Israel Channel 2 News interviewed one of the mob who lynched and murder Habtom Zarhoum at a Beersheba bus station. He had come to Beersheba from his home to attempt to get a work visa from a government office. As he waited for a bus, a Palestinian stabbed and killed an IDF soldier and then began attacking bystanders. Bus station security guards then shot and wounded Zarhoum, an innocent bystander. The shooter claimed that he did so because Habtom didn’t appear like the other victims who were fleeing. Which is true because he was Eritrean and not Israeli.
After the shooting of the innocent refugee and as he lay immobile on the ground, the mob attacked him, firing six bullets into his body, hurling a row of chairs at his head and stomping on his body with full force. Among the attackers were Israeli security personnel including an officer in the Israeli prison service, Ronen Cohen. He was the one who threw the chairs on top of the victim and kicked him in the head as captured on video. In his interview, Cohen dismissed any thought of wrongdoing:
“I came to save lives and now they want to judge me. If I’d only shot him they wouldn’t have done anything [to me]. So because I neutralized him from the State’s point of view I’m a criminal?
The scene was full of others kicking him from every side. The terrorist [he appears to be referring to the original Palestinian attacker, but conveniently could be referring to the Eritrean] had opened fire. Glass was flying everywhere. Soldiers and riot police were running toward the terrorist. They left him [Habtom] alone. I lifted a bench. He made a movement with his hand and I made a gesture to my mouth that he shouldn’t move. He moved and I thought he would bring out a weapon so I kicked him.
The reporter asked him: “At this point [when you attacked Zarhoum], he’d been shot three times. Why did you continue to strike him after he’d been neutralized?”
“Because a solider had been murdered right next to me. A policeman had been shot. He wasn’t neutralized as long as he was moving. I hadn’t come hot-headed from home. I hadn’t come hoping to beat someone up because of the color of his skin. My only goal was the help. Not to harm anyone. I’m a level-headed person. I’m no psychopath; not a criminal as they’re trying to make me out to be. My advice to bystanders is not to get involved with incidents like this because they’ll get messed up.”
I have nothing to apologize for. In my eyes, he was a terrorist. About what should I apologize? I apologize in hindsight that he wasn’t…that he was an Eritrean citizen. About that I do apologize. But to apologize for him being a terrorist? I don’t apologize. And if it happened again, and one time more, and twenty times more, I would act exactly the same way.”
Cohen’s lawyer has the unmitigated chutzpah to claim that the State wants to take his client and “hang him from the highest tree.” The invocation of the terminology of the lynch is especially offensive given what his client did to Habtom.
There was a memorial to the victim in Tel Aviv. Here is the audio. If you wish to donate to a legal fund established to seek justice for Habtom and his family, please contribute.
It’s worth noting that four Israeli members of the lynch mob were arrested by police. They were released after four hours in jail. The State refuses to prosecute them for murder and instead will charge them with grievous bodily harm, a much lower charge. Though the sentence could be as long as 20 years if convicted, it will be much shorter, if they even serve a day in jail.
There are Israeli peace activists arrested at non-violent demonstrations whose “crime” is little more than holding a protest. They are kept in jail for nearly an entire day and only released (without charge) because police would have to appear before a judge in order to detain them longer than 24 hours. Palestinians are arrested and detained for weeks, months or years on vague suspicions of infractions.
Yet if you’re an Israeli Jew you can murder a non-Jew, call it terror, and get off scot-free. The worst that will happen to Cohen is that he might be fired and lose his pension. Hartoum lost his life. To a foul crime perpetrated by an Israeli Jewish lynch mob as sinister as the worst Ku Klux Klan lynching the south had to offer. And these Israelis will get as little punishment as southern whites got for their acts of murder.
H/t David Sheen and Ofer Neiman
Today, also brings news (Hebrew version) that Israeli Palestinian graduate student, Asra’a Zidan Abed, who was shot six times at the Afula bus station and accused of being a knife-wielding terrorist, has been cleared of all charges against her. She was mentally ill, had suffered through several psychiatric hospitalizations, attempted to commit suicide and had had her baby removed from her custody.
Though police still claim she waved a knife (a fact still in dispute), she never attempted to use it and may’ve hoped the police would kill her. It’s unbelievable that given her history the prosecution still intends to prosecute her on criminal charges. For what? For nearly being killed by trigger-finger Israeli police?
In closing, Tom “Terrific” Friedman penned another one of his mealy-mouthed op-eds in which he blamed Palestinians for the failure of peace in the Middle East. He blamed Israel too. But blaming both sides equally is like blaming the mote of dust that irritates the eyes of a terminal cancer patient. Which one will kill him?
Here’s the doozy he brought forth from that florid pen of his:
I visited Monday with Israel’s very decent defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon.
Indeed, the same Yaalon who fundraises around the world with Kahanist Moshe Feiglin under the sponsorship of the Kahane kids. The Yaalon who’s responsible for IDF murders of unarmed Palestinian children, including 500 during Operation Protective Edge. How very “decent” of him.
But he does have one good final phrase that deserves mention:
I truly worry that Israel is slowly committing suicide…
To which I would add…not so ‘slowly.’
Your headline reads, “What’s to Apologize for?”
“I have nothing to apologize for. In my eyes, he was a terrorist. About what should I apologize? I apologize in hindsight that he wasn’t…that he was an Eritrean citizen. About that I do apologize.”
