“We are the masters,” says Israeli mayor as 3 more Palestinians are killed

Charlotte Silver 13 October 2015

Palestinians attempt to break through a section of the separation wall Israel built in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis, 11 October.

Yotam Ronen ActiveStills

On Monday, Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinian youths, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed since heightened violence erupted on 1 October across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and inside present-day Israel to 27.

More than 1,300 Palestinians have been injured by live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets, according to the Palestinian Authority health ministry.

In the same period, four Israelis have been killed and 67 injured.

Palestinians have called for a general strike in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and present-day Israel to protest Israel’s escalating repression.

As violence continues, Palestinian children and teenagers make up a large proportion of the dead and injured.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the deployment of up to 2,000 paramilitary Border Police reservists in occupied East Jerusalem.

On Monday evening in central Gaza, Israel claimed that about 20 Palestinians broke through a boundary fence near al-Bureij refugee camp, reportedly managing to enter Israel before the army responded with live rounds and tear gas.

In recent days, nine Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the boundary into Gaza and a pregnant mother and her baby daughter were killed in an air strike.

“ISIS-like” cruelty

Mustafa Adel al-Khatib, 18, was shot dead at the entrance to the Old City in Jerusalem.

Israeli police said al-Khatib attempted to stab a Border Police officer, before other officers in the area opened fire on him.

But Palestinian witnesses told Ma’an News Agency al-Khatib had no knife.

Fifteen-year-old Hasan Khalid Manasra was shot by police in the Israeli settlement of Pisgat Zeev in East Jerusalem.

He was with his cousin Ahmad Salih Manasra, 13, who was seriously injured. Israeli police allege that boys stabbed and injured two Israelis, an adult and a 13-year-old.

Hasan died immediately, while Ahmad remains in critical condition.

A video reported to be of Ahmad gasping for breath as he bleeds on the ground was uploaded to social media by an Israeli passerby.

Onlookers can be heard shouting insults at the bleeding boy, including, “Die, son of a whore!”

Another person tells the police to “give him one in the head.”

The video has generated shock even among Palestinians regularly exposed to the occupation’s violence.

Wattan TV said that it demonstrated the “ISIS-like and terrorist” mentality of Israeli occupation forces and settlers toward Palestinians.

Warning: This video is extremely graphic and disturbing.

A third Palestinian was killed Monday night after he allegedly stabbed and lightly injured an Israeli soldier on a bus in Jerusalem and tried to steal his gun. The name of the person was not immediately available.

The same day, a teenage Palestinian girl was shot and wounded in Jerusalem.

A schoolmate interviewed by Shehab News Agency identified the teenage girl as Marah al-Bakri.

Police allege that she had tried to stab a police officer, who was slightly injured.

On Sunday, 13-year-old Ahmad Sharaka was killed by a live bullet in the neck at a protest outside Ramallah in the West Bank, near the Israeli settlement of Beit El.

No fear

A video filmed in Hebron shows 65-year old Ziad Abu Khalil confronting Israeli soldiers, shouting that they should be ashamed of themselves for shooting children.

Abu Khalil showed no fear even as the soldiers raised their guns. He spoke for some time before he collapsed on the ground and was rushed to hospital by Palestinian medics.

On Sunday, Palestinian legal rights group Al-Haq published the names of all Palestinians who have been killed since 1 October:

“Shoot to kill”

Yair Lapid, a former Israeli minister and leader of the ostensibly centrist party Yesh Atid, has encouraged the Israeli Jewish public to “shoot to kill” when confronted with an alleged attacker.

“Don’t hesitate, even when an incident just starts, shooting to kill is the right thing to do,” Lapid said.

“The directives should specify shooting to kill when anyone pulls out a knife or screwdriver or whatever,” he added.

Israel’s Haaretz reported that Lapid “clarified that authorities will give full legal backing to such actions.”

Israeli media report that police arrested dozens of people in present-day Israel and the occupied West Bank, including 33 in overnight raids on Sunday.

