CONTACT@IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG SEPTEMBER 19, 2023 LESLIE STAHL
A PROMOTIONAL STILL FROM THE ’60 MINUTES’ REPORT ON THE ISRAELI JUDICIAL PROTEST MOVEMENT THAT AIRED ON SEPTEMBER 17, 2023. (photo)
By Philip Weiss, reposted from Mondoweiss
Israeli helicopter pilots who shoot missiles into Palestinian homes killing children are acting with “moral values,” and in the name of “democracy,” according to a “60 Minutes” segment on Israel’s anti-Netanyahu protests that aired last night.
The heroes of Lesley Stahl’s CBS News report from Israel were four Israeli reservists who are taking part in the “democracy” protests and refusing to serve under Netanyahu’s far-right government. They explained that they no longer trust the morality of their leaders:
Shira Eting: I was a combat helicopter pilot…. If you want pilots to be able to fly and shoot bombs and missiles into houses knowing they might be killing children, they must have the strongest confidence in the people making those decisions.
Ron Scherf [Commander in the special forces]: In the moral values of them.
Shira Eting: Exactly.
Stahl did nothing to push back against the claim that killing Palestinian children is a moral action.
Israel has killed hundreds of children in Gaza in recent years by firing missiles at apartment buildings said to be the homes of resistance leaders. Numerous international human rights organizations have called these actions war crimes. One earlier refuser, pilot Yonatan Shapira, stopped flying such missions because his air force commander told him that Israel would never employ the same policy of “targeted assassinations” if Jewish civilians were in the apartment buildings.
Stahl’s report erased Palestinians. She asked briefly about the occupation, which has been absent from the demands of the protesters, and Eting provided this lame response:
If you wanna be able to solve the occupation one day, and I think that everyone here does, the only way to stop it and to solve it is to make sure Israel remains a democracy.
But again no pushback. No mention of the fact that countless human rights groups have found that Israel is not a democracy, it can’t be; it practices apartheid. And very few Jewish Israelis want to reverse that policy, or remove Jewish settlers from Palestinian territories.
Stahl made no mention of murderous statements directed at Palestinians by Netanyahu ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Yes, Stahl described them as racist, but offered no report on their effects on actual Palestinians, who are dying across the West Bank as Israel expands settlements at a record pace.
The thrust of this report was the liberal Zionist claim that Israel is no different from democracies around the world, threatened by right wing demagogues. And so these children-killing pilots are heroes in that global struggle.
Omri Ronen: What happened in Hungary and Poland will not happen here.
Lesley Stahl: There is a trend and it’s going against you around the world
Shira Eting: We’ll be the first to stop it.
Lesley Stahl: (laughs) You’re all determined.
So Jewish supremacists will save democracy for the world.
The U.S. media continues to protect Israel from its own actions. The U.S. media– and reporters steeped in Zionism — continue to project a benign image of a rightwing apartheid society to the world.
P.S. The first segment of last night’s “60 Minutes” was a piece on Ukrainian resistance to occupation that implicitly defended the Ukrainians’ right to attack civilian targets inside Russia. Palestinians have never been accorded that right by our media.
RELATED:
- NYT downplays Palestinian civilian deaths, political motivation for Gaza attack
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg… If only she had supported equal rights for everyone
Opinion: Abdul Fattah Al-Sharif’s Execution by an Israeli Soldier
JUL 30, 2020
By Ramzy Baroud for Palestine Chronicle: As illegal settlers increase their attacks on Palestinian civilians in the occupied city of Al-Khalil (Hebron), the people of the Palestinian city continue to mount a campaign of popular resistance.
One of the channels of resistance is Human Rights Defenders (HRD), “a grassroots, non-partisan Palestinian organization, working to support nonviolent popular resistance through popular direct action and documentation of human rights violations committed by the occupation.”
To understand the situation in Hebron better, I spoke to Badee Dwaik, head of Human Rights Defenders; Raghad Neiroukh, a journalist, and Flora Thomas, a British solidarity activist.
The conversation included another member of HRD, Imad Abu Shamsiyah, the courageous activist who filmed the murder of a young Palestinian man, Abdul Fattah Al-Sharif.
On March 24, 2016, Israeli army medic, Elor Azaria, killed Al-Sharif in cold blood in Hebron. The Israeli army later claimed that Al-Sharif, and another Palestinian, tried to stab an Israeli soldier.
The murder was rightly dubbed an “extrajudicial execution” by human rights organisations. Under international pressure, Israel tried Azaria in court, sentencing him to 18 months’ imprisonment, but eventually released him 14 months later, to be received as a hero by many Israeli politicians, his family and ordinary people.
I asked Abu Shamsiyah about the events that took place on that day, when he had personally witnessed and filmed the execution of the young Palestinian man.
“It was about 8 o’clock in the morning and I was having coffee with my wife. I heard the sound of shooting outside, very close to my house,” Abu Shamsiyah began.
“I immediately went out to see what was going on, and my wife followed me. She brought the camera with her.”
“I found out that a person was lying in the street. He was wearing a black t-shirt and trousers.”
“I saw that there was also another person on the ground. I moved my camera to capture him on film and noticed that he was bleeding from his face.”
“I observed a few Israeli soldiers approaching one of the people on the ground; they were very close to me.”
“I realised that Abdul Fattah Al-Sharif was a Palestinian only when I saw an Israeli soldier kicking him.”
“When the Israeli soldier kicked him, Al-Sharif moved both of his legs and his hands. I captured this with my camera.”
“At that moment, my wife started shouting, saying: ‘Haram, haram,’ and tried to help the wounded young man.”
