke to him, the IOF had gone in and demolished his parent's house completely - the house he grew up in, the house that his mother and father had spent a lifetime building, the house that was home to him and his five brothers and sisters, gone forever.

According to the reports in the Israeli media, the IOF had enter Qalqilya in the morning and more than 30 Palestinian civilians had been injured in the military assault. Some were suffering from teargas inhalation; one young man had been shot in the head. According to the Israeli newspapers, the IOF had surrounded "a cluster of homes in which the IDF said wanted militants are hiding....The troops called over loudspeakers on the militants to surrender, but were met with no response. During the operation, which is still ongoing, IDF bulldozers demolished two of the homes in the compound in an attempt to force the militants out, and are threatening to demolish the rest".

CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE

This is of course the usual story put forward by the IOF to justify their actions, their target killings, their house demolitions, their arrests, their curfews, their mass abductions and arrests, their invasions.

The reason why there was "no response" from the supposed militants was because there were no militants in the houses. My friend's family are ordinary Palestinians, just a family trying to survive and get by like any other family in the world. But now their world has been turned completely upside down.

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Living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I have been a witness to what my friend Wendy calls the "everyday sorrows of the occupation" – the checkpoints, the curfews, the house demolitions, the arrests, the beatings, the dehumanisation and collective punishment of 4 million people. And like any normal human being, I have felt anger and sadness at the injustice and inhumanity I have witnessed. But today, I could feel no anger. All I could feel was bewilderment, pain and helplessness.

Today, the brutal Israeli occupation cut closer to the bone then it had ever done before - it was a friend, someone I know and care for, someone I admire and respect, someone who is dear to me. Today, the Israeli occupation army destroyed, without blinking an eyelid, the lives of the family of someone I love.

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At a loss what to do, feeling completely helpless, I rang the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition. Meir, their chief field worker, was surprised when I told him that the IOF had been demolishing houses in Qalqilya. He said that he had not heard any reports about it yet. I explained the situation to him and how my friend, so angry wanted to sue the IOF for the demolition of his parent's house. Before Meir responded, I knew what he was going to say.

"Yes, we have good Israeli lawyers who can help him, but the chance of a successful outcome is very low". He went on to say that the Israeli Courts will not intervene if the IOF say the demolitions were part of a "security operation".

It wouldn't matter that there were no "militants", it wouldn't matter that the homes of three innocent families had been destroyed, it wouldn't matter that the lives of these families have been all but destroyed in just one short afternoon.

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So now my friend is waiting.

Waiting to hear if all is okay with his family, to hear if his brother and father have been released, to hear that nothing more has happened to his family.

Tonight three branches of his family, more than a dozen or more people, will be forced to try and find comfort under the roof of his grandfather and extremely ill grandmother's house.

Tomorrow, he will travel to Qaliqilya to see his family and to make sure they are all okay. Tomorrow, he will climb through the rubble of the house that was once his home. Tomorrow, he will sit and try and comfort his mother, father and brothers and sisters. Tomorrow, the occupation will continue and the homes and lives of more Palestinian families will be destroyed.

And tomorrow what will you do? Will you stand up and be counted? Will you move a motion at your union to support the international boycott? Will you organise a rally to call for an end to the siege of Gaza? Tomorrow, will you take stand and say enough is enough? Tomorrow, will you join the campaign to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine?


VIDEO FOOTAGE OF M's HOUSE BEING DEMOLISHED - QALQILYA, 29 AUGUST 2007

B'Tselem Report on Qalqilya House demolitions: http://www.btselem.org/english/Razing/20070911_Demolitions_in_Qalqiliya.asp