So the guard does apologize for injuring the Eritrean.
And where is it stated conclusively that the mob fired six shots into the victim?
@You’ve missed the point. He had no basis to believe the victim was a terrorist. He had no right to attack him since he was already incapacitated. Half-assed, half-hearted, after-the-fact “apologies” are meaningless.
@Hopper
You are quibbling about details. Is that because you don’t want to face the main issue, the fact that in matters of “law enforcement” non-Jews are often treated as outlaws?
The deeper issue is that this aggression towards the stranger is a result of fear – and that too is among “the pathologies of Israel’s guilty conscience”.
“the pathologies of Israel’s guilty conscience”.
The mob attack occurred after the terrorist murder of a soldier, whose body was laying on the floor next to the Eritrean. Also, the Eritrean was initially shot by a trigger happy Arab security officer, who, had a guilty conscience?
Hopper when somebody works for Nazis he has to obey the rules of Nazis and what Nazis have ordered him to obey and follow. So blaming the Arab security officer is absurd. What would be interesting to know what were his detailed orders given by his Jewish commanders. Or the training he got.
In German WW2 concentration camps a share of personnel were often non-Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians etc. Could Germans of that time or even of today say, that Germans were not guilty or less guilty because non-Germans did much of the butchering?
“The mob attack occurred after the terrorist murder of a soldier, whose body was laying on the floor next to the Eritrean.”
That’s simply a lie ! You haven’t even seen the live images of his killing to state such BS !
“Also, the Eritrean was initially shot by a trigger happy Arab security officer”
Thanks for confirming what I’ve always felt reading your hasbara: that you’re a plain racist. Not once have you used the label ‘trigger happy’ concerning all the killings by Jewish soldiers. And if this security guard is trigger happy it’s because the State he serves encourages him to be ‘trigger happy’.
The guard was a trigger happy Arab idiot, and the Israeli security forces have plenty of Jewish trigger happy idiots.
What makes me ill, is that only Jewish trigger happy idiots are ‘racist’, or have a ‘guilty conscience’ pathology.
“That’s simply a lie ! ”
No. I saw the video. The dying soldier is laying up against a kiosk in the center of the terminal, and the Eritrean comes into the terminal, crouching and crawling. The Eritrean was about a dozen feet from the soldier’s body when he was shot by a trigger happy idiot security guard.
@ Hopper: How many Israeli Palestinian security personnel have killed/wounded suspected “Arab” terrorists? Not many. How many Israeli Jewish security personnel have murdered unarmed Palestinians? Thousands. You have your answer.
“The dying soldier is laying up against a kiosk in the center of the terminal, and the Eritrean comes into the terminal, crouching and crawling. ”
Where do you get the idea from that the soldier laying close to the kiosk is the one that was killed ? Four or five soldiers were wounded.
You’re just trying to justify the killing of the Eritrean ….
@Hopper
Richard’s story is mainly about the over the top reactions of that crowd and particularly of that officer in Israel’s “corrective services”, Ronen Cohen. You chose to concentrate on that trigger happy Arab security guard, for obvious reasons.
The reaction of Cohen to his “mistake” seems to me characteristic of right wing Israel in general: stupid, self righteous and obdurate.
“The reaction of Cohen to his “mistake” seems to me characteristic of right wing Israel in general: stupid, self righteous and obdurate.”
Cohen is mouthing what his attorney tells him to say. Please.
@Hopper
If his attorney thought that was the most appropriate line to take, that what Cohen said there had most chance to be favourably received by a wider public, then it seems even more likely that this oaf’s obdurate disregard of some basic tenets of humanity is representative for that wider public.
“I have nothing to apologize for. In my eyes, he was a terrorist. About what should I apologize? I apologize in hindsight that he wasn’t…that he was an Eritrean citizen. About that I do apologize. But to apologize for him being a terrorist? I don’t apologize. And if it happened again, and one time more, and twenty times more, I would act exactly the same way.”
Sounds exactly like Naftali Bennett’s “no apology” campaign rhetoric. He knew who to preach to, that’s for sure. There are enough inbred idiots in the zionist state that begin to foam at the mouth at the notion of killing without consequences. Fuck this place.
Quite a story. One would imagine that, racism apart, Israeli authorities (“security personnel”) would desire to capture or kill the original villain (a Palestinian stabbed and killed an IDF soldier and then began attacking bystanders). BTW, how’d they know and when did they learn that the stabber was a Palestinian? Did they capture him? Kill him? When? And when in relation to the other brutal events? Was he still active (knifing folks) while the other brutal event took place?
Is it noraml in Israel, these days, to lynch somebody near a tragedy but AFTER the “perp” has been captured or killed or wounded? Is that what happened here? Or was action to deal with the “perp” happening at the same time that the brutalities describe here were taking place? do after-the-fact brutalities sometimes victimize Israeli (or other) Jews instead of Arabs and Eritreans?
All the attention paid to the non-knife-wielder would seem to get in the way of capturing (etc.) the knife-wielder. So the successive brutalities paid to a cowering or crawling person far from the originally attacked person(s) seems quite a distraction from what in other times and places might be called “law enforcement”.
So the distraction from law enforcement, if any, is another bad outcome of the otherwiswe over-the-top racist and brutal (especially the follow-up after the shooting by the trigger-happy shooter).
OT.
Youtube “Israeli forces to Aida camp:”We will gas you untill you die”
middleeasteye,ma’an.