Thanks to the family of Ziad Jilani, an Israeli Palestinian who was murdered by Israeli police over two years ago, for revealing his killer was policeman Maxim Vinogradov. The Jilani family asked me not to publish until Amira Hass did in Haaretz (Hebrew), which happened today. Back in 2010, I wrote two posts (here and here) about the killing after it happened.
Ziad Jilani was driving down the street and appears to have sideswiped a police vehicle and brushed against a policeman in a narrow East Jerusalem street. The police gave chase shooting at him until he abandoned his car. At that point, he was shot and wounded twice and collapsed on the ground. The final death blow was a point blank shot through the cheek delivered by Mr. Vinogradov. Numerous Palestinians attempted to intervene on behalf of the wounded man and they were beaten and pushed aside by the police till their “work” was done.
Jilani’s American wife and the rest of his family have sued the State after the attorney general closed his investigation “for lack of evidence.” Now they have revealed Ziad’s killer as the case winds its way through the byzantine Bleak House maze that is the Israeli legal system.
There is an important sidebar regarding Vinogradov. For readers of this blog with excellent memories, you’ll recall having met Mr. V here before in all his brutish glory. He is bro’-bosom-buddy of Avi Yakobov, one of the many IDF soldiers who, over the past few years, has bragged of his abuse of Palestinian suspects using social media. On Yakobov’s Facebook page, he and Vinogradov engage in some especially dainty dialogue about some of the women they’ve known…and would like to “know.”
Posting to his page during Oktoberfest somewhere in Germany, and suitably inebriated, Yakobov brags:
Sept. 10 8 pm: “Berlin? I killed a prostitute in Berlin! In short, what do we do tonight?”
Sept. 9th 7:45 pm mentions that his penis points at MILFs [Mothers I’d Like to Fuck]
Sept. 10 at 3:04 pm “she’s maybe a MILF in Beit Jallah”
August 30th 1:07 am “What can we do, what can we do, that my generation is kind of crooked”
Orian Menahemov: “we like you complacent”
Yakobov Leonard: “whaddaya mean, camplacent”
Avi Yakobov: “whatdaayamean compalcent, the one you sat with in Austria and tossed Faisals into the sky”
August 17th 4:03 am “Alcohol poisonning is baddddddddd”
May 31st 6:05pm “Destroy Turkey and all the Arabs from the world”
Mordechai Maxim Vinogradov: “I’m with you, bro’, and with God’s help I’ll start it 🙂”
Avi Yakobov: “haha and you are capable of it, with no intervention from the evil eye.”
translation: Dena Shunra
Note that Yakobov boasts in a posting from May 31 2010 that he’d destroy “Turkey and all the Arabs in the world.” Vinogradov agrees and his friend Yakobov affirms that he’s more than capable of such mayhem. It turns out that Vinogradov murdered Jilani on June 11th, only twelve days later. There’s no better gauge of his state of mind than this Facebook posting.
In case you needed further evidence of his homicidal racist tendencies, an excerpt of his profile on the Israeli social media site, Mekusharim lists these “likes:”
Things you love to do: Love, Violence, Beating
Dishes you like to eat: Arabs
Favorite entertainment: Destroying things, Beating Palestinian wetbacks
In case anyone wants to see the profile of a murderer, you can even visit his Facebook profile. I want him to keep his profile publicliy accessible so please don’t deface it with hostile comments no matter how justified your rage may be.
In his testimony after the execution, the murderer claimed…and I paraphrased in this blog post:
…The shooter admitted, according to Haaretz’s report (Hebrew), that he shot Jilani at point-blank range. He claimed, however, that he believed Jilani was a terrorist and killed him because he feared he was wearing a suicide vest. Further, he claimed he fired to protect the lives of innocent bystanders.
You can read my rebuttal of his patently absurd claims in the blog post. But most of you will only need to read the Facebook posting above to read through this tissue of lies.
Thank you so very much for exposing this.
I was confused for a minute there, I thought you were talking about Zaid Jilani from Think Progress.
Got it, anc concur with Rabbi Mivasair
Yes, the murder victim is ZIAD. The fellow driven from Think Progress thanks to Josh Block was ZAID. Same last name.
The link to the first blogpost is not working, this is the correct link: https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2010/06/28/border-policeman-admits-shooting-jilani-at-point-blank-range-u-s-consulate-offers-widow-little-help/
When people publicly post racist messages on their facebook pages (not uncommon at all in Israel), you know you have an entire country that has to go through re-education. This is certainly not an isolated incident but a symptom of the ugly Judeo-Nazionalism phenomenon which is not shrinking but rather growing and makes you wonder whether Israeli society can ever be normalized.
