I first heard about this astonishing video yesterday and spent the entire day attempting to verify its authenticity (for reasons I’ll explain). But this morning, Middle East Eye and Maan published stories definitively authenticating the video’s provenance. Aside from the reporting of the story at MEE and Maan, there’s one further critical aspect of this video which wasn’t mentioned.
The IDF soldier speaking through a loudspeaker to the Aida camp residents threatens to use “gas” to kill them all. In other words, he’s not speaking about tear gas, which is the usual method used to disperse crowds (and which was later used copiously). He’s attempting to escalate the conventional tactics by frightening them into believing the army would actually exterminate all the residents of the camp, a deliberate echo of tactics used by the Nazis in the Holocaust:
“Inhabitants of Aida, we are the Israeli occupation forces, if you throw stones we will hit you with gas until you die. The children, the youth, and the old people, all of you – we won’t spare any of you”.
During the assault of the protesters, Qassan Abu Aker, 25, was arrested. The speakerphone announcement continued, “We have arrested one of you, he’s with us now. We took him from his home, and we will kill him while you’re watching as long as you throw stones.”
The chilling message concluded: “We will blind your eyes with gas until you die, your homes, your families, brothers, sons, everyone”.
As if to prove the potency of this threat, an 8 month old baby from the village of Beit Fajr was killed by Israeli tear gas earlier today. Both Aida camp and Beit Fajr are located near Bethlehem.
This conjures up two scenarios that would be present in the minds of both camp residents and the IDF itself. The first is reports that Syrian rebels and/or Syrian government forces used chemical weapons against their targets. In such attacks, hundreds have died over the past year or more. The second, and even more ominous, is the use of Zyklon B gas in extermination camps like Auschwitz. There can be little doubt that no matter what the Palestinian residents might’ve thought, the Holocaust was in the minds of whatever military intelligence officer came up with the script that the Arabic-speaking soldier used in attempting to terrorize camp residents.
I’m not an expert in international law, but the threat to use chemical weapons to exterminate an entire refugee camp would appear to me to be a clear war crime. It is, after all, a threat to engage in genocide.
Such tactics aren’t surprising considering the new moral lows to which Israel has sunk in the past few weeks. I am just wondering when the world will sit up and take notice of Israel’s increasing degradation and the echoing of tactics and attitudes employed by previous generations of war criminals convicted of genocide. How low do we have to sink?
And anyone who thinks that the rhetoric employed by the soldier in this video is a one-off aberration is deluded. The Holocaust and Rwanda genocide began with words and ideas and gradually turned into conviction and action. The world is now in a position to intervene before mass slaughter happens. It likely will not as it did not in those earlier episodes. But it could.
It remains to be seen whether this story will be picked up the MSM. But one mainstream publication you can be sure will ignore is the NY Times and its Israel bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren and her trusty sidekick, Diaa Hadid. If I am right, consider this scenario: say a Palestinian security agency blasted a Hebrew message inside a settlement claiming it would gas residents to death. What would be the reaction of world media? Double-standard? You betcha.
The Times of Israel has now confirmed the story and reported the Border Policeman who threatened the camp with a Holocaust has been suspended:
Border Police officials called the policeman’s actions “a grave incident,” and vowed that the case would be handled “to the fullest extent of the law.”
They told Channel 2 news the officer has been suspended from all operations until the end of the inquiry, and that his continued service in the force would be reviewed.
What a laugh: the most disgusting, violent, brutish police force perhaps in all the western world calls this a grave incident, when its officers routinely murder unarmed Palestinians in cold blood, including
But the only thing he’s likely to be disciplined for is referring to his police unit as the “army of occupation,” since it disturbs the conventional narrative. As for threatening mass murder, he’ll probably get a promotion for that.
