Description

Photo: Clip from video released by Defense of Children International-Palestine

A Palestinian man shouts for help moments after Palestinian teen, Mohammad Abu Daher, on the ground, was shot to death by Israeli troops near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Thursday, May 15, 2014 Photo by AP

The mother of Nadim Siam Abu Nuwara mourns over her son who was shot and killed by Israeli army during a Nakba Day protest near Ofer military prison the previous day.
May 16, 2014.

Blasts wall outside of Ofer military prison, where two Palestinians youths were killed by the Israeli military during a Nakba Day protest. (Photo: Ben Ehrenreich)
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UPDATE: May 29, 2014

Some important details: Ben Ehrenreich on the Nakba Day shootings

by Ben Ehrenreich at Mondoweiss
Originally post on May 29, 2014 on Ben's Blog here.

Last week I published a piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books about the killings of Nadim Nuwara and Mohammad Abu Thaher in Beitunia on May 15. In the aftermath of the boys’ deaths, Israeli officials—from low-ranking military spokespeople to the Minister of Defense and the Ambassador to the United States—have claimed that no live ammunition was fired by the IDF that Thursday, that the surveillance video that captured both boys’ deaths was either falsified or edited in a manipulative fashion (the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has since posted the unedited footage, seven and a half hours worth, online) and that the boys may have been killed by an unseen Palestinian gunman. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren suggested last Thursday to an as-usual-fawning-and-unquestioning Wolf Blitzer that the boys may not have died at all. Having seen their bodies, and their grieving families, I can assure you that they did.

In the LARB article I quoted a doctor who treated both boys and who told me that their wounds were without question caused by live fire. Nuwara was shot in the chest, Abu Thaher in the back: both bullets passed through their bodies, leaving exit wounds. The rubber-coated steel bullets used by the IDF can and often do penetrate the skin and can be lethal, but they cannot pass entirely through a human torso even when fired from a relatively short distance. I interviewed four eyewitnesses to the killings, all of whom said live fire was used. (The concussion from a live shot sounds differently than that of a shot when rubber-coated bullets are fired. I have met 11-year-olds in the West Bank who can accurately tell what sort of munitions are being fired by ear alone. All four of the eyewitnesses I interviewed had witnessed many such clashes and knew the difference well.) Three of them testified that they saw Israeli commanders choosing targets and pointing them out to snipers just before each boy was killed.

Last Thursday, to complicate matters slightly, CNN released footage showing a soldier firing his rifle at approximately the time that Nuwara was killed. He fires, another soldier reaches to take the rifle from him, and the camera leaps to the scene in the road, where a group of youths can be seen carrying away Nuwara’s body. It was easy to conclude, as many did, that the soldier caught by the CNN cameraman had fired the killing shot. Yesterday, Haaretz reported that the soldier in question was assigned to a communications division and was accompanying a unit of Border Police at the scene. Robert Mackey reports in the New York Times that the soldier has been suspended: as a “non-combat” soldier accompanying another unit, it was a breach of protocol for him to fire his weapon at all.

One thing is worth noting: the bullet that killed Nadim Nuwara was almost certainly not fired by the soldier caught on the CNN video. It was almost certainly a coincidence that he fired his weapon at approximately the same moment that Nuwara was hit. And he almost certainly was shooting rubber-coated bullets: the video is hazy, but his rifle appears to be equipped with the sort of extension that is attached to the barrel of an M16 to allow it to fire rubber-coated bullets. Mohannad Darabee, one of the witnesses I interviewed, told me repeatedly that he was sure the shot that killed Nuwara did not come from the group of Border Police who had gathered on a driveway just uphill and slightly back from the road. Darabee walked me to the spot where Nuwara fell, and to the spot from which the Border Police (and the now-suspended soldier) had been firing. The corner of a building stood in the way: there was no line of fire that would have allowed those soldiers to hit Nuwara.

