Tag: Gaza

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Second Palestinian journalist dies from sniper fire

Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Hussein is seen receiving medical treatment after being shot by an Israeli sniper during a protest on the Gaza border, Apr 13, 2018.

Ahmed Abu Hussein was shot by Israeli snipers during a protest near the Gaza-Israel border two weeks ago. He was standing at a distance from the fence and was wearing a PRESS jacket.

By Haggai Matar | +972 Magazine | Apr 25, 2018

“Ahmed had always expected this could happen to him. The situation in Gaza is difficult. There is no work. But Ahmed always had ambition and he wanted to progress. His friends offered him this job, and he would write and photograph for the agency and send materials for publication.”
— Abu Hussein’s mother

Ahmed Abu Hussein, a Palestinian journalist based in Gaza who was shot by Israeli soldiers two weeks ago, died of his wounds on Wednesday at Tel Hashomer Hospital in central Israel. Abu Hussein is the second Gazan journalist to be killed by IDF snipers over the past month, and one of 40 Palestinians killed during the Great Return March protests.

On Friday April 13, Abu Hussein, a 24-year-old from Jabaliya refugee camp, went to take photographs of the protest next to the Gaza-Israel border fence. His mother told +972 that he had been working with a small photo agency named Bisan, and according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abu Hussein had worked for a radio station linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (it is yet unclear whether he worked for both places at the same or separately).

Abu Hussein was wearing a PRESS jacket — and was standing with a group of photographers near a press tent at the Great Return March encampment — when an Israeli sniper’s bullet pierced his abdomen, disrupting the blood flow to his brain . . . . His mother says he was struck by a hollow-point bullet, which expands as it hits its target in order to cause maximum damage. This is the same kind of bullet that has been used against dozens of those who have been killed and maimed during demonstrations in Gaza over the past month.

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Blasted limbs, broken dreams

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Palestinian cyclist Alaa al-Daly, 21, rests at his home in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 19. Daly’s dream of competing in the Asian Games was shattered after he lost his leg, struck by a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier during a protest along the Gaza border. (photo: Wissam Nassar / The Washington Post)

Israel appears to be targeting the legs of protesters, then denying them access to medical care in Israel.

By Eric Cunningham and Hazem Balousha | The Washington Post | Apr 28, 2018

“The deployment of snipers, careful planning and significant number of injuries to the lower limbs does reflect an apparent policy to target [those] limbs. [Targeting protesters’ legs] does not make the policy any less illegal. The use of live ammunition to any part of the body invariably causes serious injury and even death.”
— Omar Shakir, Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch

Mohammad al-Ajouri is a lanky teenager who loves to run, a medal-winning track star with ambitions to compete abroad.

But last month, while participating in a protest along Gaza’s border, he was struck by a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. It penetrated his calf, shattering his leg before exiting the shin. Doctors tried to save the limb, but an infection soon spread. The leg had to be amputated.

During the past month of demonstrations along the border between Gaza and Israel, at least 17 Palestinians have suffered gunshot wounds that ultimately cost them their legs, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.

In at least three of the cases, Israeli authorities rejected the transfer of wounded Gazans to the West Bank, where they could receive medical care that might have saved their limbs, according to lawyers and one of the patients’ families.

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Pompeo and Palestinians have “nothing to discuss” amid Gaza crisis

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. (photo: Thomas Coex / The New York Times)

No one at the State Department called Palestinian leaders to ask for a get-together with Mr. Pompeo, according to Palestinian officials.

By Gardiner Harris and Isabel Kershner | The New York Times | Apr 29, 2018

“No meeting in Ramallah on his first visit sets an ominous tone about prospects for any progress, or even dialogue, with the Palestinians.”
— Daniel Shapiro, former US ambassador to Israel

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came to Israel Sunday in the midst of the worst crisis in relations between Israelis and Palestinians in years, but he did not meet a single Palestinian representative and mentioned them publicly once.

For decades, American diplomats saw themselves as brokers between the two sides, and secretaries of state typically met Palestinian representatives on regional tours like this one. When relations between the two sides deteriorated, the United States sought to bridge the divide.

No more.

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American Jews have abandoned Gaza — and the truth

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(photo: Getty Images)

Israel controls Gaza in the way a prison guard might control a prison courtyard in which he never actually sets foot.

