Rights and Accountability 23 December 2015
Broadcast on Israeli television Wednesday evening, it shows one masked youth holding up a Molotov cocktail while another stabs a photo of Ali Dawabsha, the Palestinian baby killed in a firebomb attack on his family home in the occupied West Bank village of Duma last summer.
“In the video one can see dozens of teens and young men singing a song in praise of revenge, while holding up guns and knives,” Israel’s Haaretz, which published this version of the video, reported.
The wedding was of a couple “very well known in the radical right,” Haaretz quotes Israel’s Channel 10 as saying.
The dancing wedding guests were described as “friends of the suspects in the Dawabsha murders.”
The report said “licensed pistols were passed around at the reception from hand to hand, including to children.”
Torture
The disturbing video emerged just as Israel’s Shin Bet secret police has said it is close to issuing indictments for the arson attack that killed three members of the Dawabsha family.
On 31 July, a firebomb was thrown into the Dawabsha family home, killing 18-month-old baby Ali and fatally injuring his parents Riham and Saad. Ali’s 4-year-old brother Ahmad, who suffered severe burns, is the only survivor.
Shin Bet announced on Sunday it had made progress in the investigation, but kept all details secret under a gag order.
However Itamar Ben Gvir, a key suspect’s lawyer, has publicly claimed his client was tortured to confess to the crime.
“They broke him. I believe very much that there are doubts that any confessions he made are usable in court. They beat him into a shadow of a person,” Ben Gvir said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Ben Gvir, a right-wing activist, said his client was sleep deprived, beaten and held in various stress positions until he finally confessed.
The lawyer also suggested that interrogators may have sexually assaulted his client, according to Israel’s Arutz Sheva news website.
While rarely used against Jews, the torture techniques described by Ben Gvir are consistent with those routinely inflicted by Israel on Palestinians, including children.
Shin Bet has come under fire for using them against Israeli Jewish citizens.
On 19 December, Israeli forces and intelligence officers brought a suspect to Duma and had him “reenact” the crime, Ma’an News Agency reported.
While defense minister Moshe Yaalon admitted in September that the army knew who had perpetrated the attack, no arrests were made until four months after the fatal crime.
Following mounting pressure, Shin Bet arrested suspects at the end of November and beginning of December.
With the permission of Israel’s high court, Shin Bet held the suspects – for the maximum 21 days before granting them access to lawyers.
While barely any details were released, the deputy attorney general publicly admitted that Shin Bet was using “exceptional measures” during interrogations.
The Electronic Intifada has identified two suspects, whose names Israeli media are still withholding due to the gag order, as Hanoch Ganiram, 19, and Elisha Odess, who is a minor.
Earlier this month, the Israeli government told the high court that indictments were not on the horizon.
But it now seems Shin Bet has managed to extract a confession.
After suspects began meeting with their lawyers last week, details of their interrogations and torture have emerged.
Attorney Adi Keidar, representing a 17-year-old suspect, claims his client attempted to kill himself by slitting his wrists.
The teenager testified in an Israeli court on the torture he was enduring, yet the judge ordered he remain in custody.
Last weekend, hundreds of supporters violently clashed with police in Jerusalem during a demonstration against the suspects’ prolonged interrogation.
Israeli civil rights groups have also questioned the legality of Shin Bet’s reported methods.
Last week, Shin Bet said it was investigating a “Jewish terror organization” that had “contributed to instability in the region.”
“This organization adheres to an extreme, anti-Zionist ideology, that has set itself the goal of violently overthrowing the Israeli government,” Shin Bet told Israeli media.
What such comments do not address is the fact that all of Israel’s settlers are in the West Bank as a result of decades of Israeli government policy and only remain there because of the protection and support they receive from the Israeli army.
Home attacked
There has been a sharp increase in violence by Israeli settlers in recent years, almost none of which is investigated and punished, according to the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din.
Early Tuesday, suspected Israeli settlers attacked a home in the village of Beitillu near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in an apparent revenge attack for the arrests of the suspects in the Dawabsha murders.
A Palestinian woman stands next to a house sprayed with Hebrew graffiti reading: “revenge” and “hello from the prisoners of Zion,” in the village of Beitillu, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on 22 December. Suspected Jewish settlers threw tear gas canisters inside as a family slept early the same morning.
APA imagesHussein al-Najjar, 30, told Ma’an News Agency that settlers arrived at his home around 1:30am and vandalized the exterior walls of the house before smashing a window and throwing three tear gas bombs inside.
Al-Najjar said that he and his wife and their 9-month-old son Karam suffered from severe tear gas inhalation.
“The family survived death thanks to the intervention of neighbors who broke open the main door and evacuated the family, who were found unconscious,” al-Najjar added.
Photos show the phrases “revenge” and “hello from the detainees of Zion” spraypainted in Hebrew on the side of the home.
Ali Abunimah contributed research.
Comments
How far is far?
Permalink tom hall replied on
A tour of Israeli English language news websites reveals a readership steeped in violent racist discourse. The comment threads fairly burst with calls for Palestinian genocide, in language clearly derived from Nazi vituperation against Jews. Moreover, many readers now demand the execution of Netanyahu for treason and openly militate for the overthrow of the Israeli state on behalf of a strict religious dictatorship.
The far right as represented by the current Israeli government doesn't tack far enough in that direction to suit the Hilltop Youth, Lehava, and numerous settler groupings. Official Zionism is seen as the enemy by increasing numbers of Jewish fanatics, and Shin Bet have begun to recognise the threat to their established order. Of course, torturing Jewish suspects will only intensify this loathing, and new cadres of extremists will emerge from the experience. There doesn't seem to be a cut-off point to this process, which is gathering velocity by the day. Netanyahu, Lieberman, Bennett- all of them are riding the tiger and can't dismount. In the end, Israel may well fall due to internal strife and racial madness rather than primarily from external pressure- although that pressure must be maintained and strengthened, too. If and when the real maniacs take power there, the world must be ready to act.
anti-Zionist Jewish 'terror'?
Permalink Eric replied on
"Shin Bet said it was investigating a 'Jewish terror organization' that had 'contributed to instability in the region. ... This organization adheres to an extreme, anti-Zionist ideology, that has set itself the goal of violently overthrowing the Israeli government.'”
"What such comments do not address is the fact that all of Israel’s settlers are in the West Bank as a result of decades of Israeli government policy and only remain there because of the protection and support they receive from the Israeli army."
There's a lot more the comments don't address. Such as why an anti-Zionist group is even relevant to this story about Zionist attacks on Palestinians.