IDF marksman caught on tape in teenagers deaths

 

"New video evidence showing the fatal shooting of two Palestinian teenagers last week strongly indicates that neither of the boys posed a threat to Israeli forces at the time they were targeted, supporting claims they were "unlawfully killed".

The footage was caught by a CCTV camera installed above a nearby office and shows the deaths of Nadeem Nawara, 17, and Mohammad Salameh, 16, who were both shot through the chest in separate incidents just over an hour apart.

The two boys are seen walking near the building, apparently unarmed, with the second teenager killed while walking away from positions occupied by Israeli security forces outside Ofer prison in the West Bank"

*************

 

“”We don’t need an American request to investigate the subject,” Liberman told reporters Wednesday while visiting Samaria’s Ariel University. “I reject any request and the hypocrisy we see worldwide.”

U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki called for a “prompt and transparent” investigation in response to a reporter’s question during a briefing on Capitol Hill.

European Union missions in the Palestinian Authority capital of Ramallah and in Jerusalem made similar statements. “We reiterate the need for security forces, whether Israeli or Palestinian, to refrain from the use of lethal force, except in cases where there is a real and imminent threat to life,” they said.

In response, Liberman pointed out that the Israeli army is the “most moral” military force in the world."  The Jewish Press

--------------------------

They do this kind of thing.  The IDF can usually simply deny the event because it is not recorded and they feel free to lie to the world.  After all, these are just Palestinians.

I witnessed a similar event in Bethlehem about 15 years ago.  Three Palestinian teenagers were killed that day when Israeli troops opened fire with ball ammunition from a sandbagged position at Rachel's tomb.  (It is now permanently fortified) Having tried to administer CPR to one of the boys I can certify that he was shot through the thorax with a rifle. I happened to be on the scene shopping.  The boys had been throwing rocks at the soldiers.  There were about 15 wounded.  They had been hit with super-caliber riot control munitions and had broken bones.

They got caught this time because CNN had a camera crew in this town for Naqba Day "festivities" outside Ofer Prison.  The CNN camera man caught an Israeli soldier on the wall of the prison firing what looks like an M-4 carbine at the demonstrators.  Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador in Washington claimed yesterday on "Wolf" that no ball (live fire) ammunition was used but the father of the boy hit from in front had a bullet that he said went through his son's chest, through his backpack and a book inside and was found in the pack.  It looked like 5.56 mm. to me.  It was not noticeably deformed.  That would be the case with steel jacketed military ammunition.

Oren suggested that the Palestinians staged all this to make Israel look bad.  pl    

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/20/video-indicates-killed-palestinian-youths-no-threat-israeli-forces

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/fm-liberman-reminds-us-europe-we-know-how-to-investigate/2014/05/22/

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/01/the-idf-ground.html

Comments

[Poul]

And another example from early this year.

1st official version from the IDF
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/96396/World/Region/-Jordan-judge-tried-to-strangle-soldier-Israel-arm.aspx

Amended version after the identity of the Palestinian/Jordanian killed was revealed.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/96450/World/Region/Israel-says-regrets-killing-of-Jordanian-judge.aspx

[walrus]

I wonder if the Neturei Karta Rabbinate may be proved right? That the establishment of Israel by other than an act of the divine will is presumptuous.

G-ds punishment is that the man made state of Israel is accursed.

I fail to see how Israel can prosper as a Jewish State. As a secular stae with equal rights for Palestinians perhaps.

[walrus]

I wonder if the Neturei Karta Rabbinate may be proved right? That the establishment of Israel by other than an act of the divine will is presumptuous.

G-ds punishment is that the man made state of Israel is accursed.

I fail to see how Israel can prosper as a Jewish State. As a secular stae with equal rights for Palestinians perhaps.

[jdledell]

More and more of the IDF are coming from the West Bank settlements. These young people are indoctrinated in absolute hatred of the Palestinians. Anyone who visits the towns of Bat Ayin, Itamar, Kiryat Arba etc will understand this. The young men who participate in Israel's Yeshivat Hesder program (essentially military yeshivas)are especially prone to reject military discipline and act out violently against Palestinians.

I would not be surprised if eventually the IDF found is was one of their Hesder men who was the sniper. They will never admit it publicly because a Jew suppossedly is never to air the dirty laundry of another other Jew. I've seen these young men on the settlement hills shooting Palestinian sheep, donkeys and any other animal. They then laugh it up. Hell my own relatives brag about these exploits when I visit. I've seen so many atrocities, big and small, committed by Israelis in my many years there, I sometimes have nightmares about what I've witnessed.

