Letters To My Country - Four bullets to the back of the head

February 2, 2014

Four bullets to the back of the head | +972 Magazine

From the article:

On January 20, 2011, Jalal Mahmoud Masri left his house in East Jerusalem and went to visit relatives in the village of Idna. Masri, a father of two and a truck driver, did not know that this was to be his last ride. Fate put Sharpshooter Avi in his path.
Avi and three of his friends had erected an emergency checkpoint after a white Peugeot 205 ignored a checkpoint near the Gush Etzion Junction. Avi, a sharpshooter, was in a nearby tower. Masri noticed the impromptu checkpoint made of soldiers waving flashlights and slowed down after seeing the first flashlight. As soon as he had passed the checkpoint, he suddenly accelerated. According to most of the testimonies, the commanding officer at the checkpoint fired three rounds into the air. Immediately afterwards, Avi fired four rounds at Masri’s head. He collapsed, mortally wounded, and died months later in hospital.
[…]
Hold on. Didn’t we all learn during our service in the IDF that if a vehicle storms through a checkpoint it must be fired upon? This is incorrect and contrary to orders. When the deputy brigade commander was asked about it, he unequivocally said that opening fire is permitted only if the soldiers’ lives are at risk. The deputy also admitted that Masri’s vehicle wasn’t the one the army was looking for, the one which had burst through the Gush Etzion Junction checkpoint. In his interrogation the impromptu checkpoint commander also stated that his men were not in danger.

Military prosecutors for the IDF closed the case, saying there was a “lack of evidence.” Several people who investigated the scene said the shooting was clearly intentional, based on the position and angle of the bullet holes in Masri’s vehicle.

This case is another example of the culture of impunity that IDF soldiers benefit from when they kill Palestinian civilians:

Out of the 179 investigations the army opened, only 16 matured into indictments – and of these, only six ended in convictions related to homicide. Out of these, only one soldier served more than one year in prison: this is Taysir Hayb, who killed British activist Thomas Hurndall without any provocation. Hayb was convicted of manslaughter – not murder – and was sentenced to eight years in prison, which he did not serve in full (Hebrew). It’s important to note that Hayb had two factors against him: firstly, he killed a Western citizen, whose family refused to act as if nothing happened. A British inquest (which Israel, naturally, boycotted) found that Hurnfall was maliciously slain. Secondly, Hayb is not a Jew; he is a Bedouin. I dare to say, and the data backs me, that an ordinary Jewish soldier killing an ordinary Palestinian wouldn’t suffer such bad luck.
[…]
Yesh Din research department director Ziv Stahl commented on the shooting on Monday morning: “the data shows that practically, the chances of a soldier who killed a Palestinian civilian without justification being investigated, much less punished, are between low and nil. Such a reality encourages illegal use of arms by soldiers even in clearly civilian settings, such as demonstrations.”

This culture is the reason why an IDF sharpshooter can act contrary to IDF protocol by putting 4 bullets in a Palestinian man’s head at an impromptu checkpoint, yet remain untouched after a 2 year investigation. Palestinians are forced to live under the heel of a military force that is subject to different laws, and then when members of that military force break those laws, they are nonetheless selectively enforced. Imbalances like this cause extraordinary resentment, and only exacerbate the social and political tension that causes so much of the violence in the Occupied Territories and in Israel.

11:15am | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZMMjnx16Chom9

(Notes: 43)