Just imagine if:
In some imaginary Middle Eastern country, a town with a large Jewish population was occupied by a heavily armed Arab military presence. Now imagine a video being secretly made of an execution of a young Jewish man, who allegedly attempted to stab one of the Arab soldiers, lying on the ground badly wounded. The video then shows one of the soldiers walking up to the man on the ground and shooting him in the head, while other soldiers, and heavily armed Arab ‘settlers’, stand around watching. Then imagine the video getting into the hands of a human rights NGO and becoming public . The Arab population of our imaginary country hails the soldier as a hero, even though the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, describes the killing as having, “All the signs of clear case an extrajudicial execution.’
Would this fictional incident make headlines in every Western country including our own? Would it ever!! All of our newspaper & radio reports would tell us the name of the shooting victim, his age, papers would print his photos., we’d learn about his grieving family.
Opinion makers would be jumping up and down shouting how Arabs are inherently violent!
It so happens that just a few days ago, on 24 March, a real execution took place, by a soldier, of a badly wounded young man lying incapacitated on the ground after allegedly taking part in a stabbing attempt. The incident took place in Hebron in the West Bank. An IDF soldier executing a local Palestinian, Abed Fatah al Sharif, was filmed by a nearby Palestinian shoemaker who is now receiving death threats. The words quoted above were by Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns who added, “Whatever legal regime one applies to the case, shooting someone who is no longer a threat, is murder.”
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns today expressed his outrage at the killing of a Palestinian man by an Israeli soldier on 24 March in Hebron, West Bank, as he laid incapacitated on the ground following his alleged role in a knife attack.
Footage of the shooting of Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif was released by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, and others have subsequently also posted similar videos on the Internet.
“The images shown carry all the signs of a clear case of an extrajudicial execution,” the human rights expert stressed. “There does not appear to be any provocation on the side of the gravely wounded man.”
“Whatever legal regime one applies to the case, shooting someone who is no longer a threat is murder. It is furthermore troublesome that this was done to no apparent alarm to the other soldiers who were nearby,” Mr. Heyns said.
The Special Rapporteur expressed further concern at the decision of the medical personnel on the scene to ignore Mr. Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif and attend only to the injured Israeli soldier, who had sustained light injuries.
A poll conducted for an Israeli TV channel showed 57 percent of Israelis opposed the arrest of the soldier who did the shooting.
Is any of this story going to be covered by our media? Of course not , get real.
Some stories are best kept quiet. It’s an accepted Western concept that some lives matter and some do not.
Our media would perhaps justify their silence by claiming that there is no public interest in this story. But I have a Dunedin Quaker friend, a very brave woman, who, as a member of Christian Peacemakers, has spent time in Hebron, notorious for its violent religious fundamentalists, many with Brooklyn accents. I am aware of at least 3 other Kiwis, including myself, who have been to Hebron. The ‘settlers’ and IDF are openly violent there and will continue to be so as long as the West looks the other way.
Silence is complicity.
Lois and her husband Martin are retired teachers who are particularly concerned about the situation in historic Palestine, having been there several times, meeting Palestinians and Israeli human rights activists who desperately want the outside world to hear their narrative.
You’ve got something to say about this aye Andrew 😉 cue Iraeli apologist
Yep!
It looks like he got exactly what was due.
Send me a link to the video please – I’d like to watch it. 😉
@ Andrew. You fucking creep. Fuck you. You’ve just said it all about yourself. I bet the Nazis wanted to watch too as they were roasting your whanau.
Would you like to watch some ISIS beheadings as well, Andrew? What about US water-boarding at Guantanamo Bay? Or the pics of maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison? And for some light sexual relief, some ‘snuff’ movies to cap the night of?
Because really, Andrew, that’s pretty much how you come across.
How about the US homegrown stuff, Frank?
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/28895-cia-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-torture-happens-in-the-us
One bullet = $-Ka Ching !
“Oi vey! Think of the money? All that lovely money !? So what if some poisun dies? They ver gonna die anyway so why waste a life right? Am I right? Of course I’m right? A nice little bullet in the head, a couple in the guts, not a huge return but every little bit helps right? Soon builds up right? Of course I’m right. We Jews? We’re always right. The world would be better to believe that.