[MRW]

I've come to the conclusion that Israelis are basically pigs, which Americans will see as the Israelis curry favor with Russians and Chinese in the next two years. The American Israel-Firsters are the same, out to destroy American culture. So not impressed.

[MartinJ]

Israel has become the object of its venom: it has become a Middle Eastern state. It feels free to murder kids when there is no real crowd control reason to do so. Hubris breeds impunity breeds arrogance. As long as the Israeli army acts with impunity and its real "combat" experience is unarmed boys throwing rocks, then there will be no improvement, only degradation. Its a good job they have America to fund and fight their wars for them.

[Highlander]

If it were me, and my buddies had been throwing rocks at heavily armed and jittery soldiers for a couple of hours. I think I might have said, "Damn hanging around here could get me shot, i believe I'll go down to the mosque instead, and pray for Israel's obliteration".

A sophisticated campaign of non violence would have won the day for the Pali's by now.

Buttttt……Noooo way man, the palestinian muslims got to have some infidel blood and guts so they can get right with Allah. Besides,killing jews is fun, macho even.

When it comes to thinking it out or shooting it out, the Israelis run circles around them. The Palestinians are getting precisely what they are asking for. They are dumb enough to play the Israeli 's game, and the Israeli's knock it and are them out of the park. I find it difficult to sympathize with terminally stupid people.

[oofdq]

And that is the same Michael Oren who told me personally that the entire LIBERTY attack was just a "mistake." Nobody should give that liar any credence.
None whatsoever.

[turcopolier]

Highlander

I have been making your argument about a smart non-violent resistance program to Palestinians since about 1974. They are largely impervious to the argument. They hate the Israelis just as much as the Israelis that jdledell writes about below hate them. Now, there are Palestinians who just put their heads down and go quietly about their business but even they are understandably filled with a seething resentment. I find it difficult to understand how you can virtually applaud the idea of shooting teenagers who are throwing stones at you when you are well equipped with riot control ammunition, tear gas, etc. "Go to the mosque..." Does your attitude have anything to do with the fact that most Palestinians are Muslims? Well, some of the are Christians as well, and I have myself seen the IDF shoot at Christian Palestinian women literally hanging out the wash outside their houses. This was at Beit Suhour on the east side of Bethlehem. The co-axial machine gun on a tank was the preferred sniper's weapon that day. Another Christian house in the same neighborhood had a six foot wide hole blown in the kitchen wall where a main gun tank round went through. The back interior wall of the house was pock marked with holes from the M-2 machine gun on top of the same tank. this tank and others were in a bermed up fort that had been bulldozed into existence 400 yards from the house. And then, in Bethlehem itself near the Catholic seminary and on the side of the hill that faces Israeli Gilo across the valley, I saw Israeli troops shoot up houses filled with women, kids and old men. Tank guns and TOW were the instruments of choice there. The method followed was to put one HE round through the wall and then another through the same hole to burst inside among those sheltered there. I am through with the place, but i will not shut up about it. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Men are not rational; perhaps you would favor Stalin surrendering rather than sending 20 million souls to perish in the war against the Third Reich?

In 1980, 6 men in the township of Howeyzeh did not take your advice - of going to mosque and praying - the mayor, another township official and 4 young men equipped with g-3 rifles decided to resist the advancing Iraqi tanks.

The chose the Path of Honor - knowing full well that they would die.

Which they did.

[Imagine]

Reasonable rumor: W.Bush/Cheney apparently used Israel to sell plutonium nuclear pits to Japan, in order to pressure China. If true, this would seem to be a violation of America's nuclear nonproliferation laws.

Yoichi Shimatsu, formerly of Japan Times Weekly but still a bit out there, offers a coherent scenario. Read first:
http://www.rense.com/general94/secbb.htm

Iran's PressTV picks up a column by conspiracy expert Gordon Duff:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/05/22/363676/us-secretly-selling-nukes-worldwide/
Although Mr. Duff's conclusions on 9/11 may be erroneous, the other information needs to be evaluated on its own.