By Peter Beinart | Forward | Apr 26, 2018

The struggle for human decency, Orwell argued, is also a struggle for honest language. Our community’s complicity in the human nightmare in Gaza should fill every American Jew with shame. The first step toward ending that complicity is to stop lying to ourselves.

“In our time,” wrote George Orwell in 1946, “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” British colonialism, the Soviet gulag and America’s dropping of an atomic bomb, he argued, “can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face.” So how do people defend the indefensible? Through “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” By obscuring the truth.

So it is, more than 70 years later, with Israeli policy toward the Gaza Strip. The truth is too brutal to honestly defend. Why are thousands of Palestinians risking their lives by running toward the Israeli snipers who guard the fence that encloses Gaza? Because Gaza is becoming uninhabitable. That’s not hyperbole. The United Nations says that Gaza will be “unlivable” by 2020, maybe sooner.

Hamas bears some of the blame for that: Its refusal to recognize Israel, its decades of terrorist attacks and its authoritarianism have all worsened Gaza’s plight. Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority bears some of the blame too. So does Egypt.

But the actor with the greatest power over Gaza is Israel. Israeli policies are instrumental in denying Gaza’s people the water, electricity, education and food they need to live decent lives.

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For Gaza protester, living or dying is the “same thing”

Palestinians gathered for a protest at the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel on Friday. (photo:Wissam Nassar / The New York Times)

Hope is a scarce commodity in Gaza, which is little more than an open-air prison.

By Iyad Abuheweila and David Halbfinger | The New York Times | Apr 29, 2018

“It doesn’t matter to me if they shoot me or not. Death or life — it’s the same thing.”
— Saber al-Gerim

No one would ever pick out Saber al-Gerim from the crowds of Palestinians demonstrating against Israel along the heavily guarded fence that has helped turn the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison.

Not for his youthful appearance. At 22, he wears ripped jeans and white sneakers, has a modish haircut and carries a few extra pounds from too many months without work.

Not for his anger. Screaming “Allahu akbar!” and hurling stones with a sling, or straining to pull a cable hooked onto Israel’s barbed-wire barrier in hopes of tearing it apart, he is just one in a fevered multitude, a protagonist in nobody’s drama but his own.

Not even for his willingness to risk death, or his dream of going home to a patch of land he has never seen and cannot really visualize.

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Natalie Portman refuses to visit Israel to receive the Genesis Prize

Actress Natalie Portman at the premiere “Annihilation,” Feb 13, 2018. (photo: Albert Ortega / Getty Images)

The Israel-born actress says she is “uncomfortable with recent events.”

By Dave Goldiner | Forward | Apr 19, 2018

“Natalie Portman’s cancellation should be a warning sign. She’s totally one of us, identifies with her Jewishness and Israeliness. She’s expressing the voices of many in US Jewry, and particularly those of the younger generation.”
— Rachel Azaria, Kulanu Party member of Knesset

Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman has refused to travel for Israel to accept a $2 million award known as the “Jewish Nobel” because she is “uncomfortable with recent events” there, apparently referring to the deadly violence directed against Palestinian protesters in Gaza.

“She cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony,” a statement from the Hollywood superstar said.

The Genesis Prize quickly announced it was canceling its June prize ceremony for Portman saying it was “saddened” at her decision, which it said could “politicize” the award, which has previously gone to Michael Bloomberg, Itzhak Perlman and Michael Douglas. Continue reading “Natalie Portman refuses to visit Israel to receive the Genesis Prize”

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Israel’s defense minister claims slain photojournalist was “Hamas terrorist”

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Palestinian journalists take part in a protest after the killing of fellow journalist Yasser Murtaja, near the Israel-Gaza border, on Apr 8, 2018. (photo: Said Khatib / AFP)

Minister provides no evidence; journalist’s colleagues reject the assertion as “ridiculous.”

By Staff | The Times of Israel | Apr 11, 2018

“[Liberman’s claims are] ridiculous comments that are not worth responding to. Yasser has been working for years in the press and making films for the United Nations, China and others. They killed a journalist and should confess it is a crime.”
— Rushdi Al-Serraj, Ain Media director and co-founder with Yasser Murtaja

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday said a Gaza journalist who was reportedly killed by Israeli gunfire over the weekend was a member of Hamas.