“When the soldiers heard her screams, they noticed our presence in the street. So they forced us to leave the street; they chased us away.”
“I went home but I began to think of another way to continue filming. I climbed on to the roof of a neighbour’s house and resumed filming the execution.”
“I saw an Israeli ambulance arriving in the area, but it didn’t go towards Al-Sharif; instead, it went towards the other person who was still lying on the ground. Only then, I realised that the other person was, in fact, an Israeli soldier.”
“So I zoomed in the camera to capture a better image of the soldier, who [looked as if he was] slightly injured. The ambulance gave him first aid and treated him, while they denied any treatment to Al-Sharif and the other wounded Palestinian.”
“They carried the Israeli soldier into the ambulance; I zoomed in again, and he was already standing; as I said before, he was [clearly] only slightly injured.”
“The ambulance began to turn around to leave the area. It was then that I heard the sound of one of the soldiers loading his gun. He got closer and closer to where Al-Sharif was [still lying down]. When he was about one metre away, he pointed the gun at Al-Sharif’s head.”
“Al-Sharif did not pose any threat to the soldier, whose name was revealed later in the media to be Elor Azaria. It was Azaria who shot the wounded Palestinian in the head.”
“I was still filming, and one of the Jewish settlers, who noticed me, told the soldiers about me. One of the soldiers turned towards me and ordered me to leave the area, but I was already leaving because I had filmed the entire scene.”
“I immediately went to the Human Rights Defenders, where I uploaded the video and many people watched it.”
“Israeli soldiers kill Palestinians in cold blood, while accusing Palestinians of trying to stab soldiers.”
Following the incident and, throughout Azaria’s trial, Abu Shamsiyah and his family experienced a lot of harassment by the Israeli army for revealing the truth that Israel wishes to keep hidden: the brutality of its soldiers, and the intrinsic relationship between the occupation army and the illegal settlers.
Speaking to Abu Shamsiyah four years after the tragic death of Al-Sharif, the Palestinian activist remains steadfast in his belief that the ongoing Israeli human rights violations must be exposed. His voice conveys determination, not hesitation or fear.
Human Rights Defenders, like many other Palestinian groups, continues to channel and guide the popular resistance of the Palestinian people in Hebron and many towns and villages across Palestine. They are a testament to the resolve of Palestinian society – brave, steadfast and unbroken.
———————-
Elor Azaria Receives Hero’s Welcome at Scene of Hebron Shooting
CONTACT@IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG JULY 4, 2018 ABDEL-FATTAH AL-SHARIF, HEBRON, IDF, MANSLAUGHTER, SETTLER
Elor Azaria, wrapped in an Israeli flag in Hebron, on July 3, 2018
Elor Azaria shot a seriously injured, unarmed Palestinian in 2016 and served a short sentence in prison. When he returned to the scene of his crime, he was treated not like a criminal, but like a prince. Palestinian life is clearly of little value to Israel and many Israelis.
by Yotam Berger, Ha’aretz
[Editor’s note: IMPORTANT BACKGROUND: On 24 March 2016, 2 Palestinians attacked and lightly injured an IDF soldier in Hebron. Nearby soldiers opened fire, killing one and seriously wounding the other. A few minutes later, reinforcements arrived, including Elor Azaria, a medic. He approached the wounded and unarmed man, who was lying on the ground, and fatally shot him in the head. The entire incident was caught on film by a B’tselem observer and went viral.
At first, Azaria was charged with murder, but the charge was downgraded to manslaughter, as well as “conduct unbecoming of a noncommissioned officer.” He was convicted of manslaughter. (His 18-month sentence was later reduced to 14 months.)
At the announcement of the conviction, PM Benjamin Netanyahu called for pardon for Azaria, declaring, “This is a difficult and painful day for all of us – and first and foremost for Elor and his family.”
After serving 9 months, Azaria was freed on 8 May.]
Elor Azaria, an Israeli soldier that shot and killed a wounded terrorist in Hebron and was released two months ago from prison, returned on Tuesday for the first time to the site where the shooting took place.
Azaria, who visited Hebron with his parents, was invited by the residents of the Jewish community in the city for a toast. A source in the settlement told Haaretz that it was not an official invitation from the settlers’ committee, but rather a private invitation.
data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==
Azaria was wrapped in the Israeli flag, and joined by many of the settlers in the area, among far-right activists. One of the settlers told Azaria: “There were dozens of stabbings before, and after the incident here, there were no stabbings here. Apparently, the terrorists understood that they were not coming out alive.” In practice, almost every week Palestinians carrying knives in Hebron are detained by the security forces, especially around the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Ofer Ohana, a local resident, told Azaria: “The two terrorists who came here and tried to kill IDF soldiers are melting in their grave, and you are here. Build your life, the dogs bark, and the convoy of the Jewish people gallops forward.” Azaria waved the Israeli flag and took part in the toast, and was greeted by cheering: “Elor Azaria, I wanted you to know how many people love you in Hebron.”
On May 8, Azaria was released from military prison after nine months. The parole board shortened his sentence by a third and released him two days earlier because he wanted to attend his brother’s wedding.
Azaria was convicted of shooting Abdel-Fattah al-Sharif in March 2016 while al-Sharif was lying wounded on the ground. The military court sentenced Azaria to 18 months in prison, stating that Azaria did not shoot out of a sense of danger, but because he decided that “the terrorist deserved to die.” The Court of Appeals rejected the appeal of his conviction and the severity of the sentence. The prosecution’s appeal was also rejected.
Related reading:
IDF soldier’s cheek > an entire Palestinian’s body
Palestinians throwing stones got longer sentences than Israeli who killed unarmed man
BIG BROTHER in the 21. Century 