Whistleblower David Chase Taylor discusses at extreme length nuclear loss-of-control incidents:
https://sites.google.com/site/davidchasetaylorasylum/the-nuclear-bible/the-9-stolen-nukes
one of his most disturbing allegations is the last page, that "John Wheeler III, special assistant to Air Force Secretary during the 2007 B-52 nuke incident at Minot, [was] found dead in [a] Delaware landfill...Wheeler was the assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force in the George W. Bush Administration. It was the Secretary of the Air Force who discovered that [V.P.] Richard Cheney had set up an alternative chain of command to the nuclear weapons wing of the AF...people involved began to die mysteriously. Wheeler is only the latest casualty."

FBI 9/11 translator Sibel Edmonds started alleging massive cover-ups at the FBI; alleged "a criminal network of Turkish, Israeli, Pakistani and American diplomats and officials conspired to steal nuclear secrets and sell them to the highest bidder in the nuclear black market". Shut down in court by State Secrets. History at:
http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-edmonds-case-nukes-for-sale-pt-2.html
comprehensive but quite long and fragmented history at:
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&projects_and_programs=sibelEdmonds

complex relationship: Israel sells some U.S. technology to China:
http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=776

Carol Moore discusses Bush, Israel's nuclear threats (sane, worth reading):
http://carolmoorereport.blogspot.com/2007/11/bush-makes-israels-samson-option-threat.html
http://carolmoore.net/nuclearwar/israelithreats.html
http://carolmoore.net/nuclearwar/

The insanity won't stop until either Israel is convinced that it is safe and respected, or it is made to change. Paradoxically, the first would require a return to the Golden Rule "You shall neither take revenge nor bear a grudge; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." which would require shutting down the settlements, the ethnic cleansing, the water deprivation genocide of Gaza, and the apartheid separate military courts for the occupied territories (See http://icahdusa.org/multimedia/downloads/2012/12/is-israel-an-apartheid-state-single-page.pdf). These would ultimately result in a safer, happier, and more secure Israel.

If the President or the Vice President breaks America's laws to take care of nuclear matters, can they be held responsible?

[Andrew]

@ Highlander - So,inter-generational child killing Nazi Israeli Jews are all of a sudden a Palestinians' Muslim/Islam problem.

I am sure Police shooting kids in Dakota would be met with "sophisticated non-violence". You are the fcukin' Oracle of Delphi on bad hootch man. I am sure Americans would accept being Helots and watch their kids get hunted in their own lands by holding bake sales and boycotting Sodastream.

The Palestinians' fault was being too mellow and not doing to those early Euro-settlers circa 1885 what that Klezmer band from hell have done to the Palestinians for the past 100 years. Should have ripped butts, instead they offered them sage freakin' tea and almonds and now they get called "terminally stupid" by a guy that would probably go postal for being served burnt toast. Love ya, really.

[turcopolier]

Andrew

you know where i stand on this but the Ottoman government regarded early Zionist settlers as useful additions to the scene and protected them and then the British did much the same. In Hebron in the 1930s there were some really ugly things done to Jewish settlers so all of this is not on one side.pl

[turcopolier]

imagine - Seems imaginary to me but I will allow it in order to see what people say. pl

[jdledell]

Highlander - I was living in Israel in the 1980's during the first Palestinian infitada. By in large it was peaceful. Mainly marches, boycotts of Jewish business, strikes against working in the settlements and other demonstrations. Sure there was some rock throwing by some young hotheads but older Palestinians usually put a fairly quick stop to it.

I witnessed many of these demonstrations. The Israeli boarder police complimented by the IDF would enter the crowd and start pulling a few of the people into their ranks where they would quickly break some legs and arms. Then they would toss the wounded Palestinians back into the crowd.

If the crowd did not disperse, they would then use live ammunition against the legs of the demonstrators. Unfortunately, some of the IDF had problems with their "aim" and some demonstrators died. Jewish Israelis would watch the action and cheer when a Palestinian hit the ground. It felt to me like I was back in time during the Roman Coliseum days.

I don't agree with Pat that a Gandhi type movement by the Palestinians would succeed. Israel is simply gripped by dreams of religious fulfillment(Eretz Israel) or nationalistic fever for restoring the Kingdom of David to satiate the need for Jewish power. Reading the tea leaves in Israel these days indicates the Palestinians will NEVER be allowed to have a viable state. Doing so would kill the religious dreams and nationalistic fever that provides the cohesion to Israel as a country.

[turcopolier]

jdledell

"I don't agree with Pat that a Gandhi type movement by the Palestinians would succeed." I concede the point but I did hope for such a thing once upon a time. The whole thing is just a hopeless mess and I will never go there again. pl

[Highlander]

I love you to Andrew. May you have the blessings of Jesus.

