Missing the point on Abu Rahmah's death
Palestinians are hurt frequently in unarmed protests, even killed. But it took Israeli Jewish activists to get one tragic death any Western attention or the IDF’s admission of fault.
Jawaher Abu Rahmah, a 36-year-old kindergarten teacher from the West Bank village of Bil’in, died after inhaling tear gas shot by IDF soldiers trying to disperse a weekly protest. Her brother was killed two years ago after being hit by a tear gas canister to the chest. The family’s account and that of dozens of witnesses were quickly dismissed by the IDF through off-the-record tips to sympathetic blogs, and without a formal investigation.
Dogged Israeli activists have forced right-wing blogger, news media and the IDF to walk back misinformation aimed to exonerate the IDF, like whether Abu Rahmah even attended the protest, whether she participated, and (incredulously) whether she died quietly of cancer. The activists chronicling their work through the portal +972 Magazine deserve the bulk of the credit for being at the protest, debunking the rumors started by the IDF, and taking on the right-wing conspiracy machine.
Since the earliest vouchings of IDF’s innocence have proved hollow, the Israel-can-do-no-wrong voices have switched to a new line: “the Israelis killed her, so what?” Christian Zionist magazine Israel Today opined, “The point is that even if Abu Rahma died from inhaling tear gas, it is a non-story.”
Quite the contrary. Even while losing the proxy war on Abu Rahmah’s death, Israel boosters seem to miss the greater points:
First, the village of Bil’in has been protesting weekly for nearly five years, seeking the implementation of an 2004 Supreme Court order to move the security wall off their land. Wrote Chief Justice Dorit Beinish, “We were not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bil’in’s lands.” Yet the wall remains, construction on the new route only started after resubmitting the petition, and settlement encroachment continues to appropriate the farmland. Willful avoidance of court rulings prompted Beinish to reprimand the government in October 2009, saying, “rulings of this court are not mere recommendations, and the state is obliged to abide by them and to execute them with the necessary speed and efficiency.” Civil protesters demanding their own property are killed by a government avoiding its own court’s orders.
Second, the irony of unarmed, civil protests being outlawed by the IDF also seems forgotten. There is no security justification in preventing a weekly protest a full mile from any Israeli civilian. This policy is contradictory to Israel as a liberal democracy: Israelis protest in Rabin Square regularly, but Palestinians aren’t allowed to gather 500 meters from their own homes? We’re left to ask, “Okay, Israel, so how isn’t that apartheid?”
Thirdly, human rights groups — Israeli and otherwise — have documented the regularity of Palestinians injured and killed in the course of non-violent protests. Abu Rahmah’s brother died from a shot to the chest. (Or did he have a previous health condition?) Again, whether or not the IDF directly or indirectly killed this particular brother-sister pair could be beside the point, except for the extraordinary effort Israeli Jewish activists have had to expend to put a face to dozens of needless deaths.
So what is most tragic about the double-killing of Abu Ramah and her brother is that both were the result of repression of protests far from any Israeli civilians and exercising the most basic of civil liberties. As commented by TIME online about this incident, “unarmed Palestinian protests against the occupation are shifting the sympathies of Western public opinion.” Indeed. If Israel boosters want to frame Israel as a country of jurisprudence, then they better direct attention away from the background and onto Rahmah herself.
Our condolences go out to the Abu Rahmah family for losing two children. And our thanks to the tireless advocacy on their behalf by the Israeli activists on the ground. My salutes to you, friends.
And don’t forget the third brother:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly2I5AzfnrY
(He’s the one in the green t-shirt).
I had a dream last night where someone gassed an Israeli to death and no one cared. It was a non-story.
You forgot the one where Abu Rahma was honor killed for carrying an illegitimate child. Unfortunately there was no autopsy, there will never be an autopsy, so the exact cause of death – and tear gas poisoning is not a likely explanation – will never be known.
Rock throwing and destroying property is “exercising the most basic of civil liberties”? You’re stretching, but you’re essentially right. The Bil’in protests are a theater of the absurd designed to create and cynically exploit situations like these, clearly to good effect. Was it last year that everyone got dressed up as a character from Avatar? It’s like a carnival, with rock throwing and tear gas, which sometimes ends tragically, in a utilitarian way.
