The on-camera execution of a wounded Palestinian suspect by an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron in March — which led to an indictment of the soldier for manslaughter and exposed a rift between Israel’s military leaders and many civilians — was preceded by another extrajudicial killing not captured on video by witnesses, an Israeli rights group reported on Monday.
The group, B’Tselem, which provides cameras to Palestinian volunteers to document abuses on video, previously released graphic footage that showed the army medic, Elor Azaria, killing the immobilized suspect, Abed al-Fattah al-Sharif, after treating another Israeli soldier for light stab wounds.
That video, recorded by Emad Abu Shamsiya, a Hebron resident who lives next to the military checkpoint where the soldier was stabbed, began with images of Sharif lying on the pavement flat on his back after being shot during the attack. Just before Azaria cocked his rifle and fired a single, fatal shot into Sharif’s head, the body of a second suspected attacker, Ramzi al-Qasrawi, could be seen nearby, with a pool of blood around his head.
B’Tselem revealed on Monday that another two witnesses, Amani Abu Aisha and Nour Abu Aisha, who each captured some of the incident on video from rooftops nearby, said in recent interviews that before they could press record, Qasrawi had also been shot in the head from close range by an Israeli soldier after he had already been immobilized.
Amani Abu Aisha’s footage, which was recorded first, includes an audible gasp as an Israeli soldier can be seen using his foot to roll Qasrawi’s lifeless body onto his back, revealing a large blood stain on the ground around his head.
The subsequent images recorded moments later by Nur Abu Aisha, from a building closer to Qasrawi’s body, show the wounded Israeli soldier walking to a stretcher, under Azaria’s care, and that Sharif was clearly not considered a threat by either the soldiers or armed settlers casually walking up to him and recording the scene on their phones.
Sarit Michaeli, a B’Tselem spokesperson, explained that the testimony from the two witnesses was gathered in person by a field worker for the rights group only recently because the neighborhood of Tal Rumeida, where the shootings took place, was closed to non-residents in October and only opened recently. (A military checkpoint blocked access to the area two weeks ago when I visited Hebron.)
Michaeli pointed out that the two witnesses, who are both B’Tselem volunteers, had shared their footage of the incident online in March, and had spoken on Palestinian television, but their accounts were apparently ignored by the Israeli press and military investigators. Speaking to The Intercept by phone from Tel Aviv, Michaeli added that both witnesses were made aware of the fact that the Israeli military almost certainly has its own footage of the entire incident from security cameras mounted around the checkpoint, which could either corroborate or disprove their accounts. Both witnesses stood by their testimony and said they were prepared to testify in court if called on to do so.
The Israel Defense Forces told the Jerusalem Post that the witness accounts “do not match the findings of our operational investigation and contradict the information the IDF has on the incident.”
Michaeli called for the Israeli authorities to resolve the matter by simply publishing all of the security camera footage it has of the incident.
Azaria’s lawyer, who had initially argued that the manslaughter charges against his client should be dropped because other soldiers had killed Palestinian suspects in similar circumstances, said the new eyewitness accounts could “signal concealment of information by the prosecution.”
If the testimony is accurate, the disparity between the attention paid to the execution captured on camera and the one that was not photographed is a stark reminder of how important video evidence has become to the public debate, or lack of it, over the lives and deaths of Palestinians under the Israeli occupation, which entered its 50th year this week.
Emad Abu Shamsiya, who recorded the footage of Sharif’s execution, is scheduled to testify this week at a military court in Jaffa in the trial of the medic.
Thousands of Israeli soldiers are deployed in the center of Hebron to protect a few hundred Jewish settlers who live among nearly 200,000 Palestinians. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in April, more of the incident can be seen in video recorded by two Jewish settlers.
Last week, military prosecutors revealed that a video clip of the aftermath of the shootings recorded by one of those settlers, Ofer Ohana — a volunteer ambulance driver who recorded himself referring to the bodies of the two Palestinians killed in the incident as “the trash” — appeared to show that he had kicked a knife closer to the body of Sharif after he was killed, presumably to make the scene more incriminating.
