This past week I have been preoccupied
with various personal matters and did not really keep up on events. Otherwise I would
not have missed this description of the actions of the IDF at the funeral of
Mustafa Tamimi, assassinated by that criminal thuggish group a week ago.
Israel
is deliberately attempting to provoke the Palestinian response from non-violent
one to a new phase of violence. They are scared of the UN bid, and they are
scared of losing (they’ve already lost) control of the I/P narrative. There’s
only so much the Palestinians can take before they succeed, and still not
enough of the truth about Israel is breaking thru the US/Zio MSM Wall around reality.
This
Israeli viciousness was planned, just waiting for the excuse to happen. How
many times do we have to hear the racism these soldiers have been raised with
from infancy?
Had
there been pits or ovens nearby, who could doubt that these people, whom they
often state are less than human, have no right to exist on the land they covet,
would have been thrown in?
December 14, 2011
This has been one of the darkest and most disturbing days I have
ever had to experience. The funeral of Mustafa Tamimi, murdered by the IOF at a
demonstration at Nabi Saleh on Friday, ended with the IOF shooting endless
rounds of the teargas canisters that killed Mustafa at unarmed mourners,
beating and arresting people with impunity as they walked across Nabi Saleh
village after the funeral.
Nabi Saleh, a small
village of only 550 people, has been organizing non-violent protests against
the theft of their land since 2009. The illegal Israeli settlement of Halamish
has continued to grow and expand since 1976, and the tiny village has been
holding the demonstration for two years protesting against the confiscation of
the village’s main water supply, the Kaws Spring. Nabi Saleh has become
infamous for its violence and arrests against Palestinians, but until yesterday
nobody had been killed there by the IOF.
Mustafa, a 28 year old
Palestinian activist, died on Saturday morning after being critically injured
when a tear gas canister was shot directly at his face from the inside of an
armoured Israeli jeep only ten meters from where he was standing. The tear gas
canister ripped through one side of his face causing a massive brain
haemorrhage, and despite initial optimism he would survive on Friday night, he
tragically passed away on Saturday morning.
I was initially supposed
to be going to the Golan Heights today with the other volunteers from ICS, but
when a funeral march was organized from the hospital where Mustafa died back to
his village, I knew there was no way I could go and enjoy the tourist trappings
of the Golan Heights on this terrible day for Palestine.
Having always followed
the tragic events that happen here, I had heard many times of Palestinians
murdered by the IOF, but since being here the Palestinian struggle has become
my struggle ~ when Mustafa died I felt my heart breaking at this unnecessary
and cruel loss of life, and wept last night as if he were my own.
Around 200 people marched
through the streets of Ramallah this morning carrying Mustafa’s body, wrapped
in a Palestinian flag with a kuffieyeh to cover his head. As his body was laid
in the ambulance, we got into a service to follow it to the village.
On the way there, I
called an activist friend of mine to let her know where we were going, and she
warned me to be careful. I assured her that there was surely no way that the
IOF would be able to unashamedly devastate the funeral of a young man with
violence. I now realize just how naive that was, and how deeply I
underestimated the savagery of the Israeli army.
By the time we arrived in
the village of Nabi Saleh, there were more than 2000 people who had joined the
funeral procession, the men carrying his body above their heads with cries of
‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is Great’) and the chilling howls of the village women
calling Mustafa’s name echoing through the tiny village streets.
We saw Mustafa’s sister
walking distraught but defiant, with tears wracking her face, and his father
being held by both arms by men around him, almost unable to walk, crippled by
his grief. This was the death of a martyr for the Palestinian struggle, and the
devastating effects of his death could be seen in every face I turned to.
His body was carried
through the streets to his home for a final goodbye, to the mosque where the
funeral prayers were spoken, and then eventually to the grave overlooking the
beautiful Palestinian valleys on the outskirts of the village.
My flatmate wanted to say
some prayers for Mustafa so we walked back towards the mosque, but when we
returned to the cemetery I was surprised to see the mourners had dispersed,
when suddenly I recognized the acrid smell of tear gas fill my nose and my
stomach turned as I realized what was taking place.
As I sprinted down the
rocky terrain towards the entrance of the village, I saw elderly women and
children running back up the other way, their faces blotchy and red with
burning tears, doubled over and retching as they tried to move away from where
the army was firing.
Unarmed mourners who only
moments before had been grieving tears for their lost son, were now being
attacked by the Israeli army with round after round of tear gas and being
sprayed with skunk water, a foul smelling liquid unlike any waste sewage you
have ever smelt.
As I moved closer to the
protesters, I asked what had happened and they explained that the ten Israeli
army jeeps I could see in the distance had arrived during the funeral, and were
placed there to taunt and goad this grieving village.
In the distance I could
see the young men throwing stones at the army vehicles, a symbolic gesture
expressing their deep anger against the death of their brother and against this
cruel and twisted occupation.
Suddenly, I heard a loud
crack and all around me the silver tear gas canisters that had killed Mustafa
were being shot directly at where I was standing with other activists from ISM,
and we ran up the road through clouds of billowing tear gas smoke, desperately
trying to avoid the path of these silver bullet-like objects.
We were called up the
road by a Palestinian from the village and he pointed down the hill to the east
of the village where another unit of IOF soldiers were standing languidly at
the bottom ~ waiting, goading, intimidating ~ knowing that the Palestinians
would not stand by as another group of soldiers occupied their land on this
day.
