Tortured in broad daylight: Israel police repeatedly electrocute handcuffed Palestinian father - video

Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 24 August 2012

Video posted on YouTube shows Israeli police repeatedly shocking a helpless Palestinian man at a Tel Aviv Water Park as horrified people look on.

The man, Talal Siad, 42, is seen writhing on the ground in agony as a uniformed Israeli police officers fires a taser-like weapon directly at him. Another Israeli then places handcuffs on Siad, before he is shocked again repeatedly. At no point, the 1:17 video shows, does he present any danger to anyone.

Siad was attacked, he said, because he challenged police over harsh treatment of other Palestinians in the park.

Day at the water park turns traumatic

According to a report by Diala Jweihan on the website AnamnalQuds.com, the incident occurred on 21 August around 10:30 AM when Siad and his family and several other families from the al-Tur neighborhood of eastern occupied Jerusalem went to the park for a day out to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

Siad told AnamnalQuds.com that he was carrying his three year-old son Zain al-Din to take him swimming when he observed a large number of police mistreating a young man also from al-Tur, spraying him with pepper spray and electric shocks at close range. Siad said he put his son down in order to go talk to the police but that they immediately attacked him with electric shocks and pepper spray.

Siad said the attack on him “spread horror and fear among the children and women from Jerusalem, as well Jewish children and their families who begged the police to stop what they were doing in front of children.”

The life of a Jerusalemite means nothing

Siad said that as he was being attacked, his three-year old son screamed, “the police are killing baba!”

“The life of a Jerusalemite [Palestinian] means nothing to the Israeli occupation,” Siad told AnamnalQuds.com, “and had I not been in front of the eyes of everyone in the water park, they would have fired a bullet at my head and then the occupation would have claimed to have fired in self-defense.”

Siad’s comment recalls the fate of Ziad Jilani, shot dead in broad daylight by a massive fusillade by Israeli occupation police in eastern occupied Jerusalem on 11 June 2010 as he came home from prayer so that he and his American wife Moira and three daughters could go out for a day at the beach.

Siad also challenged Israeli police claims that they were responding to a major brawl between two Palestinian families related to a longstanding feud, saying that a few young men from the same family, which he named, were involved in little more than horseplay as they swam.

Handcuffed

According to Haaretz, “The Taser is meant to aid policemen in controlling suspects until they are handcuffed, and its use is prohibited from that moment on. But the films prove that the policemen continued shocking Siad in front of the other bathers even after he was handcuffed and could not have presented any danger to them.”

Haaretz report begins:

A Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem complained to the Justice Ministry department that investigates police misconduct on Thursday after a police officer shocked him five times with an electric stun gun in front of his five children on Tuesday.

The Palestinian, 42-year-old Talal Siad of the A-Tur neighborhood, was shot while out with his family at a Tel Aviv water park celebrating the Id al-Fitr holiday. Siad checked himself into the hospital suffering from burns and nausea.

The incident took place after Tel Aviv police were called to Meymadion Water Park to control a brawl. Officers used pepper spray to subdue one of the participants. Siad, who was not involved in the brawl, attracted the officers’ attention by telling them they were using the irritant too freely.

“I was there with my family, my five children and my wife; we went out to have fun on our holiday,” he told Haaretz. “Suddenly there was a confrontation between a few security men and kids who were fighting among themselves. The officers wanted to arrest the boy who was seen naked in the closed-circuit television system. He fell down and they sprayed him in the face. “I saw them repeat that action several times, and then got up with my 3-year-old in my arms and shouted at them to stop. I told the policeman, ‘What are you doing? You’re killing those kids,’ and he told me to leave. I said, ‘You’re being unreasonable, you go away.’”

In response, Siad said, the policemen threatened him with the Taser. “I shouted, ‘Do you want to shoot me?’ and then he shot me in the stomach,’” Siad added.

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Comments

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Lachlan replied on

By definition, If he was electrocuted, he'd be dead.

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Lonnie replied on

...which is what happened. Have you no common sense? Also, where is the word "electrocutED" mentioned anywhere? Also, "electrocutED" is not necessarily fatal, as you claim, but can produce life-long problems and permanent nerve damage.

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Charity Clayton UK replied on

Electrocuted - not electrocuted, what's in a word? The actions of these uniformed brutes is revolting, nauseating and shocking. God help the Arabs, if these sort of people are representative of Jewish beliefs and behaviour in Israel and the OPT. It will be unsurprising if at some time in the future the Palestinian nation says to us Brits" We remember you - you are the people who made this possible and you are the people who did nothing to help repair the damage you caused to us. You are the people who stood and watched us be tortured and killed, then looked the other way in silence."

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dlb replied on

Charity, if you are concerned about the torture of Arabs and it being ignored in the UK, it is rather more rampant in Arab countries than in Israel. For that matter, torture goes on in Gaza and the West Bank (frequently in police stations built by Israel and the UK when they used to be there.) I do not mean in any way to excuse Israeli abuse of Palestinians. It is criminal. But if your concern is for Arabs, perhaps also bring the UK attention to their own countries and try to save them from themselves. This would have the added benefit of not making Israel feel demonized and would be most helpful in protecting Palestinians from Israeli abuses.

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Anonymous replied on

I cannot help but feel that you are trying to distract from the point. At that point--why stop there? Why not help all UK prisons, and work on all UK policy, etc. , etc., etc...
There are plenty of problems. That is not the point. The point she is making is here and now. Start here. Work on this. This is bad.

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Lonnie replied on

There are so much crap in your post I don't know where to begin.

First, leave other Arab nations out of this. Israel claims to be a tolerant, Western style democracy, and receives support based on that canard. A house of cards with a foundation of deceit cannot stand.