NOTE: There was much discussion yesterday of the IDF speaker’s reference to the army as the “Israel occupation army.” Arabic-speakers on social media noted that the IDF never uses a standard Palestinian usage to refer to itself–until now apparently. I hesitated to post about the video till I could authenticate it. But Maan and MEE have found the original person who recorded it and he has confirmed that the IDF usage was real. Apparently, now even the IDF itself confirms that it is an occupying army. This would further strengthen the Palestinian claim that Israel is illegally occupying its territory (a claim the Israeli hasbara apparatus rejects). In other words, if you “occupy” the land of another people, you cannot also own the land or claim it is your nation’s sovereign territory (which is the standard Israeli hasbara claim).
פתי יאמין לכל דבר
This jackass just called himself “Chacham” in Hebrew, which means “wise.” I can’t bear using the term in reference to him.
I do thank him for familiarizing me with a Biblical book I’m not very familiar with, Proverbs, which says (& he quotes above): “A fool believes everything.” Unfortunately, for him Times of Israel has just confirmed that the story is true.
Does Proverbs say anything like “he who doubts the word of a just man is himself a fool?” If not, it should.
That was yesterday.
Today Bibi is trying to backpaddle on his “The Mufti convinced Hitler to kill the Jews” claim.
Could it have anything to do with him seeing this Hasbara nightmare coming?
And to make things worse ,in a village south of Bethlehem an 8 month old Palestinian was killed today by tear gas inhalation.
Very bad timing ,Bibi.
Looks like whatever plan Bibi had with his Holocaust Revisionism is backfiring badly.
Are 1897 Zionists running out of luck?
Well,it’s real.
Times of Israel burried the story in the sideline of the homepage,very tough to find.
“Border cop suspended for threatening to “gas” Palestinians.”
That’s the official story.
What happened to my other post?
@ shachalnur: I knew they’d blame the poor shlump on the bullhorn instead of the commander who told him what to say, & the prime minister who inspired them all.
The official story is the “border cop”flipped and lost control over himself under pressure of stone throwers.
But “occupying army”,”gas to death”, and “slaughtering” a prisoner doesn’t sound like someone out of control.
This sounds like a text he was given,so the real problem is his commander.
I’m sure Bibi is not happy with this just after his Mufti antics.
To me it looks like Bibi is losing control over certain segments of the mad dogs he unleashed,like parts of the Army,the settlers and the parts of the general population.
Will he be able to control the monster he created,and are the Palestinians gambling on this loss of control?
You mean the same schlump who used ‘occupying army’ which is never used?
Quite amazing how you present the outliers as mainstream and the mainstream as the outliers.
@Eilati: So you claim that an Israeli Jewish population harboring tremendous hatred against Palestinians, is not represented in the views expressed by the speaker in this video?
You claim that the speaker in this video is an outlier? Nonsense.
And just because he used the term that isn’t used in the IDF does not mark him as an outlier. It marks him as an Arab or Muslim who is more familiar with terms used to refer to the IDF in Arabic, since that would be his native language.
“I knew they’d blame the poor shlump on the bullhorn instead of the commander who told him what to say”
And just how do you know this as fact and substantiate it?
It could have been a Druze for as you know they comprise a large percentage of Border Guards and they have a 1, 000 grudge with Islam. Aside from that the Arabic in the video was quite coherent allowing for the fact that it was the mother tongue of the speaker and not a learned Arabic for military purposes.
@shunra: I’m not sure what you are criticizing. The speaker on the bullhorn could very well have been Druze. But I still don’t blame him for the words that were spoken or the overall operation. I presume that his speech was dictated by a commander who is running the operation. I’m much more interested in getting the bigger fish. Of course, if the speaker was solely responsible, he should be punished.
Why would you presume that a Druze bearing an alleged grudge against Islam would tell a Palestinian Muslim refugee camp that his forces were about to murder them with gas? All because of a grudge against Islam?
apparently israel has suspended the person responsible:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/border-cop-suspended-for-threatening-to-gas-palestinians/
israel has also gassed a palestinian baby to death:
http://english.pnn.ps/2015/10/30/8-month-old-toddler-dies-of-israeli-teargas-south-bethlehem/
Does Tikun Olam have any evidence to support its claim that Syria has used chemical weapons, or is it merely regurgitating Zionist propaganda?
