<?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[“The army crossed another red line:” Report from Beit&nbsp;Ummar]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p class="byline"><abbr class="published" title="Sunday, April 3rd, 2011, 11:36 am">Sunday, April 3 2011<span class="author vcard">|<span class="url fn n">Joseph Dana | 972 Magazine</span><a class="url fn n" title="Joseph Dana" href="http://972mag.com/author/josephd/"><br />
</a></span></abbr></p>
<p><em><strong>The  Israeli army arrested 19 Jewish peace activists who held a  demonstration outside of the West Bank village of Beit Ummar on  Saturday. One of the activists who was arrested and beaten shares his  recollection of the day’s events.</strong></em></p>
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<div id="attachment_12919" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width:600px;"><em><strong><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-12919" src="https://i1.wp.com/972mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/199728_122294534511995_115169235224525_166526_41152_n.jpg" alt="An Israeli peace activist in Beit Ummar yesterday. Photo: ICAHD" width="600" height="450" /></strong></em></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">An Israeli peace activist in Beit Ummar yesterday. Photo: ICAHD</p>
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<p>“The army has crossed another red line,” Micha Kurz, longtime  Jerusalem peace activist told me this afternoon as he recounted  yesterday’s spontaneous Ta’ayush demonstration outside of the southern  West Bank village of Beit Ummar. “The soldiers acted as if they’d  thought about how much they hate leftist Jews before we arrived and then  just unleashed fury on us” Kurz recalled. Over the past weeks, the  Israeli army has intensified a <a class="external" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11891.shtml" target="_blank">gaza-like siege</a> on Beit Ummar, as punishment for unarmed demonstrations, alleged stone  throwing on the shared settler road bisecting the village and as part of  the reality of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank. Yesterday  (Saturday 2 April 2011), the Israeli army attacked a group of Israeli  peace activists who had come to check the situation and hold a  nonviolent demonstration. Kurz, a former IDF solider himself, was beaten  by soldiers and arrested for being in a closed military zone.  Yesterday’s unprovoked attack on Israeli peace activists falls in line  with the army’s strategy of repression of nonviolent resistance by  Israelis or Palestinians against Israel’s increasingly violent  occupation in the West Bank.</p>
<p>Beit Ummar has been holding weekly demonstrations against the  occupation and the confiscation of its lands by neighboring Jewish-only  settlements for the past several years. The demonstrations have ranged  from calm to deadly with hundreds injured and jailed. Some have even  been <a href="http://972mag.com/breaking-settlers-kill-palestinian-near-iraq-burin/">killed </a>in settler rampages through the village.</p>
<p>Yesterday, a group of <a class="external" href="http://www.taayush.org/" target="_blank">Ta’ayush</a> activists were returning to Jerusalem after spending the morning with  Palestinian farmers in the South Hebron Hills. They made the quick  decision to check on the closure of Beit Ummar on the drive home.</p>
<span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe class='youtube-player' width='640' height='360' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/8NMUfFA4NWE?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;' sandbox='allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation'></iframe></span>
<p>“Within five minutes of arriving at a series of concrete barriers in  front of the village, we were surrounded by soldiers. We walked to a  large gate [which the army had installed two months prior in order to  seal the village] at another entrance to the village only to find that  it was locked shut” Kurz recalled, “At this point there were a lot of  soldiers, many of whom were officers. So we decided to have an impromptu  nonviolent protest against the closure of the village.” Speaking to one  Israeli activist present at the demonstration, the commander in charge  threatened that “every time you do this (demonstrate), I will close the  village.”</p>
<p>The commander in charge pronounced the area a ‘closed military zone’,  after which one member of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity group asked the  commander to see the closed military zone warrant. Being a stout guy,  soldiers felt threated by his presence and attacked him. This set off a  chain of violent events as soldiers attacked anyone bold enough to look  them in the eye. Virtually everyone was arrested. According to  activists, the commander never showed them the closed military zone  warrant, a legal right afforded by Israeli law.</p>
<p>“I understand that soldiers get scared and nervous but they crossed  every red line,” Kurz told me, “as the soldiers were beating and  arresting everyone, one solider said to me: ‘I would rape your mother  and sister if I could’ and another said that he would shoot me if he was  allowed to.” In the embedded video, one brave activist caught a solider  calling one of the activists an ‘Arab son of a bitch.’</p>
<p>Within half an hour of the demonstration beginning, 19 people had  been arrested. Some were released quickly but eight were taken to the  Kiryat Arba prison next to Hebron. After some interrogation, the  activists agreed not to return to the area for 15 days and they were  released.</p>
<p>While Kurz vowed to return to Beit Ummar and continue resisting the  Occupation through direct action, he ended our conversation on a sober  and realistic note, “I can’t recognize this anymore, these soldiers were  totally out line. I’ve been a soldier in their position, I know, but  this was way worse than I’ve ever seen or experienced. No one will be  held accountable for that, they can do whatever they want. They even get  away with murder.”</p>
<p>__________</p>
<p>Ynet, the website of the leading newspaper in Israel, published a  video shot by the activists this morning as well as a small story  written by <a class="external" href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4051147,00.html" target="_blank">Yair Altman</a>.  Notice the use of the word ‘clashes’ in the report. An army beating up a  group of unarmed, nonviolent peace activists can hardly pass as a  clash. Yet, this subtle language is one way that the mainstream media in  Israel is able to create the image of ‘violent and angry leftists’ who  are interested in ‘clashing’ with the good boys of the Israeli Defense  Force. A look at the comments section, especially the comments in <a class="external" href="http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4051122,00.html" target="_blank">Hebrew</a> (use Google Translate to get the gist), is a revealing window into  mainstream Israeli understandings of nonviolence and leftists Jews. The  overwhelming majority of the comments sign the praise of the good work  that the Israeli army is doing in attacking the ‘disgusting’ leftists  who side with Palestinians. Reading the comments, one is able to start  to understand why a Jewish solider in the Israeli army could say to a  fellow Jew that he would shoot him and rape his mother if afforded the  chance.</p>
<p><a href="http://972mag.com/the-army-crossed-another-red-line-report-from-beit-ummar/">Source</a></p>
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