Israeli arms dealers .
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2014/05/lab-20145475423526313.html
and they damage 50% of their population through genital mutilation – only the males, but at the ceremony they compensate them with money.
Is that why so many of them seem to hate the rest of the world.
Zionists can never refute the mounting evidence of Israeli war crimes and inhumanities, thus they respond either by trying to divert attention away from the topic or they resort to crude abuse. Lois and Martin’s witness for truth puts Zionism to shame.
It takes two to tango Leslie.
My advise to so-called ‘Palestinians’ is:
1/ If you stop attacking them, they might just stop shooting you
2/ Never go to a gun fight with a knife
One of the most frequently repeated excuses for Israeli aggression, including the ruinous blockade of Gaza, is the claim that Palestinian missiles from Gaza are constantly raining down on Israel. The following Gaza Ceasefire Violations summary for 2016 may prove useful for anyone who is engaged in combating Israeli hasbara. The summary will be frequently updated.
Israel claims that its periodic blitzes on the Gaza Strip, with their massive tolls of slaughter and economic sabotage, are necessary to stop missiles from Gaza being fired towards Israel. What the mainstream news media fail to report and Israel’s supporters choose to ignore is that every missile-firing from Gaza occurs after prolonged and relentless Israeli provocation.
In the past 3 months there have been three acts of Palestinian armed Resistance (ceasefire violations) in Gaza. All of them targeted Israeli military vehicles. One Palestinian was wounded – the Israeli Army returned fire on each occasion.
Also in the same period there were two Palestinian ceasefire violations with missiles fired from Gaza.
There were no deaths or injuries as a result of these five ceasefire violations.
Again, in the same three-month period there were:
340 Israeli ceasefire violations resulting in:
4 deaths – including 3 children
57 wounded/injured
2 abductions of minors
5 hijackings of Palestinian fishing boats
An Israeli air strike on 12 March caused the deaths of a ten-year-old Palestinian boy and his six-year-old sister. The boy was Yassin Abu Khoseh. His six-year-old sister, Issra, died in hospital later. Medics said the pair were hit by fragments from a missile fired by Israeli aircraft. The children’s brother, Ayyoub (13), suffered moderate injuries in the air strike. The children’s father said that he was asleep when their home was hit and, awakened by the blast, rushed to see if the children had been hurt. “My boy was killed instantly, drowning in his own blood; my daughter was very seriously injured.” His other son said that when he looked at his brother and sister, he found them bleeding heavily from injuries to their heads and various parts of their bodies. The Israeli attack was in response to rockets fired from Gaza that landed harmlessly in open areas in southern Israel, causing no deaths or injuries. Imagine the outcry and headlines had Palestinian missiles fired from Gaza killed two Israeli children!
Yeah, a few years ago, a very careful, methodical scholarly study found that Israel was responsible for the overwhelming majority of ceasefire violations throughout the previous few years. They’re always looking to create pretexts for more violence and more ethnic cleansing.
While I don’t condone Palestinian violence, let’s remember that under International Law an occupied People are permitted the Right to resist Occupation. Particularly when that occupation (and ethnic cleansing / de facto annexation) is as brutal and long-lasting as this one. A whole population being systematically denied basic human rights and in a really quite hopeless situation.
That’s the broader context. The immediate triggers ? The current round of resistance began in late July 2015 following an Israeli Settler attack on a Palestinian West Bank family, torching their home, incinerating their young child, with the parents dying a few days later from their extensive burns.
At the same time, fears were growing among Palestinians that the Israelis were trying to change the status quo with the al-Aqsa mosque – an escalation of highly aggressive Israeli moves regarding that status quo (unusually large numbers of Settlers and Israeli politicians heading to the mosque). Hence, mounting fears that this was just one more step in Israel’s systematic eviction of Palestinians from their homeland.
The knifings themselves are very much an indication of pure despair. There is a precedent: they suddenly started happening in Jerusalem in 1990 as the First Intifada – which had started a few years earlier with such high hopes of political emancipation and ending Israel’s Occupation – began to falter and Palestinians were feeling an increasing sense of frustration, hopelessness and despair. It’s no coincidence they’ve began again now.