There really seem to be quite a number of people in the world who are not bothered by their conscience at all, no matter what they have done. This man is a chilling example.
Thanks to Dena Shunra for the translation too.
This vile piece of garbage needs to be exposed. let’s see him kill all Arabs and Turks, boy is he deluded.
when the shoe is on the other foot…
It is so easy to bash Israel, isn’t it ?
After 15 terrorist attacks with vehicles killing 11 and wounding many more, a Palestinian who hit 4 policeman when the other cars in the street advance at a very slow pace (traffic jam), only to flee the scene is considered a dangerous terrorist and is treated as such.
Was he a terrorist ? or did he just made several fatal mistakes (driver over policeman, did not stop to help the wounded, but drove a way, fled on foot when he was blocked by the police and called to stop) ?
As usual, you’re comments are filled with misinformation & outright lies. Jilani was not a dangerous terrorist. He was an unarmed civilian father of three young daughters. The fact that you even ask the question of whether he was a terrorist is offensive & disgusting.
He was not called to stop. He was shot twice, once in the back & lay supine on his stomach when a police officer who bragged on FB that he loves to kill Arabs shot him from point blank range, and then kicked the corpse. The killer claimed he killed him for fear he was a suicide bomber yet violated procedure and approached close enough to determine that he was not wearing a suicide vest, then executed him—because he was a Palestinian.
I’ve banned you & only published this comment because you whined about it being blocked. If you try to publish further lies like this I won’t give you any future consideration nor will I publish your puerile hasbara.
1. I never said he was a terrorist.
2. You turn again to personal attacks and threats instead of dealing with my notes.
3. So much for you pretending to be a liberal. In fact your frequent banning only showes your true colors.
No, you just asked”was he a terrorist” without adding an option that would portray him as an innocent unarmed civilian whose vehicle was stoned causing him to swerve accidentally into parked vehicles.
I don’t recall that Ziad Jilani was an Israeli citizen. He was an American citizen, yes, but though he lived in Shu’fat in East Jerusalem, I’ve always seen him referred as American-Palestinian but maybe I’m wrong.
I know his wife was an American citizen. I was never clear on his exact citizenship/nationality. But I can clarify that through the family.
He was a Palestinian with a U.S residency or green card. Not an Israeli citizen.
Ziad only had the green card…I didn’t care for him to get the American passport…becuz we were very happy living here in Palestine & had made it my home.Orginally I am from Barbados but through my father I got American citizenship.Want to Thank you Richard for all your time and support…very much appreciated!
Moira is Ziad’s widow. My heart goes out to you and your girls for your suffering. I hope you get justice & will do what I can to help.
To Moira an Iman, widow and sister of Ziad Jilani.
May God give you strenght and patience to go through what you have to go through trying to obtain justice, and may your three beautiful daughters grow up in a free Palestine.
Maxim Vino-Thing, the Russian Cossack, said he thought Ziad was a terrorist.
Here’s Basel Zaid (Zayed) singing “terrorist” [Irhabi]:
“I don’t have planes and tanks, or gun powder in my pockets,
My love for my people, my sea and my soil made people call me a terrorist
My life is that of a human being looking for a country and joy, if I sing for my soil, and my sea, am I a terrorist ?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OBgnAfp8k8
calling the murderer xenophobic & racist names is not a way to resist racism and xenophobia. 🙁
You’re talking about “Russian Cossack” ? I kind of like it, I read that somewhere else and kept it. I think it fits perfectly this thug.
Maybe I should have omitted “Russian”, but I wanted to express as someone wrote further down the thread: according to surveys about 25-30% of the immigrants from the former USSR have no link to Judaism or the Jewish people. Not that this would change anything as far as I’m corncerned, but when you look at this Maxim Vino-Thing he doesn’t look as someone who returned to his “ancestral homeland”. He looks very Russian/Slavic to me.
And then it’s interesting to know that some of those people brought Neo-nazis ideas along in their luggage: a taboo in Israel. I also think their very racist attitude towards Palestinians – not that it didn’t exist in Israel prior to their arrival… – has reminiscences of the Russian historical hatred of Caucasians and other “Black people”. And I’m talking about a general attitude, just in case.
If someone has references on that, I’ll be grateful.
