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| Bedroom ransacked in IDF raid on Palestinian home |
We were taken to meet an independent media journalist, Rami
Al-Ariya, who monitors actions of Israelis and publishes on www.Alqods.ps and www.imcpal.ps. He told us he was the only
journalist working in the area, covering ours and surrounding villages. The
previous night he had heard that Israeli soldiers were attacking houses and
arresting residents, so went with his wife to film incidents that he witnessed.
The soldiers usually come at night, he said, because there is no media, no
audience, and it is therefore safe for them to act as they please. He always
takes his wife with him as cover – without someone filming him the Israelis
will shoot him, since he is known to them as someone who records and publishes
photographic and video evidence of abuses. He went to a house where there was a
commotion and entered via a side entrance where he found Israeli soldiers
beating a man and ransacking the place. He started to take photographs, to
which the soldiers responded by attacking him, taking his and his wife’s
cameras and IDs, and arresting them. A soldier remarked at him “you never
learn”, referencing previous incidences in which that soldier had arrested him
and a military court case he has to attend on 15th March for one
such incident. He agreed not to cover them anymore, and was given his
belongings and let go. Photographs he took evidencing abuses that took place in
the house – ransacked room and blood on the floor from the beaten man –
can be seen here. The man they beat was in the soldiers’ vehicle with his
hands tied, to be taken away for some form of ‘processing’.
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| Blood on floor, following beating of Palestinian |
He went on to tell us about previous events. He had been
arrested 6 months previously for taking photographs while soldiers were
arresting a small child – it is for this that he must attend a military court.
They took him and the child and searched him for the memory card, which he had
hidden well enough to save. He told of how he had been shot three times in the
back and once in the leg with rubber-cased steel bullets; the latter left his
entire leg blue and he was incapable of walking on it for 2 months. He told of
how they had used him as a human shield, holding him in front of them while
walking towards people throwing stones at them – without, of course, the
protective clothing that prevented stones from inflicting injuries upon them.
“No one cares about any of the harmful things they do to us
– Israelis, they don’t care.”
He showed us videos of a number of incidents, one of which
showed an ambulance transporting a man with a bullet wound to the head being
stopped by the IDF and diverted to a military base/police station. Another
particularly harrowing video showed an incident last year in which he was
filming Israeli attacks on Bedouin houses. A boy aged 13 had been shot in the
back of the head with a teargas canister and in the leg with a rubber-cased
steel bullet while running away, and then arrested – Rami was certain the boy
had not been involved in any actions against the occupation that day. Rami
caught the Israeli soldiers holding the injured boy in a chokehold and posing
while other soldiers took photographs. At one point a soldier held a Molotov
cocktail in front of the boy in the photograph, and the boy shouted something
before being choked into silence, which was translated to us as “it’s not
mine!”. Rami’s publication of the video caused problems for the Israeli
military – firstly, because the boy had an Israeli ID and passport, and
secondly because of the way in which the soldiers took posing photos with him
after he had been shot and arrested. “Since then, they shoot me wherever they
see me… They said ‘you make us look like beasts!’… I [now] take someone
everywhere just to cover me – not anything else – because it is very
dangerous”. He told us that it is getting increasingly dangerous for
journalists to work in the West Bank.
When
we were leaving, we asked Rami if he wanted us to change his name for our blog - he laughed and informed us that he was already targeted and it couldn’t get any
more dangerous. He was already an IDF target, and was therefore resigned to
continuing his work until the end, come what may.
The videos can be found at the following location:
JD
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