They make the headlines in the western media, of course, and provide useful little rhetorical strategies for Hasbara (Black Israeli propaganda) enthusiasts like Andrew, but they pale into insignificance beside the routine week-in week-out murder of Palestinian civilians indulged in by Israeli Settlers and the IDF.
Love the way, incidentally, that Andrew talks about “so-called ‘Palestinians'”. Very telling indeed.
What Countryboy said.
You are a miserable waste of Higgs Bosons. Go post your inhumane bilge somewhere that might appreciate it. The Whale might be a start.
So Andrew, you would’ve said the same thing to the Jews held in the Warsaw Ghetto? Just stop shooting at the Nazi guards and life would be sweet as, bro? Is that your logic?
As an apologist for the Israeli war-machine, you’re actually doing more harm than good.
Carry on.
And he was arrested, charged and is now facing manslaughter charges in court. It has also extensively been covered in Israeli media and all over CNN etc.
I’m not sure what your issue is?
Jollo, would and your fellow apologist for Israel, Andrew, rather that the story simply “went away”?
So really, whatever Israel does, you have an excuse?
It’s amazing how many fellow-travellers will support an aggressive, expansionist regime that is oppressing one of it’s neighbours; carrying out illegal settlement building on occupied land, and other hostile acts.
But if Palestinians dare to fight back, then you guys scream blue-bloody murder.
I think that about sums it up.
Jollo , it isn’t just one man who is guilty..it is all the bystanders, other IDF & settlers, who showed no concern about a badly wounded man being shot close up in the head. It’s the Israeli government and some Israeli rabbis too who encourage a policy of ‘take no prisoners’. It’s the media and public gatherings who are promoting the soldier to be a hero. It’s the Government who are saying that any IDF who try to tell the public what is really going on, “Breaking the Silence”, are traitors.
The ‘settlers’ who are threatening to kill the photographer with are guilty too.
I suspect that once the media loses interest in this story, and ‘moves on’, the soldier will given a light, if any, sentence.
The Talmud repeats the Ten Commandments TWICE so there is no excuse for devout and practising religious to keep breaking the basic rules – no murder. And ‘thou shalt not covet’.
It’s like Ireland and the Kurds and the Basques – ever-running, never-ending aggro, straight from the reptile brain. ‘The Hatfields and McCoys’ – unfortunately.
What a filthy legacy for either side to be leaving.
Respect to the people of loving kindness on both sides who do their best to relieve the curses of hatred.
Poor lil Arab.
Why did they shoot him.
All he wanted to do was stab some Jews.
He probably just needed a hug.
Leslie, what many of your readers may be unaware of is the on going campaign in the west bank to stab innocent civilians with knives. This has included more than one foreign tourist.
The terrorists are training children to run up to random individuals and stab them. Infants are being brainwashed to conduct these attacks.
Your weak attempt at deflection away from the real story tells me you’re just a propagandist.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/two-palestinians-shot-dead-knife-attack-west-bank-israel
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/18/palestinian-with-knife-attacks-female-israeli-settler-in-west-bank-settlement
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Stabbing-attack-thwarted-Palestinian-teen-arrested-with-knife-at-Tapuach-Junction-445591
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/palestinian-teen-killed-after-alleged-west-bank-knife-attack/
http://www.albawaba.com/loop/most-west-bank-palestinians-oppose-knife-attacks-israelis-poll-finds-817218
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.699046
http://www.union-bulletin.com/news/world/palestinians-kill-israeli-civilian-in-knife-attack-at-west-bank/article_bce4d3a6-d676-11e5-8e52-2f87a102b6b7.html
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news-article/28595/
http://www.france24.com/en/20160216-middle-east-israel-palestinians-west-bank-syria-refugees-kobani-homs-artists
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/world/middleeast/palestinian-assailants-are-killed-after-knife-attack-on-2-israeli-women.html?_r=0
Spoken like a true apologist. Only the great Andrew could rationalise killing woman and children of another nation. In a lot of places like the international criminal court, that is still a crime punishable by death.
Andrew (and others), your support for a brutal government that committs aggression against it’s Palestinian neighbor does you no credit. Any justification you try to present simply makes you look very foolish.
