<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[ei: Murdered Jerusalem man subjected to racism even in&nbsp;death]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p><span class="text14">Jillian Kestler-D&#8217;Amours, <em>The Electronic Intifada,</em> 25 February 2011</p>
<p><span class="content"> </span></span></p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" width="483" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://i2.wp.com/electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/3/110225-hussein-rwidy.jpg" border="1" alt="" width="483" height="321" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="text11">Hussain Rwidy speaking at a demonstration  in Sheikh Jarrah two weeks after the murder of his son, Hussam.  (Jillian Kestler-D&#8217;Amours)</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><span class="text14"><span class="content"><br />
All Hussain Hassan Rwidy wanted was to bury his son.</p>
<p>&#8220;They took me to see the investigator who worked on the case. He called  me inside [his office], alone, and asked me, &#8216;Are you strong?'&#8221; I said  to him, &#8216;I want my son,'&#8221; Rwidy told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>&#8220;He said directly to me, &#8216;Your son died &#8230;'&#8221; Rwidy paused, then  continued. &#8220;&#8216;Your son died, and there are two people arrested.'&#8221;</p>
<p>Twenty-four-year-old Hussam Rwidy was killed in the early morning hours  of Friday, 11 February, on Hillel Street in West Jerusalem as he and a  friend, Murad Khader Joulani, were walking to their car to drive home  from work.</p>
<p>According to the Rwidy family, who live in the East Jerusalem  neighborhood of Kufr Akab, everything began when a group of extremist  Israeli Jews heard Hussam and Murad speaking Arabic to each other, and  shouted &#8220;Death to the Arabs.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;My son started to walk [away],&#8221; said Hussam&#8217;s father, from a mourning  tent set up to remember Hussam in the occupied East Jerusalem  neighborhood of Silwan, where the family is originally from, last  Saturday.</p>
<p>&#8220;They came from behind with a knife and jumped on him. After they cut  his throat, four more people came and started to beat them with punches  and kicks,&#8221; he explained.</p>
<p>While Hussam died of his injuries when he reached the hospital, Joulani  survived the attack with a deep knife wound visible on the back of his  neck. According to an account Joulani gave to the Wadi Hilweh  Information Center, a resident-run information and media center in  Silwan, Joulani managed to pull Rwidy to a nearby restaurant where he  called for help.</p>
<p>&#8220;None of the Israeli customers assisted the two men, except for one who  handed Joulani a paper napkin to remove the blood from Rwidy&#8217;s face.  Joulani was then himself able to call the police, who then commenced  investigation into the incident,&#8221; the Wadi Hilweh Information Center  article states (&#8220;<a href="http://silwanic.net/?p=12167">The final moments of the martyred Husam Rwidy</a>,&#8221; 20 February 2011).</p>
<p>The Israeli police originally arrested two suspects for the crime, but  placed a gag order on the details of the criminal case. The Israeli  media, however, quickly presented the attack as a drunken brawl between  the two groups, an account the Rwidy family vehemently denies.</p>
<p>&#8220;If the government or police lie and say that [Hussam] started this, I  will never believe that. He was handsome, a gentleman,&#8221; Hussam&#8217;s uncle,  Bassam Maswadi, told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>The gag order on Rwidy&#8217;s case was lifted earlier this week, and the  Israeli media reported that four Israeli teenagers &#8212; two from Jerusalem  and two from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank &#8212;  were arrested for his murder. Israeli daily newspaper <em>Haaretz</em> reported that &#8220;police suspect that the stabbing had nationalistic  motives and the prosecution decided to put them on trial for  manslaughter&#8221; (&#8220;<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/four-teens-suspected-of-stabbing-arab-youth-to-death-in-jerusalem-1.345233">Four teens suspected of stabbing Arab youth to death in Jerusalem</a>,&#8221; 23 February 2011).</p>
<p>&#8220;After praying in the mosque on Friday [11 February], I was on the bus  and my wife called me to tell me [what happened]. I was shocked,&#8221;  Maswadi said. &#8220;I started crying, like he was my son.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Family&#8217;s suffering prolonged by &#8220;security threat&#8221;</strong></p>
<p>The Rwidy family&#8217;s turmoil didn&#8217;t end with Hussam&#8217;s death, however, as  they were forced to wait five days before the Israeli authorities would  release Hussam&#8217;s body for burial.</p>
<p>The family wanted to hold his funeral in a graveyard adjacent to the  Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, which is known to Jews as the  Temple Mount and is the third holiest site in Islam.</p>
<p>&#8220;They said to me that Sunday at 11am, everything is okay and [I] can  come and take [my] son. When I went on Sunday, they said to me the  security situation didn&#8217;t allow that,&#8221; Hussain Rwidy said.</p>