However, another, larger group of Israeli soldiers had gathered behind a concrete blast wall on the edge of a parking lot about 200 meters from the spot where Nuwara was hit. (See image above.) It was there, Darabee said, that he saw a commander choosing targets through binoculars. Those soldiers had an unimpeded shot at Nuwara. Forgive me if this is all a bit hard to visualize: The Guardian produced a graphic that maps it all out. But I want to make this very clear, because the waters have been muddied considerably, both through deliberate obfuscation and by speculation about a video that reveals less than it appears to: the fact that the soldier caught on video by CNN was apparently firing rubber-coated bullets only confirms the accounts of eyewitnesses who testified that the bullet that killed Nadim Nuwara was likely fired by another group of soldiers gathered at the edge of the parking lot. Abu Thaher, who was shot about an hour later, and was standing in the middle of the road, easily visible from the Border Police officers’ perch, could have been killed by either group.
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UPDATE: May 22, 2014
CNN reports cameras rolling during shooting. Father of one of the victims displays the bullet that he believes killed his son.


BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian human rights group on Monday published video footage showing the moment two teenage boys were shot dead by Israeli military forces on Nakba Day last week.

"The images captured on video show unlawful killings where neither child presented a direct and immediate threat to life at the time of their shooting," said Rifat Kassis, executive director of DCI-Palestine.

"These acts by Israeli soldiers may amount to war crimes, and the Israeli authorities must conduct serious, impartial, and thorough investigations to hold the perpetrators accountable for their crimes."

Israeli military forces have killed four Palestinian children in 2014. Over 1,400 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since 2000, according to DCI-Palestine.

Amnesty International condemned Israel's military forces following the killings, saying the army has "repeatedly resorted to extreme violence to respond to Palestinian protests against Israel’s occupation, discriminatory policies, confiscation of land and construction of unlawful settlements."

In February, Amnesty released a report entitled 'Trigger-happy,' which found that Israeli forces display a "callous disregard" for human life, with near total impunity for the killing of Palestinian civilians in cases examined since 2011.

The report said that some killings, including the murder of Samir Awad, 16, in Jan. 2013, could amount to war crimes.

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A top UN official called on Tuesday for an investigation into the deadly shooting of Palestinian youths during a Nakba Day protest last week.

"It is of serious concern that initial information appears to indicate that the two Palestinians killed were both unarmed and appeared to pose no direct threat," Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, assistant UN secretary general for political affairs, said, according to AFP.

The two Palestinians, Muhammad Abu Thahr, 15, and Nadim Nuwara, 17, were shot dead by Border Police officers at a Nakba protest outside the Ofer Military Prison near Ramallah last Tuesday. Palestinian hospital officials said that both were shot in the chest.

An "independent and transparent" investigation must be conducted, Fernandez-Taranco said.

On Tuesday, video footage of the shooting surfaced, indicating the victims were far away from the clashes and not in a direct confrontation with soldiers. The cameras were positioned atop a Palestinian-owned store where the incident took place.

The video, distributed by Defense for Children International Palestine, shows both youths the moment they were shot. It doesn't appear as if they presented any threat at the time of the shooting. One of them was shot when his back was turned to the soldiers.

One of the eyewitness says he heard four shots within a few minutes of each other and saw three youths injured in the chest area, two of whom were killed at the scene, while the third was hospitalized in Ramallah.

The video clearly shows the first Palestinian teen being shot at 00:48, as he was approaching a crowd of others, while the second youth was shot at 1:27, as he turned his back to the soldiers.

"The images captured on video show unlawful killings where neither child presented a direct and immediate threat to life at the time of their shooting," said Rifat Kassis, executive director of DCI-Palestine.

"Israeli authorities must conduct serious, impartial, and thorough investigations to hold the perpetrators accountable for their crimes," added Kassis.

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By Noam Sheizaf for 972Mag.com

Following the release of CCTV footage showing the killing of two Palestinian minors near Ofer prison on Thursday, the Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem called for an investigation of senior officers who were present at the scene. B’Tselem also asked the IDF to look into “misleading information” given to the local and international media after the incident.

The organization released several more videos from the event, showing the moment of shootings and the minutes leading up to them from two different angles. Here are the clips:

Nadem Syam Nawara, 17, and Mohammad Mahmoud Odeh, 16, were shot to death near Ofer military prison in the West Bank during a Nakba Day protest. Two more Palestinian protesters were injured. Stones were thrown at IDF soldiers during the protest, but as the new footage revealed, Nawara and Odeh were shot from afar; one of them was actually with his back to the soldiers, and neither posed any risk to the army forces, nor threw any rocks.