The claim was immediately rejected by one of Yasser Murtaja’s colleagues, who called the statement “ridiculous.”

Palestinians say Yasser Murtaja was shot Friday while covering violent mass demonstrations near the Israeli border. He was reportedly shot in the torso while wearing a vest emblazoned with the word “press” and filming in an area engulfed in thick black smoke caused by protesters setting tires on fire.

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Slain photojournalist’s last video captures brutal crackdown on protests

Palestinian photographer Yasser Murtaja’s final images eerily prescient as he documented the rising violence in Gaza before he was shot dead.

By Peter Beaumont | The Guardian | Apr 9, 2018

“Yasser Murtaja was a civilian and a journalist who was wearing clear press identification while he was filming the demonstrations at the Gaza fence with Israel. He was there because he wanted to document civilians exercising their right to peacefully protest.”
— Jan Egeland, Norwegian Refugee Council secretary-general

The drone floats above the farmland at the east of Gaza’s narrow coastal strip where beyond the fence — the transition is almost invisible — Israel’s border communities begin.

The video is among the last footage filmed by Palestinian photographer Yasser Murtaja in Gaza before he was shot dead by Israeli troops last Friday — and it eerily foreshadows his own fate.

Palestinian demonstrators walk through the flat fields, hold signs or sit in the shade of tents in the five border protest camps that dot the landscape from east of Jabaliya in the north to Khuza’a, a short drive from the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Murtaja died on the second of a series of mass Friday protests called the “Great March of Return,” which will culminate on “Nakba” Day (catastrophe in Arabic) on 15 May, which will commemorate the events of 1948 when, following the creation of the state of Israel, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

Despite wearing body armour clearly marked with a press sign, Murtaja was shot in the stomach while covering the protests and died later of his wounds. He was one of nine Palestinian men killed in a space of a few hours.

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Video emerges of Israeli soldiers cheering as sniper shoots Palestinian

Israel’s military says incident in Gaza Strip will be “thoroughly investigated.”

By Oliver Holmes | The Guardian | Apr 10, 2018

“Do you have a bullet in the barrel?” asks a voice off-camera in Hebrew. A crack is heard and the man falls suddenly. “Wow, what a video. Yes! Son of a whore!” another person says as people are seen running towards the victim to help. “Wow. They hit someone in the head,” says an off-camera voice.

Footage has emerged of an Israeli sniper shooting a seemingly unarmed and motionless Palestinian man in the Gaza Strip, followed by exuberant whooping from an onlooker.

Israel’s military said an initial inquiry found the shooting had taken place on 22 December, when one of its soldiers injured the man in his leg during what it called violent riots.

The grainy video comes after almost two weeks of daily protests by Palestinians on the Israel-Gaza border in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have fatally shot more than two dozen people and wounded hundreds more, according to Gazan health officials. . . .

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ICC chief prosecutor calls for end to violence in Gaza

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The Palestinian photojournalist Yasser Murtaja, shot by an Israeli sniper while filming a Palestinian protest, is carried to his burial, Apr 7, 2018. (photo: Samar Abu Elouf / ImagesLive)

Attacks on civilians could be unlawful under international criminal court treaty.

By Owen Bowcott | The Guardian | Apr 8, 2018

“Since 30 March 2018, at least 27 Palestinians have been reportedly killed by the Israeli Defense Forces, with over 1,000 more injured, many as a result of shootings using live ammunition and rubber bullets. Violence against civilians, in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza, could constitute crimes under the Rome statute of the [ICC] . . . .”
— Fatou Bensouda, ICC chief prosecutor

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court has called for an end to violence in Gaza after hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of a Palestinian journalist shot beside Israel’s security fence.

Yasser Murtaja, a 31-year-old photographer, was wearing a clearly marked press vest as he reported on a mass demonstration along the Gaza border, in Khuzaa, on 6 April when he was shot. The area was engulfed in thick black smoke from tyres that had been set on fire.

Murtaja was one of about 30 Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire over the past 10 days along the border. As many as 491 people were wounded in last Friday’s protest against the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. Mass rallies are due to continue until 15 May.

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