By the way, you wrote that a settlement is encroaching on Bil’in’s farmlands. Which settlement?
Unfortunately there was no autopsy, there will never be an autopsy, so the exact cause of death – and tear gas poisoning is not a likely explanation – will never be known.
The medical statements by an ambulance driver, immediate care physician and the head of the hospital count for me.
Rock throwing and destroying property is “exercising the most basic of civil liberties”?
Whose property, Victor? They’re demonstrating 500 meters from their own village. Modi’in Illit is a mile away. Why are there soldiers there to put down the protest? Aren’t there real terrorists out there to capture instead of tear gassing a gathering of villagers gathered at a gate blocking their own farmland?
Here’s the original route of the wall through the farmland of Bil’in. And you can find the up-to-date footprint and routes of the security barrier in Peace Now’s settlement database.
And I’m right that the right-wing is trying to distract from the issue of the Supreme Court’s ruling and the commonplace injuries of Palestinians during unarmed protests? You’ve fulfilled the thrust of my post in asking which is more carnival-esque: the protesters or people like you who can’t discuss the cause of the protests in the first place?
“Again, whether or not the IDF directly or indirectly killed this particular brother-sister pair could be beside the point, except for the extraordinary effort Israeli Jewish activists have had to expend to put a face to dozens of needless deaths.”
Sorry but that statement is false. The Palestinians want to say she was “gassed to death,” to invoke images of the Holocaust. It is part of an ongoing campaign to turn the Holocaust (which ironically some Palestinians have denied ever happened) into their own metaphor and turn it against the Jews.
According to every medical source, including an extensive report by Doctors for Human Rights a few years ago, it is not possible for a person to die outdoors from tear gas. If the gas was not tear gas than others who were at the rally would have died as well. Therefore she must of died of something else.
The evidence I have viewed at 972 are even more troubling. Read the ambulance report, read her vital signs and her state of consciousness, how could she have died if those are true?
Every death is tragic but what is more tragic is the imagery that is being accepted by people worldwide, “Israel gassed a Palestinian.” That is why it is crucial we disseminate the truth about how she died.
Rawr! So throwing rocks at soldiers and destroying government property is perfectly ok? You can just say “yes” instead of avoiding the issue.
Didn’t you say yourself that the barrier is being rerouted? So what exactly is the point of further demonstrations?
They’re demonstrating 500 meters from their own village. Modi’in Illit is a mile away. Why are there soldiers there to put down the protest?
It’s a good question. Are the soldiers there to put down the protest or to protect the security barrier from being damaged by the protesters? Is it a wall in this area, or a fence?
You’ve fulfilled the thrust of my post in asking which is more carnival-esque: the protesters or people like you who can’t discuss the cause of the protests in the first place?
I’ll say the protesters, but I don’t think that’s the answer you had in mind. And is anyone disputing the cause of the protests? The route of the security barrier is the cause of the protests, but it’s not the cause of the celeb theater that accompanies the protests, or the flirtation with violence designed to provoke a kinetic response by the IDF that can be exploited for purposes of a propaganda war, having nothing to do with one village’s farmland.
The Jewish Quarter of the Old City is listed as a settlement by Peace Now. I can’t wait until the Zionazis return it back to its rightful owners.
Israel will always find many beguiled defenders rush to its help, but every time, just every time, its actions outstrip their stooges of every excuse. They’re already too overstretched.
Here it comes: On the night of 6-7 January 2011, the “moral” IDF killed an innocent 67-year-old Palestinian in his bed in Hebron, and then “regretted” it.
Me neither. 😉
And I’m right that the right-wing is trying to distract from the issue of the Supreme Court’s ruling and the commonplace injuries of Palestinians during unarmed protests?
Because of course had Bagatz ruled that the route was acceptable in that area, KFJ would still be making arguments on such a ruling.
The Jewish Quarter of the Old City is listed as a settlement by Peace Now.
Victor, don’t you want us to take matters into our own hands, to save our hold on the parts of the Land of Israel/settlements which we can still save, before the whole Zionist project is lost?
I don’t know what the Zionist project is anymore (is it hiding behind walls) but the Jewish project is in no danger. We’ve discussed this, Jonathan. I’m not opposed to Palestinian state, but not at the expense of ethnic cleansing Jewish communities. I understand your exhaustion but it’s just not a viable way to go forward.