A RELATED COMMENTARY: “Hersh Vindicated? Turkish Whistleblowers Corroborate Story on False Flag Sarin Attack in Syria” | by Peter Lee | Counterpunch.org | October 23, 2015
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/23/hersh-vindicated-turkish-whistleblowers-corroborate-story-on-false-flag-sarin-attack-in-syria/
I can’t imagine that this is the first time something like this has happened, but just the first time it was captured on video. This will never been shown on American television, which is exactly where it belongs. I don’t think too many people here are shocked by this, it’s embedded into the fabric of the zionist state. However, the so-called liberal zionists in America might have a more difficult time looking at what their Disneyland for Jews only has turned into and they are the ones that need to see this the most. They and their democratic counterparts who only murmur meaningless, impotent phrases, i.e., “tragic”, “not helping the peace (!) process”, etc. There is no peace process. The lives of Palestinians has been an unending tragedy since 1947, wake up and do something! BDS all the way!
Maybe he only meant to threaten the use of Tear Gas but then – you know how it is – the Grand Mufti whispered softly in his ear and next thing you know……
@ Richard
I remember a couple of years ago you wrote (I paraphrase by memory) that when you thought the State of Israel couldn’t surprise you any more, it still managed to do so in some way.
I think we all had such a moment after Bibi’s “The-Mufti-Made-Hitler-Do-It”-speech, and personally I had such a moment when I first saw this video on Twitter yesterday, I watched it various times, and I just could’t believe what I heard. Only when I read Mohammed al-Azzeh’s testimony (he’s a well-known photographer – who nearly lost an eye after being shot at by the IDF while filming from a balcony) in Middle East Eye did I start to believe that this is not a hoax, still I didn’t dare to post it elsewhere. I will now that Times of Israel has confirmed the story. This should be front news but it won’t ….
@ Deir Yassin: You are right. I did write that. And this is yet another example of how Israel never ceases to surprise me with the depths to which it can sink.
Israel’s ongoing degradation into a Kahanist, proto-fascist state seems to bring me ever lower in spirit.
Europeans gassed each other by the thousands on the battlefields during World War 1.
The Nazis used gas to kill millions of Jews.
Iraq gassed thousands of it’s Kurdish civilians, and Arabs continue to gas each other to this day.
Yet, when ONE, lone IDF soldier threatens to use gas, and is consequently suspended for his idiocy, you pull out the ‘shame bell’ and toll…
…’Shame’.
*ring*
..’Shame’.
*ring*
RE: “Yet, when ONE, lone IDF soldier threatens to use gas . . .” ~ Hopper
PLEASE SEE THIS – https://goo.gl/nXPGRJ
Both sides have their extremists. See https://www.google.com/search?q=gas+the+arabs&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMIlreXhMfqyAIVQ0AmCh29mAze&biw=2145&bih=1373&dpr=0.67#safe=off&tbm=isch&q=%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%88%D8%AA+%D9%84%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%87%D9%88%D8%AF and both deserve our opprobrium. Given the ubiquity of smartphones, it beggars belief that this is a common occurrence, ordered by a higher ranking officer. Totally ridiculous.
@ pea: So you think low-ranking soldiers make decisions in the field on their own and receive no instruction from superiors? If that’s so the Border Police is an entirely dysfunctional force in which commanders have no idea what subordinates are doing–in which case the former should be sacked. Or else the Border Police commander told the poor shlump what to say and he dutifully did it. Either explanation works for me.
Low ranking soldiers are instructed about what they can and cannot do. When they don’t follow those instructions, there are usually ramifications. You know that the border guard in question was suspended pending an investigation. Neither of your 2 likely scenarios reflects reality. And certainly not the second one where you imply that this sort of behavior is par for the course.
You are glad to cite all kind of idiots that excite everywhere, even in the USA.
@gilead: the difference is that in Israel the “idiots” run the country…& the asylum.
Part of the story is that there is a ludicrous discrepancy between the threat and that what incited it: the throwing of stones.