On July 20, at least 90 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya. Days later, former Israeli soldier Eran Efrati was arrested by Israel after he posted details about the massacre based on interviews he conducted with Israeli soldiers who were there. Today he speaks out about what he learned and talks about the killing of 23-year-old Salem Khaleel Shamaly. Activists with the International Solidarity Movement posted a video on YouTube showing the fatal shooting of an unarmed Palestinian civilian during the massacre. Family members later stumbled onto the video and identified the man as Shamaly. In the video, Shamaly is seen lying on the ground, apparently wounded by an unseen sniper. As Shamaly tries to get to his feet, two more shots ring out, and he stops moving. Efrati interviewed three of the Israeli soldiers who witnessed the killing of Salem Khaleel Shamaly. His sources within the Israeli Defense Forces reportedly informed him soldiers were deliberately targeting civilians as “punishment” and “retribution” for the deaths of fellow soldiers in their units. Efrati is a former Israeli combat soldier turned anti-occupation activist and investigative researcher.
ERAN EFRATI: I’m a seventh-generation Jerusalemite, and very proud of it. My grandpa grew up in the old city of Jerusalem with other Palestinians. He knew Arabic before he knew Hebrew. He actually referred to himself as a Jewish Palestinian. He had Palestinian friends, and he fought with them against the colonial forces of Britain at the time. Of course, in some point, he became the colonial forces himself, because he had to choose if he’s more Arab or more Jewish. Of course, you can be American Jewish in Israel, or you can be European Jewish, but you cannot be Arab Jewish in Israel. Arab Jews in Israel, much like people of color here, like blacks in here in the United States, in Ferguson, is under the same kind of racism, systematic racism, as Palestinians. We are all really Palestinians. Here in the U.S., in Israel and in Palestine, we are under the same oppression.
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ERAN EFRATI: Exactly. They’re doing it every day. The violence in Palestine is every day. The structural violence in Israel toward Palestinians, like here in the U.S., is more than just structural; it’s happening in a big masses. We’re hearing sometimes about massacres, like what happened in Gaza. But we don’t hear about the everyday situation of the occupation, the everyday beating, the everyday arrests. They administer the arrests of people without them knowing what they’re charged of, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, never going to a trial. That, of course, will not help them, because if they would go to a trial, it will be a military court with a military judge and a military lawyer. So, of course, they don’t have any chance, from the beginning with. Beating like this is happening every day in Israel, not only to Palestinians, also sometimes to Israeli activists, like the last summer showed us. The only difference was that this story came out to the news because he was an American citizen.