Following the incident, the IDF Spokesperson claimed that no live ammunition was used by the military that day. However, the medical team that treated the teens said that they were wounded from live bullets. The distance from which they were shot also supports this theory, as rubber coated bullets very rarely kill from such a distance.

B’Tselem obtained the full tapes of four CCTV cameras which operated at the scene. A spokesperson for the organization said that the raw footage will be handed to the military police. B’Tselem also invited all media organizations to examine the raw footage themselves.

“The evidence might suggest intentional killing,” said B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli. “There was no danger posed by the deceased or by the injured to the security forces, nor from anyone standing close to them.” All four Palestinians were hit in the upper parts of their body. Army orders allow the use of crowd control measures and rubber coated bullets. In extreme cases of immediate threat to soldiers, the orders allow shooting live ammunition in the lower parts of the body.

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Video Renews Questions on Death of Young Palestinians

By JODI RUDOREN for the New York Times

JERUSALEM — A human rights group circulated a video on Tuesday that renews questions about last week’s killing of two Palestinian teenagers by Israeli forces during a West Bank demonstration.

The video, taken from a security camera belonging to a business in Beitunia, a West Bank town outside Ramallah, was edited and promoted by Defense for Children International-Palestine Section and shows two youths felled by apparent gunfire on Thursday about an hour apart in a sparsely populated concrete expanse shrouded by a cloud of smoke. Neither of the teenagers appeared to be engaged in provocative behavior at the time they were shot, though a photograph shows one wearing a black ski mask, and the video shows another individual hurling stones from the same spot seven minutes before the first shooting.
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Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, condemned Israel’s “deliberate execution” of the teenagers, calling the shootings “crimes against humanity under international law” and demanding “immediate action” by the United Nations and the European Union. Rifat Kassis, executive director of Defense for Children International, said “neither child presented a direct and immediate threat to life at the time of their shooting” and urged Israel to “conduct serious, impartial, and thorough” inquiries to “hold the perpetrators accountable for their crimes.”

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said Tuesday that investigations by the military and the police were continuing, and that “the preliminary inquiry up until this moment still does not indicate any use of live fire by the forces.” Colonel Lerner said that the few minutes of edited video footage did not capture the “atmosphere of violence” during the demonstration, and he noted that it did not show who fired the shots or whether they were rubber bullets or live ammunition.

“So what caused the deaths,” he said, “is a question mark that needs to be answered.”

A top United Nations official on Tuesday called for an “independent and transparent” investigation into the deadly shootings.

Oscar Fernández-Taranco, the assistant secretary general for political affairs, told the Security Council on Tuesday that Israel should “ensure that its security forces strictly adhere to the basic principles on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials.”

The deaths occurred on Nakba Day, in which Palestinians commemorate the destruction of scores of Arab villages around the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. The Israeli military said that 150 people had gathered for the demonstration outside Ofer prison — where more than 100 Palestinians had been on a hunger strike for weeks to protest their detention — and that they had hurled stones and firebombs and ignored orders to disperse.

“There was a substantial riot that took place,” Colonel Lerner said. “Our forces used riot-dispersal means and crowd-control methods to limit and prevent the riot from causing any damage.”

Palestinian health officials say that Nadeem Siam Nawara, 17, and Mohammad Mahmoud Odeh Salameh, 16, were killed by live ammunition. (They originally provided an incorrect age for Mohammad.)

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said in a statement on Tuesday that it had reviewed video from four security cameras and consulted medical experts who said the entry and exit wounds on the victims were “completely consistent with injuries caused by live fire and could not have been caused by rubber-coated metal bullets.” The statement said B’Tselem’s investigation raised “grave suspicion that the killing was willful.”

Fakher Zayed, who owns the building where the security camera was mounted, said in an interview that accompanies the footage on the video that he had heard live ammunition — “four shots to be exact” — and that “the shooting was not from the same side where the boys were throwing rocks at the beginning.”

“The army had fired plenty of tear-gas canisters, and the youth retreated back toward the gas station,” Mr. Zayed said. “At the moment of the killings, nothing was going on and no stone-throwing was taking place. Actually, the youths were moving back.”