Ten people were arrested near Ramallah for alleged involvement with Hamas, while others are being investigated for “terrorist activity, disturbance of the peace, and violence against civilians and security forces,” according to Haaretz.

Police are also cracking down on the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

Netanyahu has instructed the Shin Bet secret police to work with legal advisors to prepare the case to outlaw the party.

One of the party’s leaders, Yousif Abu Jama, was arrested on suspicion of organizing an “illegal gathering.”

General strike

Palestinians have called for a general strike on Tuesday in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and in Palestinian cities inside present-day Israel.

The Higher Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, a body made up of elected officials from the Palestinian community in present-day Israel, has called the strike.

Palestinian members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, have expressed support for it as well.

“In recent days this sense of security was harmed by assaults by Jewish racists against Arabs,” Aida Touma-Sliman, a Palestinian member of the Knesset from Akka, said. “More importantly, however, the police and the prime minister [sic] are calling on citizens to carry weapons, which can pose a real danger to the lives of Arab individuals.”

The Joint List, the grouping of Palestinian legislators in the Knesset, urged broad public participation in rallies protesting Israel’s crackdown on Palestinians.

Adalah, a legal rights group for Palestinian citizens of Israel, has monitored an uptick in “brutal and repressive” tactics adopted by the Israeli police, including arbitrary arrests of minors, “preventive arrests” of activists intended to stifle demonstrations, arrests of activists’ family members and severe physical violence against protesters, particularly in East Jerusalem.

“We are the masters”

Another law to increase the penalty for throwing stones passed its first reading in the Knesset.

Punishments for minors in present-day Israel and occupied East Jerusalem used to be that parents’ benefits would be frozen or the minor would be sentenced to jail time.

Sponsored by Ayelet Shaked, the justice minister who is notorious for her violent anti-Palestinian incitement, the new law would allow both penalties to be issued at once.

On Monday, three minors were arrested in Umm al-Fahim and two more in Jerusalem for allegedly throwing stones.

In attempt to appease demands for tougher “security,” the mayor of the northern Israeli city Kiryat Bialik instructed police to inspect the ID cards of Arab workers at construction sites in the city, Ynet reported.

“We are the masters of this land,” the mayor, Eli Dukorsky, wrote in a directive to city officials.

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Comments

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tom hall replied on

The video of a child who has been shot by police, lying on the pavement struggling for life while an Israeli citizen shouts the coarsest possible abuse at him, is one of the most distressing videos to have emerged from the recent surge in racist violence. That a man would film such a scene- for his evident pleasure- inserting his own bellowed epithets into the record and then proudly circulate the whole obscene performance to his friends and neighbours demonstrates the complete absence of civilised values among Zionists. We are truly seeing what Yeshahu Leibowitz referred to as "Judeo-Nazism".

It's also important to point out that the police refrained from offering any first aid treatment to their victim, and that one cop appeared to place his boot on the boy with the intention of kicking him. I honestly hope that everybody who still entertains a sense of ambivalence as to the nature of the apartheid regime views this footage. It is heart-rending and utterly abhorrent- as well as entirely characteristic of today's Israeli society. This video should be shown at town council meetings across the U.S. accompanied by a demand that local and municipal governments sever all ties with such a vile state. Support BDS- now more than ever.

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dekkers replied on

What a hate this war criminal settler has. Incited by his racist leaders spreading the brute occupation like a cancer. You are truly the masters .... of hell.

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Ali Ahmed replied on

"It is justified to kill many Palestinians as possible, but unjustified to kill 1, just ONE Israeli...."
White/European supremacy for you

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Abu Finkelstein replied on

I've had it with pro-Israel people vilifying Palestinians and pro-Palestine people vilifying Israelis. No educated, thinking person who has read and travelled extensively will ever see the Palestinians or the Israelis as pure villains. All EI is accomplishing is the riling of young/inexperienced people who haven't fully delved into both narratives, to no useful end. Count me out, I have better things to do.

If all this site is going to do is stir the pot and not look for nuance and a peaceful endgame then I've had with EI too.

