In the Wake of the Deaths of Three Israeli Teenagers: A Wave of Death and Terror Against Palestinians

By Alan Goodman | Updated July 6, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On June 12, one of a group of three Israeli teenagers called a police emergency hotline from his cell phone. He left a message: "I've been kidnapped." The message did not identify or describe the kidnappers. News accounts describe the tone of the message as calm. In fact, authorities initially took the call for a prank. According to police and media accounts, voices in Hebrew and Arabic and an Israeli radio station can be heard in the background of the phone call, and a sound authorities say is a gunshot is heard. On June 30, bodies of the three were found buried near the West Bank town of Hebron.

The disappearance of these three Israeli teenagers, and the discovery of their bodies, has been seized on by Israel to unleash a ferocious wave of terror and death, along with a campaign to turn reality upside down and portray Israelis as collective victims of Arab terror. And a lynch mob atmosphere in Israel led to the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a Palestinian youth. That act set off fierce clashes between protesting Palestinian youth and Israeli forces of repression—clashes that are intensifying as this article is being written, with reports emerging that Israeli troops are using live ammunition against unarmed protesters.

After the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, Palestinian youth use rocks and stones to fight the Israeli Army in Shuafat, East Jerusalem, on July 2, 2014. Photo: activestills.org

The killings, and the way the incident has been used by Israel, take place in the context of an increase in global outrage and protest over Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people—at a time of ongoing Israeli missile attacks on the Gaza region of Palestine. And all this is happening in the context of complex, convulsive conflicts involving global powers and smaller-scale reactionaries that threaten to spin out of control in the region and beyond.

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What Are Zionist "Settlements" in Palestine?

The three Israeli youth found dead on July 1 lived in one of what are referred to as "Settlements" in the mass media.

What are these "settlements?"

Most of Palestine was seized by Israel through ethnic cleansing and war in 1948. On that basis, the UN (unjustly) drew boundaries recognizing a state of Israel and setting aside the rest of Palestine for the Palestinians.

Since 1993, small sections of the West Bank (east of Israel) along with the Gaza Strip at the southern end of Israel have been administered by different factions of the Palestine Authority (PA). The PA has no real authority, and basically serves as an administrator for Israel's interests in the West Bank. Since 2007, Gaza has been controlled by Hamas, an Islamic fundamentalist force.

In addition to what is recognized by the UN as Israel, and the areas controlled by the PA and Hamas, Israel militarily occupies much of the area designated as Palestine by the UN. These areas—overwhelmingly populated by Palestinian people—include the eastern part of the city of Jerusalem and much of the West Bank of the Jordan River (the eastern-most section of Palestine). Israeli occupation of these territories is illegal under all international mandates.

The government of Israel has repeatedly expanded what it calls "settlements" in the "occupied territories" in the West Bank. These "settlements" are armed outposts of highly armed, fanatical Zionists who spread terror among the Palestinian residents of the "occupied territories" as part of the ongoing and expanding ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

There is, to date, no substantial public evidence as to who kidnapped and killed the three Israeli teenagers. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay." (Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist group that controls the Gaza region of Palestine, which is separated from the West Bank by Israel.) Hamas generally takes public credit for operations it launches and has not done so in this case. The New York Times reported that "Israeli authorities acknowledge that [the suspects] might have been a rogue cell operating without orders from the Hamas leadership."

In the spirit of 'who cares about evidence, they're terrorists,' U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared, "As we gather this information, we reiterate our position that Hamas is a terrorist organization known for its attacks on innocent civilians and which has used kidnapping in the past."

After the disappearance of the teenagers, Israeli military imposed a total crackdown in the West Bank—kicking down doors, searching homes, provoking outrage and protest. Even before the bodies of the teenagers were found, Israeli troops had murdered five Palestinians in suppressing those protests. The murder of these Palestinian youth by Israeli troops hardly made it into news accounts in The West.

Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian City of Jenin on the West Bank, July 2, 2014. PHOTO: AP

Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian City of Jenin on the West Bank, July 2, 2014. Reports are emerging that Israeli troops are using live ammunition against unarmed protesters. Photo: AP

After the bodies of the three teenagers were found, Netanyahu declared the Israelis "were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts." On cue, Zionists rallied in Jerusalem chanting "death to the Arabs." And on July 2, the body of 17-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was found burned and with signs of torture. Mainstream media in Israel are quoting witnesses who say surveillance footage shows what appear to be Israelis forcing Abu Khdeir into their car in front of a supermarket before speeding off.

The Jerusalem police chief called on Palestinians to "exercise restraint, refrain from reaching conclusions and wait for new developments in the investigation." Israel's minister of internal security, Yitzhak Aharonovich said "There are many possibilities [for the death of Mohammed Abu Khdeir], criminal and nationalistic, and everything is being examined in a responsible manner."

Israeli media is reporting that police in East Jerusalem are refusing to release security camera footage that could shed light on the kidnapping, and that the victim's father was held by police for a day.

After the discovery of the burned, tortured body of Mohmmad Abu Khdeir, there was no massive military assault on Zionist communities by the Israeli military. No suspects in this killing have had their homes blown up by the authorities before they were charged or convicted of any crime (as did happen to the home of a suspect in the kidnapping of the Israeli teens). No Zionist organizations that might have influenced, or been associated with the killers of this youth have been branded as terrorist organizations and subjected to threats to their leaders. No Israeli leaders have called those who murdered, and apparently tortured this youth, and those who instigated and created the conditions that set them loose "wild beasts."

What is going on at this moment in Israel is the reality of an Apartheid state, where the indigenous population, as a whole, is dehumanized and subject to constant terror to enforce the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

 

Institutionalized Kidnapping and Torture of Teenagers—by Israel

In early February 2014, news agencies of the Australia's ABC news network began a series of exposures on the brutal seizure and detention of hundreds of Palestinian children each year by Israeli troops in the middle of the night, literally from their beds. These youth are threatened with rape, tortured, interrogated, and pressured to be snitches—without access to lawyers or their parents.

Qsai Zamara, 14, was taken from his bed during a night raid on his family home in a Palestinian village and then taken to prison by the Israeli army where he was whipped and threatened into falsely confessing that he threw stones at the army. He told Australian television "There was this big machine with all the electric wires in it, connected to the electricity. [The Israeli torturer] wanted to give me electric shock with it," he said.

Fathi Mahfouz was arrested when he was 15 for something he did not do and taken to prison, where he was given electric shocks. He said, ""Because I didn't confess he sent me to a room that has a cross in it, and hung me on it. I was hung and he kept hitting me."

An Australian lawyer told Australian television that he has interviewed hundreds of Palestinian children. He told of an incident where a child was taken into custody by Israeli troops and "someone put food on his genitals and the dog was then made to eat the food off that part of his trousers." He described an Israeli interrogator of children "who specializes in threatening children with rape, and he makes very specific allegations. He will name someone who apparently is waiting outside the interrogation room who will, if the child doesn't confess, will come in and rape that child."

One activist characterized what is being done as "breaking children forever."

Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Australian news media that this was "perfectly legitimate" because these children were allegedly involved in "violent actions." (See "Israeli security forces accused of using Palestinian children to gather intelligence" and other coverage at radioaustralia.net.au, 2/10/14.)

 

Saturday, July 5: 1,000 people marched on Michigan Avenue in Chicago in outrage against the Israeli assault on people in Palestine. Demonstrators denounced the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir by fanatical Zionists, the Israeli police savage beating of his cousin Tariq, and the collective punishment against all of the Palestinians, including mass arrests and the bombing of Gaza. Young activists, including from local college chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, were leading the chants, which included "Free Free Palestine" and "End the occupation now." Protesters took over the sidewalk and stopped traffic, creating a huge splash among the throngs of shoppers on Michigan Avenue, which is Chicago's elite shopping district. There was broad participation at this march among forces concerned about Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, such as Jewish Voices for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee. This was one of the largest protests around the world against the current Israeli assault, according to news reports. Supporters of the RCP distributed hundreds of reprints of the above article about this situation as well as hundreds of palm cards advertising the revcom.us web site.

 

 

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