I wonder how many of your ilk also supported Nazism and Stalinism when they slaughtered millions of people in the name of whatever “just ideology” they were defending???
Try as much as you like, but you can’t wash the blood from the hands of Zionist oppressors.
SAM: I presume you’re a feminist like most of the rest here.
So why should women get preference? Children I can understand but women? That’s SO last century!
Arabs don’t deserve your pity, because they haven’t earned it.
This is what an educated Arab thinks about his own people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkgAQcSpypo
No. It is you that think if some how you write aggressively towards woman that that will some how change the world
I wonder what ‘Imright’ has to say about Andrew’s sexist and misogynistic views on women, considering he condemns Islam for the same thing?
Andrew, all you’re doing is posting instances of Palestinian resistance against Israeli oppression.
I say again, and to all you other anonymous pro-Israeli trolls;
1. Israel must tear down the Wall,
2. Israel must end the blockade on Gaza,
3. And Israel must evacuate it’s settlers from illegal settlements on the West Bank
Your support for Israel’s expansionist policies at the expense of Palestinians paints you and others like you as supporters of an aggressive state policy.
Israel can put a stop to Palestinian resistance by ending it’s aggression in Gaza and the West Bank. Your attempts at justifying this kind of quasi neo-fascism are wasted.
Frank: You make these demands but are less clear about your ideal outcome. What is your goal?
As I see it, if the Israelis tore down the wall (the one they built to protect themselves against snipers and bombers) ended the blockade (which only blockades weapons entering Gaza) and left the West Bank, what do you think would be the outcome?
Would the Muslims stop their acts of terrorism?
Clearly only a fool would consider this an option – the same groups are committing these outrages all around the world.
Israel is in an irregular war. Retreating is not the best strategy.
What “terrorism from muslims” are you referring to Andrew?
If it’s ISIS – you’re conflating two different things. ISIS is the product of the US invasion of Iraq, and the reforning of Saddam Hussein’s old guard under a religious flag of convenience to carry out their vengeance-war against the Americans and the West.
If it’s Palestinians – well, you’ve expressed your pro-Israel views before. You want the Palestinians to accept occupation and colonisation by the Israeli government, and to cease resistance.
In effect, you are a committed supporter of Israeli militarism and expansionism.
[…] – See more at: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/04/05/guest-blog-3/#sthash.Ba12uc1F.dpuf […]
“If the arabs laid down their weapons there would be peace tomorrow, If Israel laid down it’s weapons there would be no Israel tomorrow’
Why the left hug and apologise for Islam is beyond curious, the cult of Mohammad has it’s women as 3rd rate humans and if of course you are gay, ohhh well there are some terrible execution methods for you. And here was me thinking the left proudly fights for the LGBT and womens rights….just not when it means you can get a hit on Israel. Israel will exist long after it’s neighbours cities have been taken over by the desert sands.
Imright – your user-name is appropriate in defending Israeli military aggression in Gaza and the West Bank.
But he is correct.
You’ve said nothing to try and refute him because you have no response to the truth.
Formation of the Jewish State in years versus the State of Palestine please, im an idiot. Hey you and Andrew dont room together by chance do you?
It isnt about apologizing and hugging Islam ya nonce.Why does someones personal view have to come from a certain political position, not an informed, objective and outraged view disregarding any political affiliations?
Happy to continue trading with the Saudis are you Mr Right if your so concerned about human rights?
Yeah and I’m pretty sure if Israel decommissioned all those illegal nuclear weapons that they would disappear off the map overnight. My 3 and half year old could put more thought into your sweeping statement.
if you cant actually see the injustice delivered upon the Palestinians for decades, and recognize that all human beings from all ethnicities have a right to be treated equally, then the KKK is the place for you. Andrew has the contact details.
Imright, as Pedro pointed out below, we’ve yet to see you condemning any other repressive nation for human rights violations against women and LGBT.
Saudi Arabia?
Death penalty in China?
Not a peep from you.
You’re not in the least interested in women’s and LGBT rights. You’re simply exploiting those issues in your racist views against Palestinians.
Frank: As usual you’re wrong.
Firstly the Arabs of the region and the Jews are the same race – Semites. So there can be no issue with race here, either way. So stop sloganizing people with that term just because they disagree with your one-eyed views.
