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by IMEMC News
Published November 9, 2019 9:24 PM

An online video has surfaced, showing two Israeli soldiers shoving and cocking a gun in the face of a Palestinian father, in the presence of his young son, causing outrage among Palestinian social media users.

The scuffle — which took place in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, on Tuesday — starts with an Israeli soldier shouting at the man, saying that the child has been throwing rocks at the regime’s forces.

“Throwing rocks?! He’s five years old,” exclaimed the father.

“Yes, throwing rocks. All your friends are throwing rocks. I don’t care [how old he is],” the Israeli soldier replied.

Another Israeli soldier then joined in and both started shoving the Palestinian man. The man responded by saying “don’t raise your hands on me.”

One of the Israeli soldiers cocked and aimed his gun at the father’s face as he tried to move on with his child.

The incident, nonetheless, gained widespread attention, prompting Israeli authorities to claim that they were probing the incident.

This is not the first time that Israeli soldiers have been caught on camera assaulting Palestinians, PNN further reports.

Just last week, footage emerged showing an Israeli police officer firing at an unarmed young Palestinian man as he was leaving the scene with his arms raised.

Israeli police claimed the incident had taken place roughly a year and a half ago, and that the officer had been arrested on suspicion of shooting the Palestinian man with a sponge-tipped bullet “as a dubious form of entertainment.”

Crimes perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians are rarely acknowledged by their authorities. Limited cases against Israeli forces are addressed in courts and are also known to result in very mild prison sentences.

In a notable case in 2017, the United Nations slammed a “lenient” 18-month prison sentence handed to Israeli Sergeant Elor Azaria who had killed a wounded Palestinian. The UN described the murder as an apparent “extrajudicial execution.”

Several human rights organizations have highlighted that the Israeli military purposely targets Palestinians with unnecessary lethal force, with one report saying that senior Israeli officials have encouraged forces “to unlawfully shoot to kill.”
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Opinion: Israeli Soldiers Attacked a Palestinian Dad With His Son. Watch It and Cry
by Rogel Alpher for Haaretz
Published Nov 07, 2019 5:16 PM

Every day of the last week has offered another glimpse of the racist, fascist and brutal conduct by IDF “fighters,” the pride of the nation. The stomach churns each time anew when watching them in action. These Judeo-Nazi storm troopers. The latest video was filmed on Tuesday in Hebron.

Hebron is a stain on Israeli society. An ongoing moral disgrace. The same Hebron from which Rabin, yes the same one of the “Rabin legacy,” the tireless fighter for peace, did not remove the settlers there when a historic opportunity to do so came his way, following the massacre by Baruch Goldstein. Astar Shamir once sang about “the lowest place in Tel Aviv.” In Tel Aviv, the lowest places refer to material for pop songs. Topographically, the Dead Sea is the lowest place in Israel. Morally, the lowest place is Hebron.

In the video two “fighters” approach a Palestinian man walking with his son. What could be more banal or mundane or human than a father walking with his son? It sounds like the chorus of an Eli Mohar song. The boy has a satchel on his back. Father and son are walking the streets of their city in autumn. The two “fighters” shout at the father and shove him. “Don’t raise your voice at me,” one of the “fighters” yells at the father, wagging a warning finger at him. It seems more like the experience of a Jewish father walking with his son in the streets of Berlin in 1934 than in the streets of Tel Aviv in 2019.

The “fighters” claim the boy threw rocks at them. The Eli Mohar song begins to fade. It doesn’t really fit the Yehonatan Gefen song from “The Sixteenth Sheep” either – it’s not so nice to meet a storm trooper on the way to kindergarten. The father is astounded by the assertion that his son threw rocks – He’s only five years old. (As the song goes), he loves chocolate and birthdays and little bags filled with goodies. Not the excrement-filled diapers that settlers throw. A shouting match begins.

One of the “fighers” insists that the boy threw rocks and says he doesn’t care how old the child is. He is wearing a helmet and armed with a rifle and who knows what else. His enemy is just five years old. A five-year-old boy, who is traumatized. The “fighter” once loved chewing gum and candy too. One of the “fighters” shoves the father hard, humiliates him, scares him. The boy is terrified. The Palestinian man asks them not to lay a hand on him. In response, the “fighters” push him a few more times and tell him to go.