<p>The Israeli authorities argued that they had secret evidence proving  that if Hussam&#8217;s funeral was to be held in the vicinity of the Temple  Mount, a riot would break out, similar to what happened when an Israeli  settler security guard shot and killed Silwan resident Samer Sarhan in  September 2010.</p>
<p>Therefore, the Israeli police forced a set of rules upon the Rwidy  family, which needed to be agreed upon before his body was released.  Israel said only forty persons could be present at the burial, that it  could only take place after 8pm and that the family couldn&#8217;t hold the  ceremony near the al-Aqsa mosque.</p>
<p>&#8220;But at 1pm on Sunday, the police called me and said that everything [in  the agreement] is cancelled,&#8221; Rwidy said. He explained that the Israeli  authorities told the family that they would only be allowed to pick up  Hussam&#8217;s body at the Qalandiya checkpoint &#8212; which separates East  Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank &#8212; and that he could only be  buried in the West Bank, not Jerusalem.</p>
<p>This outrageous condition, Rwidy explained, forced the family to submit a  petition to the Israeli high court to get Hussam&#8217;s body back. They  finally reached an agreement, and at 12:30am on Wednesday, 16 February,  were able to prepare Hussam for burial.</p>
<p>That night, Hussam&#8217;s body was taken to a mosque in Ras al-Amud, a  neighborhood of East Jerusalem near Silwan, and was buried in a cemetery  there.</p>
<p>Only twenty men and fifteen women were allowed to be present while the  body was being prepared for burial, and no more than fifty men could be  at the funeral ceremony itself. The family was not allowed to visit  al-Aqsa, either, which is a customary practice for Jerusalem-area Muslim  families.</p>
<p><strong>Attack reflects rising tide of Israeli racism</strong></p>
<p>Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem have been  the target of increasingly discriminatory and hostile rhetoric in  recent months on the part of Israeli politicians, religious leaders and  members of settler-related organizations.</p>
<p>In Jerusalem, this inciting rhetoric has translated into more than a  dozen separate incidents since the summer of 2010 in which Palestinians  have been attacked, beaten or killed by groups of Jewish Israelis.</p>
<p>Last November, it was reported that groups of Israelis were stalking  Independence Park in central West Jerusalem, looking for Palestinians to  attack. The rising wave of violence received international attention  when a middle-aged Chilean tourist was mistaken for a Palestinian and  was sent to a hospital after he was jumped and beaten near the park (&#8220;<a href="http://www.imemc.org/article/59847">Fundamentalists Attack Chilean Tourist After &#8216;Suspecting&#8217; He Is Arab</a>,&#8221; International Middle East Media Center, 8 November 2010).</p>
<p>In another incident reported in late December by the Wadi Hilweh  Information Center, a 28-year-old resident of Jerusalem&#8217;s Old City was  severely beaten in a bar on Jaffa Street in West Jerusalem after a group  of Jewish youth shouted racist, anti-Arab remarks at him (&#8220;<a href="http://silwanic.net/?p=9402">Racist attacks on Palestinians</a>,&#8221; 23 December 2010).</p>
<p>&#8220;These attacks in the last two years I would say are not just one person  or two persons, [but] it&#8217;s actually quite organized. You can see an  organization going on in especially the suburbs of Jerusalem, in the  settlement suburbs like Pisgat Zeev, Givat Zeev,&#8221; explained Yossi  Bartal, a long-time Israeli activist and community organizer based in  Jerusalem.</p>
<p>&#8220;Young kids that come from these neighborhoods that are very much  influenced by right-wing politicians, by rabbis, go to the city center  and try to use violence and show their right-wing ideology by attacking  Arabs or anyone else they don&#8217;t like,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p><em>The Jerusalem Post</em> reported in December 2010 that a group of  nine Jewish Israeli youth from the Jerusalem area had been taken in for  questioning on the suspicion that they were involved in a string of  attacks on Palestinians in the city (&#8220;<a href="http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?ID=200410&amp;R=R1">Nine member J&#8217;lem gang arrested for attacks on Arabs</a>,&#8221; 21 December 2010).</p>
<p>&#8220;The youths, most of whom are aged 14 to 19 and are residents of  Jerusalem or the surrounding suburbs, are accused of gathering on  Thursday nights, identifying Arabs and attacking them with stones, glass  bottles and pepper spray,&#8221; the article reports.</p>
<p>According to Bartal, while the Israeli police have made some arrests,  they aren&#8217;t taking these racist attacks seriously enough and most  importantly, have failed to define much of the violence as being  racially-motivated.</p>
<p>&#8220;The way the police tries to define these things as just normal fights  is very political,&#8221; Bartal said. &#8220;They are actually stating the obvious:  that they don&#8217;t want to fight racism by not defining these attacks as  racist attacks.&#8221;</p>
<p>The pressure on the Israeli police and government, therefore, needs to come from<br />
Israeli society itself if individuals and groups are to be held accountable for their role in the wave of violence, Bartal said.</p>