Sure I don’t like China’s and Saudi Arabia’s suppression, torture and murder of their populations. That’s exactly my point – why don’t you protest outside the Saudi embassy for a change? The change of scenery might do you all some good.
Well, why don’t you get off your lazy backside “Andrew”, and protest yourself?
Of course you won’t. This isn’t about human rights (which you show a scant disregard for), this is about supporting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and it’s continued aggression against Palestinians.
As recently as this month, Israel seized more land on the West Bank;
ref: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/israel-seizes-234-hectares-land-west-bank-160315133241395.html
And entire Palestinian homes are being seized by Israeli settlers;
ref: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/israel-to-allow-settler-takeover-of-palestinian-homes/
And you wonder why the Palestinian people show their anger and continue to resist?
The Israeli settlements are illegal, but that doesn’t seem to concern you greatly, does it, Andrew? No, because you are a supporter for the Israeli regime.
excerpts from report on Hebron murder in Haaretz by Gideon Levy
“This must be stated clearly. Perhaps for the first time in the history of the state, an abhorrent murder whose only obvious justification seems to be a hatred of Arabs and contempt for their lives, has become a heroic act. A murder that required no courage, a cowardly act of the highest order, has become heroic in the eyes of the masses, simply because it ended with a dead Palestinian bleeding on the road to the sound of their rejoicing.
Never have so many cheered such a vile murderer.
Israeli racism has reached a new peak. The murder in Tel Rumeida and the ensuing response are no less than seminal events. Israeli racism had previously been based on the arrogance of the Chosen People, to which everything is permitted, which is the very best and knows better than anyone else; on manipulating the perception of endless victimhood and persecution; on demonizing the Arabs, who only want to destroy us; on dehumanizing them, as if their lives are worth nothing; on incitement, denial, repression and lies and on Israel’s formidable military might. On these foundations we built a racist society, probably the most racist in the world today.
Now all this has been taken up a notch, or perhaps down. To all the above we can now openly add bloodlust — unadulterated, uninhibited and undisguised.
This combination of racism and thirst for blood is not only repulsive, it’s also volatile and dangerous. There is racism in many societies, generally hidden and marginal. In Israel it has become standard, perhaps the height of contemporary political correctness, and fighting it is seen as treason.
Moreover, it’s doubtful there’s another Western society whose racism is accompanied by such bloodlust. “
Frank: You may be right. Some Israelis may have stolen a plot of land on the west bank.
Meanwhile next door, the Russians have been carpet bombing civilians for the last few months. Yet you don’t make a sound about this.
What is this blog’s position on Assad?
What do you think about Muslim rape gangs in the North of England?
How do you stand on the mutilation of female genitalia by Somalis in London (probably happening here too)?
Are you appalled by the murder of a atheist blogger in Bangladesh for daring to express his opinions?
WILL ANY OF YOU STAND UP AND BE COUNTED ON ISSUES THAT REALLY MATTER?
Or will you continue to kick away at Israel just because it’s easy?
The question is, Andrew, what are you prepared to do about it?! Why do you expect everyone else to oppose an injustice (and everything you’ve listed counts as an injustice) whilst you do nothing; sit on your hands; and snipe from the side-lines?
Why? Because it’s so much easier, isn’t it. You snipe, but you don’t actually do anything practical. Not a damn thing.
By the way, on just one issue (Russia), these were my two blogposts;
https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/dear-mr-putin/
https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/a-fta-deal-with-russia-thats-a-big-nyet-comrade-key/
Now tell me; what did you do on the imprisonment of “Pussy Riot”?
And what have you done to oppose an FTA with Russia, currently ruled by gangsters?
Do you even care?
You cannot minimimise one injustice with another, Andrew, thereby justifying other acts of wrong-doing. Which is what you are trying pathetically to do.
Nice try at a deflection but neither of these deal with Assad bombing civilians in Syria.
Let’s focus on what’s happening in the middle east – why does this blof focus solely on Israel, when there are far more pressing matters to hand?
How did the ‘regressive left’ come to be associated with radical fascist Islam.
Or are you just afraid to call them out?
Because if you allow them to win, all the liberal reforms of the last century will be wiped out.
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