If you win over your fellow citizens, I will support you. So long as there is a sizable majority fighting for what I think makes more sense, I will support them.
I understand your exhaustion but it’s just not a viable way to go forward.
I will admit that there is a level of exhaustion for many, especially on the Left, which probably was one of the mistakes Peres and Rabin made in selling Oslo to the public (the New Middle East, etc..)
But, Victor, I’m not exhausted at all. I love being a tiny part of, and I still believe in the worth of, the Jewish and Zionist project (they are intertwined for me.) We’ve just made a lot of big mistakes since 1967, and if we don’t put the country on a different trajectory, I wonder if things will work out at all.
Let’s put it this way: We ethnically cleansed the Sinai of Jews in 1982, and that worked out well in the long-term–at least for me, maybe you see that differently.
And think how much better it would have been had Yamit remained and its residents been granted dual citizenship. As a test of Egyptian tolerance, as a bridge between nations, as constituency for improved relations with Israel… And yes, as a tripwire to renewed aggression. You wouldn’t have to do a thing, Jonathan. Leave it for the Diaspora.
Once political control is transferred, resentment against Jewish settlers becomes not anti-Zionist, but racist.
Ok. If Jews want to live in a Palestinian state, as citizens of Palestine, then I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Although, are there actually such people today in Judea and Samaria? Rabbi Fruman is about the only one I can think of.
But, I’d say if we had to choose between Yamit and a treaty with Egypt, the treaty with Egypt was more important.
Look, if you’re asking me if I would have preferred a treaty with Egypt whith Israel maintaining control over all of the Sinai, I would have. If tomorrow, the vast majority of Palestinians in the Land of Israel were to get up and emigrate, I wouldn’t be crying. But we just don’t live in this sort of world. We have to make decisions sometimes.
What? Control over sinai? How would allowing 2500 Jews in Yamit to keep living there given Israel control over sinai? Second, Egypt was willing to pay Israel for Yamit as part of the peace treaty. Why do you assume that peace treaties can’t be signed if Jews are allowed to live where they are? The decision to destroy the town was made by Israel. It’s the same in the West Bank. The Palestinians can live with Jewish villages remaining. It is an Israeli policy to destroy settlements.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141613
Because there wasn’t going to be a deal with Egypt unless Egypt got back the whole of the Sinai, and the settlements there were taken down. That was the price for a treaty. I think the treaty was worth it–maybe you don’t.
And, I just said, if there is a treaty with the Palestinians (albiet it will be more complicated and risky then the Egypt deal) and it is agreed that Jews can stay in their homes, as citizens of Palestine, that would be fine with me–although I don’t really know of any Jews who would want to stay there in such a situation. Maybe there are and I don’t know of them.
There are and you don’t know them, and they’re having children like firecrackers.
Please tell me where you’re getting this idea, that without removing Jews from Sinai there would have been no treaty? It’s a fact that Egypt was willing to pay for the town to remain. Israel refused and destroyed it. OK, that was 40 years ago. But we don’t have to repeat unnecessary wrongs. It is Israeli policy to destroy settlements, not Palestinian one. Israeli negotiators insert this clause during discussions. Of course Palestinians are happy about Jews being forced out of their homes, but it’s not on their agenda.
You don’t need to do a thing, Jonathan. No Israeli soldier will have to die for the settlers ever again. Just leave them alone and let the Diaspora take over.
Why do you equate Jewish presence with Jewish political control?
It’s a fact that Egypt was willing to pay for the town to remain.
Egypt just wasn’t willing to allow the Israeli Jews to remain there. Even if that wasn’t the case, on the theoretical question: I do think that the treaty is more vital than was Yamit. Maybe you just disagree.
Just leave them alone and let the Diaspora take over.
I keep saying that they can stay in their homes, after a partition, if all sides agree. Do I need to take out an ad in the newspaper for you to believe me?
No Israeli soldier will have to die for the settlers ever again.
When did I ever say that Israeli soldiers die for settlers?
Why do you equate Jewish presence with Jewish political control?
Ok, I keep saying that if there is a partition, and the Jews want to stay in their homes, and all sides agree, then fine.
It’s not just fine, it should be encouraged, as that is in the interests of a true peace. I’m glad we agree 😉