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Donatus replied on

HERRENMENSCHEN-Ideology, an Israeli import from Nazi-Germany of the darkest times...

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As-salāmu ʿAlaykum replied on

I understand the Palestinian struggle. Having your land ripped away from you, forced to move and unable to start again. The solution of your problem is not to fight Israel but to prosper yourselves. You still have land and the ability to start over. You are choosing to fight and die in vain.

If you begin to develop a productive society along side Israel, in a very short amount of time you will have your own state. Not because you fought and died for it, but because you will have earned it and you will be well respected by the international community.

I am not saying this will be easy and at first Israel may hinder your growth, but after Israel sees you using for example, building materials or computer systems for good, rather than evil, you will earn their trust and be able to prosper more.

Peace.

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tom hall replied on

You've managed to post the most cynical piece of hasbara I've seen in a long time.

Palestinians are trapped in ghettos, subjected to racist laws and military courts, dispossessed of their land, murdered at the hands of illegal settlers, their homes demolished, families forced apart, children shot down, legitimate resistance criminalised, persons imprisoned without charge or trial, travel restricted, goods and basic services interdicted, a regime of deliberate economic ruin imposed with total colonial control by border police and government agencies, full scale bombardment with weapons of mass destruction, even as new waves of fanatical invaders are welcomed from abroad and government ministers openly propose genocide. It's under these horrific conditions that you offer the suggestion that, "after Israel sees you using for example, building materials or computer systems for good, rather than evil, you will earn their trust and be able to prosper more." Apparently, that's what this has been all about- Palestinians must win the trust of racist forces fully engaged in the project of their destruction.

I note also your appropriation of the traditional Arabic greeting which conveys the hope for peace. I won't reciprocate by replying "Shalom". To do so would simply profane one more ancient expression of solidarity and compassion. So I'll close with a more suitable term- Chutzpah. You've got it in spades.

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Anonymous replied on

i can see why you would insinuate the "hasbara" trope; it is often the case when those who choose to refute a factual position because the aforementioned goes against their personal prejudices.

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tom hall replied on

What exactly is the "factual position" in question? Could it be that "You still have land and the ability to start over" ? This admonition was addressed to the Palestinians. But what land is alluded to? Because virtually all of historical Palestine has been seized by the Israelis.

Perhaps the factual position is expressed in, "If you begin to develop a productive society along side Israel, in a very short amount of time you will have your own state. " Alongside Israel? Where, alongside Israel? Israel occupies 100% of Palestine. Is the proposal then that Palestinians evacuate the country in order to "start anew"? Should they emulate the Jewish colonists, pick out a target nation and move in?

I gave a comprehensive description of the oppressive conditions under which Palestinians live. The answer you're offering is that I'm prejudiced for noticing such brutal injustice. Do you honestly believe that Israel provides equality for Palestinians, either in the Occupied Territories or the Jewish State itself?

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saleem yousaf replied on

it is truely shocking the true face of Israeli society has been revealed.I would like to see how Zionists and Pro Israeli supporters try to excuse this kind of behaviour,welcome to the Racist Apartheid State of Israel,the Democratic terrorist state of the Middle East.
Despite whatever Israel does the US always supportsd Israel.Netenyahu should be tried for war crimes,and crimes against humanity

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Slim replied on

Well said Tom Hall, there should be more people of your caliber and guts to put those zionists into their rightful place. The video of that shot Palestinian boy is beyond human comprehension but not that of the israeli society. He was a boy, surely he could have been disarmed and arrested but NO in the israeli eye all Palestinians deserve to suffer and die. Haven't you noticed that the infamous idf will only disarmed and arrested jewish israelis but will shoot to kill all Palestinians young and old even those who hold israeli citizenship. Question is why is the supposedly most powerful nation the u.s is so scared of the meaningless nation like israel???.

Charlotte Silver

Charlotte Silver's picture

Charlotte Silver is an independent journalist and regular writer for The Electronic Intifada. She is based in Oakland, California and has reported from Palestine since 2010. Follow her on Twitter @CharESilver.