Israeli Border Police Executed Bedouin at Um al Hiran, Doctored Video Footage

I wrote a post about the killing of Musa Abu Qilyan in which I presented both the claim of the Border Police that he killed a policeman in a deliberate terror attack; and also presented video which, as I wrote, failed to support the police claims (though it didn’t refute them).  Now, Ronnie Barkan has provided a close video analysis of two separate versions of the video, one distributed by the police and another slightly longer one which surfaced on Facebook.  Ronnie shows (be patient in watching the various iterations of the video clips he presents) incontrovertibly that the Police video was subtly and slightly edited, both removing the first shot a Border Policeman fired at the car, and also speeding up the video to make the vehicle appear to be going faster than it was.  You may read an alternate version, which essentially agrees with Ronnie’s work, at 972.

Abu AlQiyan’s vehicle with his body outside the vehicle after officers fired an execution-style “kill shot” to ensure he was dead. (Activestills-Faiz Abu Rmeleh)

What does all this mean?  First, that when Abu Alqilyan’s vehicle drove along the road it presented no threat whatsoever to the police personnel.  It was driving slowly and deliberately.  As it proceeds, a police officer runs toward it firing.  Three or four shots are fired.  The first shot is fired while the car is driving quite slowly and seemingly under the driver’s control.  Only after those shots are fired does the vehicle speed up, lose control and hit another police officer standing near the road.  Clearly, the driver had been fatally struck by these bullets before he killed the officer.

In other words, the police acted recklessly and with total disregard even for their own safety.  They essentially murdered the Bedouin driver when he posed no threat.  After he was incapacitated, his vehicle struck and killed the other officer.  He was not intending to harm anyone.  Ergo, he was not a terrorist.  It’s certainly possible he was a supporter of the Islamic Movement, but certainly not of ISIS as Israeli Jewish politicians have claimed.  Further, being an Islamist is not the same as being a terrorist.

The only possibility I can think of to support the police version is perhaps an officer had tried to stop him at some point before the drone footage began.  He may’ve seemed to defy an order to stop and proceeded on his path, which led the officer to fire.  But you can be sure that if such a thing happened, the drone footage authenticating it would’ve been released.

Further, how can a major police action at which physical altercations and protest is expected not secure the perimeter of vehicle and pedestrian traffic?  How could the police have allowed any vehicles to approach them as this man did?  Why weren’t there roadblocks preventing access?  To me, this appears to be a botched Border Police operation for which they have only themselves to blame.

Finally, this is yet another example of fraud and mendacity on the part of the Israel’s most vicious, brutal and violent police authorities.  Not only are Border Police the most racist, they are also the mostly likely to lie and cover up their errors, as they have here.  It’s a shameful episode which should be met with skepticism and derision by the Israeli media and the Israeli public.  However, Israeli Jews are all too quick to swallow the lies fed to them by authorities.  Once they have drunk the Koolaid, counter-evidence like this threatens their equanimity and is usually ignored or dismissed.

In my earlier post I debated the meaning of “terrorism” in the Israeli context and argued that dispossessing the Bedouin as Israel is doing, along with deadly violence like this constitutes state terror.  This new evidence confirms there was no terror on the part of the Bedouin at all.  The only terror was that of the forces of the State.  If I were Israeli, I would hang my head in shame.