Comparing the part of Nour Abu Aisha’s footage at the 18-second mark with the last six seconds of a graphic clip shot a short time later by one of the settlers appears to show that the knife by Qasrawi’s body was also moved closer to him on the pavement at some stage after he was killed.
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Tyrants.
The assasination is done in such a cold blood and daily
Azaria’s lawyer … initially argued that the manslaughter charges against his client should be dropped because other soldiers had [murdered] Palestinian suspects in similar circumstances
Last I heard, “but lots of other people do it too” isn’t exactly a legal defense.
The Israel Defense Forces told the Jerusalem Post that the witness accounts “do not match the findings of our operational investigation and contradict the information the IDF has on the incident.”
Well, of course. Why would you take the word of a mere eyewitness or three when the criminals’ bosses are so willing to helpfully clarify the truth?
This past week, the Canadian press and press core, as well as the government and the opposition, were up in arms because when a reporter tried to question a Chinese government representative about Chinese human rights abuses, the rep berated him for ‘racism’. That the same government passed a motion condemning questioning the Israeli regime’s human rights abuses, with a provincial government trying to pass a law OUTLAWING doing so (much the way one of the state Governors in the US outlawed the same thing by Executive Order) as a racist act makes Donald Trump seem to be actually a pretty ordinary candidate.
The sickest part of this is that if the Israeli Deathsquad Force murder shots had ricocheted and hit the ‘ambulance driver’ or one of the ethnic cleansing volunteers who were egging on the murderers for their sick videos, THEY would have been described as ‘innocent civilians’ who were ‘victims’ of the ‘racist extremists’ who the IDF murdered, and if the filmed victim had managed to hurt his murder, the Israeli regime, and the supporters of it of all stripes would have called THAT the war crime.
They won’t be stabbing anyone again! It harkens back to the pioneer days in Texas when the settlers killed every hostile indian they could to quell future threats.
Is that why Texas is reaping their floods?
“They won’t be stabbing anyone again!”
No, but a couple of dozen family members, neighbors, friends and others who have long been chafing at the occupation just rededicated themselves to the goal of avenging these murders.
It harkens back, all right, but you don’t have to go that far back in American history for an apt analogy. Indeed, it is closer to the police ‘lynchings’ of ‘uppity Blacks’ who dared to walk on the same sidewalk as a ‘White woman’, looked a police officer ‘in the eye’ etc. Indeed, the trip back in history is so short, you might not have to go further than your browser history.
There’s no evidence that the victims attempted to stab anyone. Extrajudicial executions assure that no proof of guilt is necessary. Since they’re dead they can’t defend themselves. Even if they did attempt to attack they are guilty of nothing more than defense against illegal occupation which is a right and responsibility.
Does anyone agree that the what, namely that judea and samaria/west bank are totally in control of Israel, yet the how, as in if this will lead to a possible one state for all or a murderous war can be influenced at all?
Sickening!
This is beyond Apartheid. This is Nazism!
Sadly the so called World powers allow Israel to do this.
An Israeli does something wrong so you blame the whole country?
So no other country has crime?
Where’s the outrage against the Arabs who attacked the Israelis?
Words can’t describe just how despicable this is.
Why charge him with manslaughter?
Is their definition of murder different that ours in the US?
There was intent to kill him. That is murder, not manslaughter.
I dont care if its Israeli or Palestinian… this is truley out of hand. humans have no more sympathy for each other… this cold killing was caught in camera, but countless others have taken place through out the whole region (iraq, syria…)… Its truly shattering to the decincy of being a human being… fighting over ancient texts or some other stupid superstition, nationality, race… you get the picture. I wonder what a an Alien race would think of our “modern” times…
This is so disturbing…every time I see it. I wonder what was going through his mind before being executed in cold blood. May the Almighty have mercy upon their souls. Give them the peace that they have never seen, heard, felt, nor knew. May His Justice be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
I also have a hard time believing that the IDF was stabbed. It is an abomination.
