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.
Silverstein has published Tikun Olam since 2003, It exposes the secrets of the Israeli national security state. He lives in Seattle, but his heart is in the east. He publishes regularly at Middle East Eye and Jacobin Magazine. His work has also appeared in Al Jazeera English, The Nation, Truthout and other outlets.
everything can be doctored even when it has already been doctored.
it boils down to choosing your own doctor.
“The family of the attacker claimed he was murdered in cold blood and that he was neither a terrorist or an Islamist. Apparently, according to my sources this is not true.”
Soo…the driver wasn’t an Islamist and your source is wrong?
@ Ben: Sources are sometimes wrong. They have their own agendas or those of the agency they work for.
Nor did I say he wasn’t an Islamist. Don’t you bother reading? I specifically wrote that he might be. But that still doesn’t turn him in too a terrorist. Though clearly you, like your hasbara masters, believe this to be the case. Ah, your racism is showing…
Do you have no READING COMPREHENSION at all, ‘Ben’ ? Why post crap like this?
Yesterday it was an Arab MK’s bodily injury. Today it’s a ‘doctored’ video. Tomorrow, the next ‘shame d’jour’.
And everyday, global warming gets worse and too many Haredim and Bedouin babies are being born to the poorest and least productive sector of Israeli society.
Israel’s existential problems will be of her own making. Maybe she is too busy ‘weasel whacking’ her enemies. Maybe her leaders are just too venal and short-sighted. Probably both.
Either way, the future is bleak for the region’s Jews and Arabs. Maybe both need to wake up.
@ Ben: You clearly didn’t watch Ronnie’s analysis which shows the 2 videos side by side and clearly indicates where the video has been edited to remove the first gunshot. So it was not “doctored,” in scare quotes. It was doctored.
Nor was it a “bodily injury.” It was a Border Police bullet to the head. If the Border Police would fire at a Bedouin driving a car slowly on a desert road why wouldn’t they fire into the head of an “Arab” MK? Of course they would. I’ve heard nothing more from hasbara media concerning the alleged Bedouin rock which miraculously struck Oudeh. So that concoction too has apparently been abandoned. You ought to keep up better with those hasbara directives/talking points.
If you don’t like Haredi or “Arab” [sic] babies perhaps you should try forced sterilization like the Jewish Agency did with Ethiopian immigrants. That racist approach goes hand in hand with the racism you & your kind spew here.
“Nor was it a “bodily injury.” It was a Border Police bullet to the head”
He was shot twice. Once in the leg and once in the upper body. Not in the head. More important- there is no way to know which of the many bullets shot towards him actually hit him. It might have been the first shot and it might be a bullet shot agter he already ran over the policeman.
@Amico: since yr claims are unsupported they are no more than your hasbarapinion. Witnesses and others noted after his car was stopped an officer approached & executed him with a kill shot. They are not delivered to the legs or upper body. This was an execution.
You are now at your allotted 3 comments for the day.
New day, new comments
Sorry for assuming that if you write about this topic you know the basic facts, such as the initial findings of the autopsy
http://news.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=1228766
There was no “kill shot” as the driver died only 30 minutes after the incident. The police is blamed for not giving him medical treatment in time.
@ Amico: Either way, the police killed him. So why quarrel whether it was a bullet to head execution style or deliberate neglect leading to him bleeding to death?
You will probably not wake up, until you have ended up as a refugee in Europe in your old age. That is: after this whole nationalistic land-grabbing insanity in Israel has ended in disaster. Let’s hope some of the despised Merkel spirit will have survived by then, to give you shelter.
@ Elisabeth: Amen to that.
Actually Germany is far more receptive to refugees (both Israeli Jews AND Arabs) than Israel is (unless we’re talking about heterosexual Jewish immigrants ).
“Why weren’t there roadblocks preventing access?”
I read a testimony (I can’t remember who exactly, but a Jewish Israeli activist who was present in Umm al-Hiran), the guy was apparently trying to leave the village and not entering it. I also read that the road went downwards, which might explain why the car started accelerating.
Another flagrant manipulation of the images, a BBC jounralist (can’t remember the name, Shoval or Shuval) posted an even more edited version starting exactly at the moment the car started accelerating which gives the impression that this couldn’t be anything else but a car ramming attack. Youssef Munayyer and many others intervened on his twitter-account, but as far as I’m concerned the question is: how can such a journalist continue working for the BBC ?
So now, everytime the-most-moral-army kills a Palestinian, Bibi and his buddies just claim he/she was an ISIS supporter, if this isn’t disgusting ….. the State of Israel was turned genuinly fascist, for non-Jews at least.