<p>&#8220;There is a law in Israel against racist incitement. This law that  actually defines, in a very problematic way, what is racist incitement  should be used against these rabbis and against these politicians who  call very clearly to use violence against minorities inside Israel.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Hussam Rwidy remembered</strong></p>
<p>More than a hundred persons gathered in Silwan last Saturday to mourn  the loss of Hussam Rwidy and condemn the vicious attack that ended his  life.</p>
<p>&#8220;People need to open their eyes and see what&#8217;s going on. All of us are  human beings. We can live together. We need to respect each other,&#8221; said  Bassam Maswadi, Hussam&#8217;s uncle.</p>
<p>Maswadi explained that Hussam worked two jobs &#8212; as a Coca-Cola salesman  during the day, and making deliveries from the Mahane Yehuda market in  West Jerusalem at night &#8212; in an effort to save money and start a  family. The eldest of three children, Hussam planned on getting engaged  next summer.</p>
<p>&#8220;Anyone who needed help, he would help. Lots of people respected him. He  was just great. He was like one of my sons,&#8221; Maswadi added.</p>
<p>According to Hani Baidoun, a Silwan resident and friend of the Rwidy  family, the Israeli government and police and security forces play a  large role in perpetrating the violence toward Palestinians in  Jerusalem.</p>
<p>&#8220;Previously we used to hear them saying that a good Arab is a dead one.  Today, neither a live or dead Arab is good for Israel. They want to  evacuate Jerusalem from Arabs as much and as quickly as possible. They  are pushing them to think openly about leaving Jerusalem for the West  Bank and even abroad,&#8221; Baidoun said.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Israeli policy and government encourages such beliefs and such acts  against Arabs, Palestinian youth and the Jerusalemites in particular,&#8221;  he added.</p>
<p>Maswadi agreed.</p>
<p>&#8220;[The Israeli authorities] have a responsibility,&#8221; Maswadi said. &#8220;We  will be afraid to go in the streets at night now. We live together. This  is not a life.&#8221;</p>
<p><em>Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D&#8217;Amours is a reporter and  documentary filmmaker based in occupied East Jerusalem. More of her  work can be found at <a href="http://jilldamours.wordpress.com/">http://jilldamours.wordpress.com</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><strong>Latest articles on EI:</strong></span></p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="2" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/humanrightswire.shtml"><strong>Human Rights</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11830.shtml">Murdered Jerusalem man subjected to racism even in death</a> (25 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/theroleofthemedia.shtml"><strong>Role of the Media</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11828.shtml">Israel investing $1.6 million in &#8220;new media warriors&#8221;</a> (24 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/humanrightswire.shtml"><strong>Human Rights</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11826.shtml">Father of Furkan Dogan, slain on flotilla, seeks justice</a> (24 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/artmusicculture.shtml"><strong>Art, Music &amp; Culture</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11827.shtml">Palestinian fashion designer&#8217;s uncompromising debut</a> (24 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/humanrightswire.shtml"><strong>Human Rights</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11825.shtml">Gaddafi follows path of ousted dictators</a> (23 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/diaries.shtml"><strong>Diaries: Live from Palestine</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11824.shtml">Why I tried to arrest Avigdor Lieberman</a> (22 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/opeds.shtml"><strong>Opinion/Editorial</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11823.shtml">Libya&#8217;s tragedy, Gaddafi&#8217;s farce</a> (22 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/humanrightswire.shtml"><strong>Human Rights</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11822.shtml">Report exposes proliferation of rights abuses in Iraq</a> (22 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/developmentwire.shtml"><strong>Development</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11820.shtml">Gaza reconstruction held hostage to politics</a> (22 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/humanrightswire.shtml"><strong>Human Rights</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11819.shtml">Gaddafi uses deadly force against protesters</a> (21 February 2011)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11830.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29">ei: Murdered Jerusalem man subjected to racism even in death</a>.</p>
]]></html><thumbnail_url><![CDATA[https://i2.wp.com/electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/3/110225-hussein-rwidy.jpg?fit=440%2C330]]></thumbnail_url><thumbnail_width><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_width><thumbnail_height><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_height></oembed>