Second, where do you get the lie that torture occurs in Gaza and the West Bank?? That is what it is, a bald faced LIE. Prove it, show evidence, direct us to witnesses, or shut the hell up.

Third, how in bloody hell does NOT demonizing Israel protect the Palestinians??

Why are you on this Palestine/Israel board, if just to deflect from the issue at hand and to irrationally protect Israel? So far you have thrown up a straw man, stated a falsehood, and said not pointing to a crime helps the victim.

Un-freaking-believable.

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Charity Clayton UK replied on

Of course DLB, if and when I read about Arabs torturing Arabs in their own countries, then I will criticise them. Meanwhile though, I can't find any good reason NOT to criticise Israelis for their terrible treatment of people in the OPT and Gaza.

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Lonnie replied on

This all obvious from statements arguing the semantics of "electrocuted" to arguing we should "look the other way". It is amazing more people do not address the disingenuous of these posters, and their strange, irrelevant statements.

Sophism and distraction are liars' tactics. They may hide behind verbal decorum and civility, but they are liars just the same.

IMHO

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Sue replied on

Hi Lonnie, sometimes people don't comment because they are sick of seeing the same old 'irrelevant statements'. It gets very boring seeing their half a dozen or so highly refutable arguments. For example, were I to respond to all the trolls on the Guardian website, I'd be there all day responding, though I have to admit that sometimes , though not usually on the Guardian website (the Zios have more or lesstaken over) I can't help but respond. Glad you're here and with us, though.

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Lonnie replied on

I know what you mean. I try to "give 'em hell" on various boards but it's tough. They have a cadre of volunteers with one goal - skewing public perception. They lie, cheat, and spin without a care. All I can do is point out how ludicrous they are, as loud as I can, and move on.

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dlb replied on

Charity, et. al.

I’ve been asked a few questions. Please forgive me, but I can’t do it in 2,000 characters. This will run on a few segments.

Okay, first I’d just like to say that I agree criticizing someone for defending Palestinians when greater crimes are happening elsewhere doesn’t make sense. It would be like criticizing someone who spends their time researching throat cancer because more people are dying of lung cancer. It’s absurd. If someone cures throat cancer she is a hero regardless of who else is dying.

I apologize for being unclear.

Why did I even try to bring it up to begin with? It seemed somewhat relevant to me because you said the reason you felt you had to do something was the weight of the British history in bunging up that situation. Here’s some other situations you may want to concern yourselves with. India. A few centuries of British control ended with Churchill sitting on food stores while a million Indians starved. He also famously drew the map that not only carved out Israel but also Syria where more people have died in the current conflict than the whole history of Palestinian –Israeli conflict. The Iranians, from what I hear, have a particularly keen memory of british acts in Iran in the 20th century… plenty to consider…

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Lonnie replied on

Where did you get the "torture in Palestine" remark? How does turning the spotlight from Israel protect Palestinians?

Regarding other Arab nations, yes, why even bring it up. Isn't the majority of problems in the Arab world a direct result of repression and dictators created by the U.S. and its allies? Whether a cold war legacy, or from a warped, Israel-hijacked foreign policy, doesn't matter, we have the responsibility.

Am I wrong?

You've not used your 2000 characters...care to try again?

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dlb replied on

My post was actually in 5 parts. For some reason only two have been posted.

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dlb replied on

So, let’s think about goals. Perhaps your goal is to show Palestinians that they are not alone. I’m not a Palestinian. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say they must feel pretty isolated. The West? America, confined by their internal politics, makes things worse for them pretty consistently. Europe pays lip service and does nothing. The Middle Eastern countries primarily either pay lip or send weapons to fundamentalists. Very isolating. Any evidence of support for their cause would help. If countering their very real sense of isolation was the goal, kudos.

On the other hand, perhaps your goal is to fight to make the situation better. In that case I think it becomes more complicated to chart the right course. You then have two audiences.

Jews have a saying, “Paranoid. With reason.” Given the history of Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim relations, if you, or anyone reading this, do not understand why this idiom makes sense – or cannot understand it after a moments pause……. you should stop reading my post. You are either an anti-Semite or so woefully ill-informed that you should start by reading some history and then return.

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Sue replied on

This is not restricted to Jews: 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not after you.' The talk about Churchill: what's your point? He also gassed the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1927, but 20 years later was lauded as a hero. (No hanging for him) I'm sure you know the old adage: the victor writes the history. As regards your comments on the history of Jews vis a vis Christian and Muslim relations, my reading of history shows that Jews were treated far better by Muslims than by Christians, as does my son's (separate) reading of history at school. Muslims were tolerant of the Jewish faith, unlike Christians, but this is all beside the point. What's important is what's happening NOW (the fact that this has been going on for a century notwithstanding), so I think that overall your comments on history can be disregarded . However, because this policy of ethnic cleansing, segregation, combined with the litany of other abuses like the one reported above that occur daily, HAS been going on for a century, this is enough reason for most of us who support the Palestinian quest for equality and humanity to continue with our support. You can talk about all kinds of abuses elsewhere, but there is nothing akin to what is happening in Palestine/Israel. Syria? Congo? Tibet? etc. etc. etc. All terrible But there is NOTHING quite like the situation in Israel/Palestine. So for those who ask "Why single out Israel?" Israel single's itself out with its philosophy of exceptionalism and its belief that the imputinity it is offered by the most powerful in the world will go on for ever; And it is because of this, that many people in civil society feel that it is incumbent upon us to act. Finally, you never hear supporters of a just peace for P's/I's, genuine supporters that is, criticising other people for supporting other causes. As Lonnie said, it's only those attempting to defend the indefensible by deflecting onto other abuses that do that.

Ali Abunimah

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

Also wrote One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Opinions are mine alone.