[Highlander]

I personally would have taken my G-3 to the hills, and lived to fight another day.

[Highlander]

jdledell,

Thanks for the first hand observations.

Your observations about the Israeli religious aspects are spot on. It gives the Jews moral will. (Now listen ninnies, moral will is not necessarily about right or wrong. It is about giving a tribe a sense of purpose) . The Jews have it in spades plus a 20 point IQ head start. The Palis don"t. PERIOD.

With the help of the Arab dictators, the Palis and the Arab nations have had three major goes at wiping the Jews out. FINAL SCORE: Jews 3, Arabs O. It doesn't look to me like the Palis can make the violence option work. And I have a Celtic inclination toward using the violent types of options.

I grew up during Dr King's non violent revolution in the American south. I watched it work almost like magic. Same types of situations, in the end the brutal counter measures of the southerners were no match for the innate morality of Dr Kings non violence. Same principles were in play in South Africa. The Boers made the Israelis look like Mr Green Jeans, but they still lost.

Now, sadly it may be that a Muslim culture is not capable of anything except the violent option.

Thanks again for your lucid observations. I respect your opinions. By the way why is your tribe? i assume either Jewish or Arab.

[Highlander]

Colonel,

I suspect you may know as well as anyone on the planet, how hopelessly the middle east is addicted to violence. Your personal observations of Israeli savagery have had an effect on modifying me views somewhat.

And yes, I do have a negative opinion of the Muslim religion. It is a relic of the dark ages. Islam will need to take the entire human race back to the dark ages in the near future, if it wants to survive. With WMD proliferation, that outcome is entirely possible.

Yes, I am sorry the teenagers were killed, but at the same time like you, I know a teenager can kill you just as fast as a 35 year old.

I think we both agree the non violent option is the only viiable one for the Palestinians. But for cultural and or genetic reasons, they are incapable of executing it. So the Jews keep on winning.

[turcopolier]

highlander

"...like you, I know a teenager can kill you just as fast as a 35 year old." That 's true but in this case and the one I witnessed in Bethlehem the kids were kids and were armed with nothing more than rocks. IMO this is a deliberate tactic designed to lure the Israelis into acts of savagery and it often works. In my Bethlehem incident I left the shop where I had bought my wife a Jerusalem Cross after the surviving kids had been called of by one of their leaders and walked back down Manger Street to my rented SUV from the Anerican Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. On the way to the car i passed a side street in which about a hundred Palestinian Authority police troops were standing in ranks. they were armed with AKs and a LTC was in charge. He came to talk to me. He was a PLA officer returned from Syria to the PA Police. I asked him what his mission was. He said that if "it got too bad" he was to assault the fortified checkpoint at Rachel's tomb. "This wasn't bad enough?" I asked. "No, it wasn't," he replied. My shirtfront was soaked with the drying blood of the boy I tried to give CPR to. Several of this officer's men approached to touch my bloody shirt and then then touch their fingers to their lips. BTW, your apparent assumption that the Palestinians want to kill all the Jews in Israel is not, I think, correct. they want to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. that is not the same thing. Are you being offensive to jdledell? Surely you know he is a Jewish American. pl

[Highlander]

How do you know that the establishment of present day Israel is not by divine will?

God sent Hitler to kill 6 million jews so western guilt could be mobilized to facilitate the establishment of the third kingdom.

Not saying I know it so, but it is somewhat a peculiar set of circumstances.

[David Habakkuk]

Colonel Lang, ‘Highlander’,

I am sceptical of the relevance of the point that ‘Highlander’ has made – also made, in a different context, by ‘Will’ – about superior Jewish IQ.

For one thing, it seems to me likely that Trotsky had a much higher IQ than Stalin; but Trotsky lost out in the political struggle following Lenin’s death, and indeed ended up dead.

A high IQ is sometimes useful in confronting practical problems, but often not -- indeed, quite often it can be a double-edged sword in confronting intellectual problems.

I have no doubt that the chief economics commentator of the ‘Financial Times’, Martin Wolf, has a very high IQ – very possibly much higher than mine, and perhaps even higher than that of Colonel Lang.