We ran down the rocky
slope where at the bottom the women who earlier had been sobbing and lamenting
the death of Mustafa were now screaming into the faces of these IOF soldiers,
holding his picture to their faces and demanding to know which one of them had
killed their brother.
As I stood taking
photographs of this painful scene, time suddenly collapsed into itself when I
saw one of the soldiers smirk and tear the poster of Mustafa from a woman’s
hands and rip it into pieces at the same moment a sound bomb exploded next to
me, quickly followed by a tear gas canister that had been thrown and detonated
at my feet.
My face, my head, my mouth,
my whole body was suddenly filled with tear gas and I ran away blindly as my
face scorched from the gas and I felt like my head was going to explode on
itself. I couldn’t breathe nor see nor think of anything apart from the burning
that filled my lungs and head, and in the panic and confusion I ran as fast as
I could from the canister.
But no demonstration I
have attended here could have prepared me for the scene that was unfolding when
I finally managed to regain my balance and ran back up the road to where the
soldiers and Palestinians had gathered.
IOF soldiers were
savagely beating anybody within their vicinity, three or four soldiers at a
time grabbing men and throwing them to the floor, kicking them violently and
stamping on their heads.
As I stood back from the
scene taking photographs, a soldier suddenly lunged towards us entirely
unprovoked and threw one of the ISM activists I was with against the barrier of
the road, doubling him over it as his body crashed to the ground.
I screamed in his face
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING YOU ANIMALS and he shoved me out the way and turned
back to the group of soldiers that has amassed to join in the violent spree.
As they tried to arrest
more and more people the group of strong and defiant Palestinian women we were
with threw their bodies over the men they were trying to drag away, and the
soldiers began dragging these women by their hijabs, their clothes, wringing
the necks of the men who were under this pile of women and trying to pull them
from underneath.
Covering and protecting
the bodies of those trying to be arrested, the women were screaming so loudly
for the soldiers to stop and this sound pierced my heart more deeply than any
sound bomb could ever have done.
As I stood a few paces
back from what was happening, my whole body was wracked with uncontrollable
sobs as I helplessly looked on as the scene unfolded. Never in my life have I
felt more powerless, weak and unable to do anything to intervene in the
horrific scene that was playing out in front of my very eyes.
The soldiers there were
like savages, no remorse in their faces as their murderous hands grabbed and
pulled the bodies of these innocent people who had come that day to mourn the
loss of their brother.
After arresting three and
beating many more, the group was forced to retreat back up the hill we had come
from, running from the soldiers as they fired round after round of tear gas
after us.
A tear gas bomb exploded
directly at the feet of one of the protesters, and inhaling the thick plumes of
smoke he began suffocating and collapsed on the ground.
As people gathered around
him trying to help him, the soldiers who were watching what was happening
started firing tear gas directly at the group that was helping the unconscious
man, and they were forced to drag his body up the hill to escape.
We spent the next twenty
minutes dodging tear gas as we made our way back up the hill, until eventually
things began to calm so we made our way back to where the protest had
begun originally, and the violence there too had dissipated.
As we sat in the service
on the way back to Ramallah, I came to understand what the word ‘shell shocked’
really means. My mind was almost numb as we drove through the Palestinian
valleys, unable to truly comprehend the things I had seen. It was only when I
got back to my flat and recounted what had happened to my anxious flatmates
that all my anger and distress bubbled to the surface once again, and I sobbed
uncontrollably as I tried to understand what I had just experienced.
Knowing that this level
of violence is what the Palestinian people have experienced for 64 years,
almost powerless against the brutal, mechanized force of a murdering Israeli
army, serves to only more deeply cement my hatred for the IOF and the terrible
things they inflict on the wonderful people I have spent the last three months
with.
It’s difficult to put
into words the grief and humiliated anger that I feel as I sit here writing
this, and yet I still cannot believe that the Palestinians are so strong and
defiant against this savage, repressive force.
The injustice of the
occupation courses through my veins, and I cannot begin to get my head around
the mentality that would allow the Israeli soldiers to act as they did today.
As one of my flatmates
said, the IOF have no respect for the living, so why would we think they would
have even an ounce of respect for the dead?
What I saw today was
humanity at its very worst, savagery that I did not think possible. Yet still
knowing that this is only scratching the surface of the suffering experienced
by Palestinians as they try to defend their lives, their lands and their homes
hurts me more deeply than anything I have experienced in my life.
This is not propaganda.
This is not my opinion. This is an account of a terrible scene that should only
reinforce how destructive and cruel this occupation really is. Those who try to
explain or justify the behaviour of the Israeli army are as complicit in these
actions as the soldiers perpetrating these terrible crimes.
Silence is compliance ~ I
will not be silenced.
”I loathe my enemy. I
will never forgive, I will never forget. People who say such hatred transforms
a person into a bitter cruel shell know nothing of the Israeli army. This
hatred will not cripple me. What does that mean anyway? Do I not continue to
write? Do I not continue to protest? Do I not continue to resist? Hating them
sustains me, as opposed to normalizing with them. Their hatred of me makes
reinforces the truth of their being murderous machines. My hatred of them makes
me human.” – Linah Alsaafin
In our thousands, in our
millions, we are all Palestinians. RIP Mustafa Tamimi – you will never be
forgotten.
Holly Rigby's blog Carbonating Change
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