I think the desire to “disown” and get this person as far away from “us” and as disconnected from us as possible does not allow us to deal and heal racism and violence in our society.
when we make the “evil” an external thing to us, we are sure to be unaware and unaccountable when we are the perpetrators of harm.
one manifestation of xenophobia is nazism – those who have measured the skulls and evaluate the physical features of jews for racial classification. so it is interesting that you’re saying russian people had brought nazi ideas in their luggage, while you make a remark and judgement of the soldiers’s ethnical / racial features…
only deep denial of our own ability to manifest Nazi thought allows us to ever put army uniforms on and build concentration camps in our own hands.
without seeing ourselves whole, yes including this murderer we have created and are accountable for, it is impossible to do any “tikkun” – of the world and of ourselves.
We All have Nazi thought in our luggage!
hazatetet.wordpress.com
It’s natural to feel unconfident pronouncing names that are not common in your daily language. luckily we are typing, and can even use copy & paste. you sound like the worst colonizers.
@ lion cub
1. Is Maxim Vinogradov Russian ? According to his name: Yes
2. Did he behave like a Cossack ? Yes
3. Did I say all Russian behave like Cossacks: No
And please don’t include me in your “us”. And I don’t need your moral lessons, probably posted from some stolen Palestinian land, maybe my grandfather’s….
Deïr Yassin, i’m actually posting this from the stolen land of the Cree. and you?
my apology if i sound like i think i’m making better moral choices than you do, that i’m in some place to “preach” from. that is not the case.
i am only sharing what i know about resisting oppression wherever it appears – assuming (oops) it is somewhat our shared goal, but i might be on the wrong blog.
Well, I’m not here to discuss philosophy – and it’s much too complicated for my brain – so when I see you speaking about “we”, particularly in your response to Damaris who’s clearly an Israeli, I took it for granted that you were speaking of “we” as an Israeli.
If you want to embrace Maxim Vino-Thing in your common humanity or whatever you’re trying to express, it’s not my case.
I’ve not living on stolen land, thanks. If only I could get back what was stolen from my family, that’ll be fine, I have no intetions of taking up the land-stealing business.
I don’t know about “our shared goals”: I’m a One-Stater, I want to abolish the Jewish Law of Return, to implement the Resolution 194 ….and if it’s possible send Lieberman, Edelstein, Michael Ben-Ari and some more to the moon, and Barak, Livni etc to the Hague. And Mark Regev back to Australia…
Not mich philosophy in that, right ?
i apologies for making assumption on where you’re coming from, Deïr Yassin, and for “we”-ing you.
Thanks Richard, the family really appreciate your help in keeping Ziad’s name out there. This wasn’t a mistake – this was a cold blooded murder. What kind of society accepts this kind of casual hatred and violence, and allows the perpetrators to not only go free, but to brag about it ?
FYI – Ziad’s widow Moira works with theparentscircle.org, to try to stop the violence. She is an inspiration.
There other such societies in history.
Thanks for having the courage to keep putting this stuff up there, Richard.
I wish this weren’t happening, I wish there were no culture that held a space for people like that. But since there is, what you’re doing here *is* Tikun Olam. And thanks for doing it.
Ha’aretz reports that four policemen were hit by the vehicle before the rest of the force started shooting. Is that incorrect?
If you read Richard’s links to his two former articles, the Haaretz-article in quoted. You should read them, and the comments by Ziad Jilani’s sister, Iman. And don’t forget the testimonies by a mother and her daughter on how Jilani was finished off while lying on the ground. And the look he had in his eyes when he ran into that alley, allready wounded. The look of a man knowing that he was going to be killed ! And the photo of his head with the left side shot off ! And how he lost control of his car because stones or a bullet hit it.
Yes. I was concerned about the actions of the force and whether they had cause in the first instance.
Nope. They had no cause.
People who would fire on any driver that hit a group of pedestrians should not have access to firearms. A traffic accident involving a Palestinian driver cannot and should not be considered an intentional attack, without additional evidence.
If I wanted to be extremely charitable to the police I could say they might be justified firing at a fleeing hit & run driver. But firing a kill shot at a severely wounded man lying on the ground? Sorry, that just won’t do except in Israel I’m afraid & if the victim is Palestinian.
Erratum: “the left side SHOT off”. And I think ‘should’ is not the right word in English, it sounds like an imperative 🙂
There was possibly some sort of contact between the vehicle & the officers. But it was not a serious accident & certainly came nowhere near warranting cold blooded murder.