BDS ISRAEL
FREE PALESTINE
May the Almighty have mercy upon their souls.
You’re a good man, sparrow.
Jesus has come and gone. Many learned, many didn’t.
This time it’s different.
He returned in 2010 and is going to be six years old this Christmas.
More than 575,000 Iraqi children died from sanctions.
Do you want more than 575,000 Israeli children dying from BDS?
BDS is demanding that Israel end the occupation.
If Israel ends the occupation of the West Bank,
Palestinians will launch thousands of rockets & mortars from the West Bank against Israelis.
So Israelis will die.
If Israel doesn’t end the occupation,
BDS will cut Israel’s source of income.
If they have no money, they can’t buy food.
If they can’t buy food, they will starve to death.
This is about the tenth time you’ve spammed this in I-P threads, and you’ve already been definitively rebutted many times. Please stop. This approaches crapflooding.
The authoritarian, anti-free speech advocate Mona threatening to ban Jack. God I hate dissent!
How have I been rebutted?
The only freedom Palestinians care about is the freedom to bring in weapons to murder Jews. If Palestinians were interested in freedom, the Palestinians of the West Bank would not have asked for union with Jordan at the Jericho Convention of 1948. If the Palestinians of the West Bank were interested in freedom, they would have declared independence in 1948.
The only time the occupying zionists will ever reap anything good is when they sow the seeds to humanity…
Why in God’s Name would I care about the self imposed “starvation” to a brutal occupying murdering death squad…its population, its children, its existence? BDS is not designed for that and you well know it. You find inexpressible excuses to your calculated cold blooded undeniable hate. You are the lowest form of human conscience and I have no compassion on your fate when it meets you. And be well warned…it’s not maybe, its not perhaps, but its a given.
The Almighty’s Mercy is well beyond your comprehension. And also is His Wrath.
Take your fake zionist religion of death to your own grave. You are trying to cause the death of true Jewish persons by causing the world to come against them with your atrocities. May God provide them protection from you and your kind. I thank Him for distinguishing to me the true from the false…and may the world come to that same understanding.
PS…
The Iraqi children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins….all died from a LIE. A lie caused by AIPAC/Zionist controlled USA. Take your deflections and paste them on your back…that is where they belong. Shame on you, Israel/USG.
Jack, at this site we don’t engage in alternative history, the kind of thing some novelists tinker with. We prefer the actual history because this is a political site, not a literary one.
Please be specific.
It is time to BDS the good ol’ USA for supporting this murderous regime, which led to Osama wanting to kill us on 9/11.
building 7 was taken down.
why?
too many memories……….?
people know.
I was sorta buying into that until I saw the pictures of the other side of Building 7. It was clearly a raging fire. How or why, I don’t know. Osama clearly warned us for years. Plus, despite the evil of USG, do you think those incompetents could keep a secret (a conspiracy) for that long? Either way, I support the skepticism and digging for deeper answers. Anything undermining the state is a good thing in my book. Never attribute to malice (conspiracy) what can be more easily explained by incompetence (being warned by Osama yet Dept. of “Defense” being able to defend its own Pentagram HQ, much less the rest of the Father, er, Homeland).
How do I BDS myself? Instructions unclear.
There are just too many Palestinian terrorists to keep proper count how many are killed, how many are injured and how many escape. So it is natural to overlook a few here and there. It is nice to see articles pointing this out, but then please don’t make a huge fuss over such trivial matters. Our primary goal is to build the wall than Vincente Fox is going to pay for. After that we need to sit down with Netanyahu and make sure he is following international laws. That Netanyahu fellow is the real crook and we need to get Sarah Palin to do to him the job that Hillary Clinton did to Mohamet Gaddafi and Victoria Nuland did to Yanukovich. The females of the species can usually do wonders.
Who are the Nazis now?
Great analysis Stan, but in depth analysis is your specialty, right? Did you ever look into the possibility that it was the Mossad goons that tortured you in Brazil?