• The dehumanization is the point
    Israeli soldiers placed IEDs at the entrance to a Palestinian village. Why is such an act so hard to believe, even after everything we’ve seen the army do?
    By Sarit Michaeli September 4, 2020
    https://www.972mag.com/kufr-qaddum-protests-dehumanization

    Israeli soldiers carry away a Palestinian protester in Kufr Qaddum, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, August 23, 2019. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)

    After 15 years of documenting protests and clashes in the occupied West Bank as part of my work for Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, I thought that nothing about the Israeli military’s suppression of Palestinian demonstrations against the occupation could surprise me. Last Thursday, however, I was proved wrong.

    That day, residents of Kufr Qaddum, who since 2011 have been protesting weekly against the closure of the main entrance to their village, posted photos of camouflaged improvised explosive devices that Israeli forces had placed at spots where protesters gather.

    I found it hard to believe that soldiers on duty had snuck into the outskirts of a Palestinian village close to its built-up area, where they know villagers roam and children play, and planted IEDs made from military stun grenades the day before a protest. They had been placed in such a way that any contact would cause them to explode.

    Yet this is precisely what had happened last Thursday. The first device exploded after it was discovered by a 7-year-old who luckily did not touch it. Wasim Shteiwi, a relative who was summoned to the area and examined the device, was wounded lightly from the blast. The military admitted planting the devices, in response to a query from Haaretz reporters Hagar Shezaf and Yaniv Kubovich.

    After my initial surprise, however, I thought about the things I’ve seen the Israeli military do with my own eyes over the last decade-and-a-half at the hundreds of protests I’ve attended in West Bank villages, including Bil’in, Ni’lin, Nabi Saleh, and Kufr Qaddum. I’ve seen soldiers firing live rounds at, toward, and above protesters, wounding and sometimes killing them; soldiers and Border Police officers wantonly firing crowd control weapons such as tear gas canisters and rubber-coated metal bullets at people who hadn’t posed any risk, often contradicting the military’s own open-fire policy (including the time I filmed a Border Police officer firing a rubber bullet at me, later removed from my thigh at the hospital).

    I’ve filmed dozens of incidents of Israeli snipers firing 0.22 caliber bullets (known as “Ruger” or “two-twos”) at protestors in Kufr Qaddum and other villages, resulting in dozens of injuries, and killing 22-year-old Saaba ‘Obeid in front of our very eyes in Nabi Saleh. Also in Nabi Saleh, in 2011, a soldier fired a tear gas canister at Mustafa Tamimi from close range, killing him. I reached the scene seconds later, to document him lying on the ground, mortally wounded. (...)

    Mustafa Tamimi, a 28 year-old Palestinian from Nabi Saleh, seconds before an Israeli soldier shoots him in the face with a tear gas canister from a short distance, Nabi Saleh, December 12, 2011. (Haim Scwarczenberg)

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