Saturday, July 5, 2014

The Unending Cycle Of Payback

Three Israeli teens found dead near the West Bank two weeks ago has escalated into the latest IDF bombing campaign against the Palestinians, who have responded with rockets, prompting retaliation where a Palestinian teen was abducted and burned alive.

Mohammed Abu Khedair, a Palestinian teenager who was abducted and killed in Jerusalem this week, died from being burned alive and hit with a blunt object to the head, according to Palestinian General Prosecutor Mohammed al-Auwewy, sourcing the medical autopsy.

Al-Auwewy said the autopsy discovered traces of smoke inside the lungs of the 16-year-old , meaning that it was inhaled during the burning.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said his country is aggressively investigating the killing. "We'll get to the bottom of it and catch those responsible," he told CNN on Saturday.

This of course led to more fighting at the teen's funeral.

The teenager's death sparked widespread outrage among Palestinians and clashes with Israeli security forces broke out during his funeral on Friday.

More than 60 people were injured in fighting in parts of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a group that said it was involved in evacuating injured Palestinians. It said the injuries mostly involved rubber bullets fired at the upper body and chest.

Israeli police said 13 of their officers were slightly injured in clashes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, where Palestinian protesters were throwing rocks at police, who responded by firing rubber bullets and tear gas.

 And so on, and so on, and so on...

In a separate incident, two videographers recorded men in the uniform of Israeli security forces holding down and pummeling a teenager in Shuafat. Relatives say he is a U.S. citizen from Florida and a cousin of Abu Khedair.

The victim, Tariq Khdeir, 15, is a high school sophomore in Tampa, family members there said. He was visiting his Palestinian relatives in Jerusalem for the first time in over a decade when he was attacked and detained outside the home of his cousin, who was kidnapped and killed on Wednesday.

The two videos, which were posted independently, say the beating occurred on Thursday.

CNN's Ben Wedeman confirmed that the videos appeared to show an area near the home of the killed teen.

Hard to fight thousands of years of hatred and death.  Very hard indeed.

1 comment:

  1. Funny how the Israeli government immediately claimed that the murder of Israeli teens was a terrorist attack by Hamas(without citing any evidence), and immediately began mass arrests and attacks on Hamas in both the West Bank and Gaza - while the murder of a Palestinian teen results in calls for restraint by the Israeli government - which also ignores all the other Palestinians killed by the Israeli military.

    I expect the Israeli government is somewhat less eager to conduct mass arrests of fanatical anti-Palestinian settlers than it is to arrest Palestinians.

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