The police quickly confiscated all video footage from local shop video feeds & doubtless know what happened. The fact that they haven’t as far as I know released this footage is telling.
Thank you for writing about this. I’m part of a team of activists who are leading a campaign to get maxim tried for murder. We are making a short film which will be released in a few weeks, planning memorial services in front of Israeli consulates on June 11 (the 2nd anniversary of his death) and getting signatures on a petition to the state attorney (who is currently deciding whether to try him). I’ll be sure to update here when our website is finished next week so more people can get involved. Thanks!
I’m eager to help in any way I can. My readers as well I’m sure (well, most of them anyway).
Thank you, Richard, for keeping this story alive.
It’s particularly sickening when someone who may have only tenuous links with the Jewish people and this land, whose parents (maybe himself) were probably parachuted in a few years ago, vents his thuggishness on people whose ancestors have lived here for generations.
I’m glad someone has used the word ‘cossack’ here. I was being very careful with my language in my previous comment. Isn’t it outrageous that given our history with them we’ve invited these cossacks into our country to reap mayhem on our neighbours?
I’m very sorry you did not choose to stay care-ful with your language, and rather pull your judgement on a whole people for this murderer’s behavior. The fact that someone said it before you doesn’t make it right, just, or a good idea. We know all too well how this cannon roll.
“WE” didn’t “invite” nor “allow” anybody to be here, same as nobody invited you or your grandparents to be here and migrate here just like everybody else migrated here at one point… from Africa.
As people who know the powerful effects of being generalized and put in negative light as a group, we should be very careful to not emulate the same blind hatred toward others, whether Palestinian, Orthodox Jew, Eastern European, or Mizrahi. that is truly shameful. racism is racism.
Sometimes in our aversion to racism we fail to see the obvious. Commenting on a culture and its values has nothing to do with measuring heads and noting hair colour.
And it should go without saying among intelligent people (which I’m sure subscribers to this site are) that we’re not totalising (Levinas) when we make such observations. They’re ‘in the culture’, that’s all. Of course every one is a person, an individual, and we never really know what’s in a person’s heart.
Lion Cub: This kind of therapy-speak (I’m a p/therapist myself) disarms us and prevents us from being righteously angry at injustice.
right, just like saying “arab people are not violent, it’s just in their culture”, or “i love jews as individuals, but it’s in their culture to be greedy and only care for their own” – a certain image is being painted on the whole people.
i don’t know what you refer to as therapy speech. i’m not a therapist, nor am i a fan of appropriated and diverted new age thinking that cancels political reality as if all that needs healing was within us and peace upon earth. i am all for justice. healing is not a word i use to negate the pursue of justice or suppress any feelings such as rage, at outraging and brutal power structures and oppression. healing is just a necessary part of the justice process.
let’s not be too righteous for honest self reflection and self criticism is all i’m saying. iv’e seen many times justice seeking people – definitely including myself – being so righteous and enraged that they’ll miss the part when they are the ones bulldozing other people.
“Ziad Jilani was driving down the street and appears to have sideswiped a police vehicle and brushed against a policeman”
what a nice way to say “tried to run over a border police officer”.
How do you know he “tried” to run over anyone? Once again, the confiscated shop videos will show exactly what happened & I urge you to get the border police to release it. Will you?
I urge you to publish my response and stop censoring me.
The way you treat me just show what a phony you are.
Playing a liberal and pluralist while acting like the worst of the Bolsheviks.
Unless I’m mistaken, I banned you. That means if you try to publish another comment I will only publish it if it falls within the comment rules. And whether I do so or not is solely at my discretion. If I didn’t publish one of your comments it’s for that reason. But I will review the comment again to see if it’s appropriate for publication.
Firstly, I would like to thank Mr Richard Silverstein for all the support he is offering to Moira. I have met Moira this year on my first trip to Palestine. I was moved by her story. We often hear similar stories but to meet someone face to face was the highlight of my trip. I admired her courage, confidence and perseverance.
I hope that Moira succeeds in seeking justice for the murder of her husband. Our thoughts and prayers go to her.
Yes, I was generalising for which I apologise – I was very angry when I wrote the post. But generalisations and prejudices have some truth at their core, even if it becomes perverted in the hands of bigots. I remember that the Israeli nazi group (yes it was tiny) was made up of boys of Russian origin. Quelle horeur ….
I sometimes look at the blond blue-eyed soldiers that you see here, and wonder what their great, great grandparents did during the pogroms. Israelis of Russian origin in the uniformed forces aren’t known for their restraint (and yes, I know, this is a generalisation, I just notice the names when their is a report of another ghastly episode of thuggishness).