However, back in June 2004 he produced an article entitled ‘There Can be No Right of Return’ which perfectly embodied the sheer silliness of very many ‘liberal Zionists’ with excellent degrees from first class universities:

It concluded:

‘Any idea of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is insane. Direct Israeli rule over millions of non-citizens is morally corrosive, while letting settlements dictate policy is mad. Israeli control over the West Bank needs to end, provided that is consistent with maintaining its security. For all these reasons, the two-state solution is the only one conceivable. But reaching this solution does not depend on Israelis alone. Today’s difficulties descend from the Arab refusal to accept Israel's secure existence. Unless that is seen to change, there will be no durable peace.’

The article is simply woolly.

1. What precisely ‘Arab refusal to accept Israel’s secure existence means’ is totally opaque. If Wolf thinks that Arabs are ever going to accept Israel as ‘legitimate’ in some abstract sense, he is dreaming.

He is compounding his own problem, because having set out a demand for the unachievable, he is patently unable to grasp that the kind of acceptance which Arafat was prepared to offer was not necessarily simply a ruse, and might be the best Israeli could get. The same error was made, more consequentially, by Dennis Ross.

2. Given that Wolf’s argument implies that there can be no ‘durable peace’, its logic boomerangs. What it implies is, first, that Israelis will dream of ‘ethnic cleansing’, but be unable to do it; second that ‘direct rule over millions of non-citizens’ will continue to be ‘morally corrosive’ – as evidenced in the behaviour of the IDF which Colonel Lang and jdledell have described; and third that the ‘mad’ approach of ‘letting settlements dictate policy’ will continue.

3. Perhaps because he has too high an IQ, and not enough ‘horse sense’, Wolf could not see how this was liable to end. Earlier in his article, he wrote as follows:

‘I have never written about the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. This is partly because I am personally engaged. Both my parents were refugees from Hitler. In my father's case, his immediate family managed, with difficulty, to reach Palestine, where my relatives remain to this day. Yet for me, as must be true for the majority of Jews, the rebirth of an independent Jewish state after two millennia seems a miracle. Its existence is a reason for joy.

‘It is also, for all its evident imperfections, a source of pride. My visit reminded me once again why. I saw a dynamic, world-class university, one of a remarkably large number in such a tiny country. I saw a beleaguered country that has managed to achieve a standard of living almost twice as high as that of oil-rich Saudi Arabia. I saw a lively democracy. And I saw all this in a country whose population has risen 10-fold since its foundation, with most of these immigrants from countries where they were, at best, tolerated inferiors.’

What Wolf simply could not see, but was reasonably obvious to me, at the time, was that an Israel which could not find some kind of modus vivendi with the Palestinians would, ineluctably find itself moving in directions which, to fundamentally quite decent people like himself, meant that it could no longer appear as a ‘miracle’. Rather, it would be likely to end appearing like a ‘monster from the Id.’

Meanwhile, for an ever-increasing part of the non-Jewish population, it would delegitimise itself. Of course, this would not be the case with ‘Christian Zionists’, dreaming of the apocalypse when the Jews would convert. But does anyone in their right mind think that people like Martin Wolf would want to associate with these, either in this life or any kind of afterlife?

And what was reasonably obvious to me then has now come to pass. One result is that, at the cost of what may be the most intense distress to himself, jdledell has laid bare dilemmas and distresses which very many Jews in Britain certainly feel, and whose outcome is all too often a kind of catatonic silence.

It seems appropriate to pay homage to his courage, which seems to me both immense and wholly admirable.

[different clue]

Imagine,

Your last paragraph seems a very reasonable way forward. Rabin and those Israelis who voted for him came to think so to. For show or for real? Apparently the Greater Israel likudists thought Rabin was for real so they engineered his assassination. Netanyahu was very heavily involved in creating the assassinationist-minded mass-movement background.
Might some Israelis still agree in principal with your paragraph? I think so. But unless they can somehow seize power from the Revisionised majority, they will not have the power to impose your suggestions against the majority by force. If they tried to form a "Golden Rule" Party in Israel to seek offices on the basis of implementing all your suggestions as "confidence building measures", would such a party be able to defend itself and its people against terror and assassination campaigns from the visible extremists and their hidden government supporters?
Might a Golden Rule Party have any hidden security support itself from parts of the armed forces and security/intelligence services?

[Poul]

All due respect Highlander, but a non violent options depends on those at the receiving end of the non violence aka the Israeli Jews.

Non violence has been the choice of action for the Tibetans under Dalai Lama have it worked for them in their struggle with China?

No, seems the clear answer to that. Chinese Communists don't mind bloodshed and I don't see Israeli Nationalists being different.