The latest on the Israeli Border Police murder of two Palestinian children outside Ofer Prison comes from Israel’s major news magazine program, Mabat (Hebrew video above), which interviewed Palestinian eyewitnesses and family members of the murdered boys. The store owner whose video camera recorded the killings reaffirmed that neither child was armed, that they were not in the vicinity of the soldiers who killed them (they were at least 100-250 meters distant), and that they were killed in cold blood.
But the most shocking revelation is an interview with one of the victim’s fathers, who produced the brightly-colored school backpack his son was wearing when he died. The man shows the bullet-hole in the backpack which lodged there after it went through the victim’s body. It is clearly a round of live ammunition and not a rubber bullet. The hospital records of the wounds also indicate live fire killed them.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon stated today that he knows his boys were in mortal danger. But when asked if he’d seen the murder video, he said No. But he discounted it because it was likely staged. He concluded by stating: “I know the system.”
Both the UN and U.S. government have demanded a full, transparent investigation of the murders. But these demands are window dressing. As I’ve written here, there are no full, transparent investigation of Israeli war crimes and cold-blooded murders of Palestinians. There is only cover-up, opacity and inaction.
In the interview, the victim’s father promises to file charges in an international court. Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas will join the ICC just in time to bring such a case against the Border Police murderer who committed this foul crime.
It’s a tragic irony that the killings occurred on Nakba Day protests, which mark the 1948 catastrophe that tore Palestinian society asunder and deprived it of land, liberty and life.
B’Tselem has released additional images taken from another angel. They probably have more footage to release. I remember some other case where the IDF lied, and after each new lie, new footage was released to debunk the lies. Still amazing to see the denial posted by inconditionnal Israel-defenders on various blogs (Noam Sheizaf wrote an article available on 972 a couple of years ago about the hasbara system: an operation room working 24/24, in five languages, and having 100.000 dedicated Hasbara-soldiers available in time of crisis; this must be such a time….)
http://www.btselem.org/releases/20140520_bitunya_killings_on_nakba_day
(two videos)
If you go to B’Tselem’s web site you’ll see that they have the complete unedited feeds from all four security cameras.
They are more than willing to give copies of all the feeds to anyone from the media; all a reporter has to do is to front up to the B’Tselem office with a USB memory stick capable of holding 20GB of raw video.
Thank you for the report and links. This is terrible -plain wrong. Unlawful, indiscriminate, deliberate targeting and killing of children. I hope the investigation won’t be a sham. And how long will it drag on? The establishment are making up lies as they go along.
When are IDF ever held to account?