It’s well known that the Jewish Agency, at the end of their time in Russia, were desperate to press any with the most tenuous connection with the Jewish people into aliyah. People without the faintest memory of what it means to be a mensch. We are reaping the harvest.
“Quelle horreur” 😉
If you understand French, here’s a short documentary from “L’Effet Papillon” [the Butterfly Effect], a well-estimated programme on French television on the neo-nazis in Israel. Very interesting interviews. In Russian, French and Hebrew.
400.000 immigrants from the former USSR have no link to the Jewish people. 400.000, that’s the number of Palestinian refugees that would return home within the ’48-borders according to the estimations made the people behind the Geneva Accords.
http://www.rutube.ru/tracks/1892028.html
Deir Yassin: yes, you are absolutely right, I often think how outraged the refugeees must feel to know that these cossacks have a right to return, but they don’t.
I realised that I’d spelled ‘horreur’ wrong as soon as I’d posted – quelle horreur again! Unfortunately my French doesn’t extend much beyond this.
Are people above saying that Maxim is a Cossak? and non Jewish?
But there must have been Jews amongst the Cossaks too. I fail to see it of any significance here, considering that most Jews who emigrated from Russia, even when fully Jewish were non observant, even if they were Jewish.
It stands to reason, some of them, must have brought along their ‘picked up’ traits or racism and brutality, with them, whether Cossak or not, Jewish or not, or half Jewish it’s irrelevant.
The fact remains he is an Israeli.
Off topic, but i can’t let this pass without a reminder of the brutality of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, (Blackwater), thus i’d say it’s not soley a ‘Russian’ problem.
I’m shedding no tears that Ahmed Chalabi deceived this ‘superpower’ with a thuggish military.
If you fail to see the relevance of “Cossack” here, it’ s maybe that you ignore their significance in Jewish history in Russia.
And no, it’s not irrelevant whether Maxim Vino-Thug is Jewish or not. Maybe to you, but then you’re not Palestinian, and it wasn’t your people who were expelled to create a “Jewish State”, was it ?
I guess you think it’s irrelevant too that Anastasia Michaeli is an ethnic Russian who converted to Judaism as an adult and who’s now spewing her hatred in the Knesset, telling indigenous Palestinians to get off the land.
If it’s irrelevant you don’t have to comment on it. Not that your comment on Chalabi is relevant …
It really is CHUTZPAH for these cossacks to parachute into this land and then terrorise the indigenous people as aliens. I don’t think any Jews should terrorise their neighbours and and fellow citizens, but it’s particularly loathsome coming from those who have no genuine connection with the Jewish people.
It’s becoming fashionable to be Jewish now that there are other minorities on whom bigots can vent their spleen, and we have become ‘like the nations’. I say to them: p…s off, you have no yiddishkeit, no Jewish heart. There are enough of our own people who’ve forgotten what it means to be a Jew, without being added to by gentiles who feel alienated from their own people.
jewish people come from all parts of the world, have a diversity of features, and yiddishkeit is only shared by few of them. being PURE BREED doesn’t make you immune to bigotry.
oh please , who said it did. You’re determined not to read my posts properly and see what I’m actually saying, just as you are determined not to see what is going on here under your own nose, and witter on with meaningless, wooly platitudes.
Can you not see how angry i am with what some of MY people are doing here?
The artical in haaretz specificly said the policemen had some bones broken. Richard wont cite that because he’s a lying piece of shit.
Thank you for writing about Ziad’s story and keeping his memory, and a invaluable life lesson, alive – we are all human and we are on this earth to live together, hopefully in harmony. Moira is my sister, and I will never forget the day that this tragedy unfolded and the irrevocable pain it has caused our families. I am most concerned for my nieces who miss their father daily and the loss that his murder will forever represent in their lives. Moira is tough and perseveres with a stand fast determination to see that Ziad’s name is cleared from the cruel and unjust titles the Israeli police refer to him as – he was never a terrorist. He was a husband, father, brother, uncle, cousin, friend. He so wanted to watch his daughters grow up and wished for a more peaceful world than what he had. As a parent, this is the basics.
We know we will not see Ziad again in this life, but hope that no more families will have to endure the heartbreaking loss my sister, nieces and Ziad’s extended family have lived with since June 2009.
Enough is enough. Try to see past the clothes that separate you and look and the threads that make us all human.