The United States, Democrats and Republicans, are responsible for funding, arming and supporting the Israeli state. Indeed American Police forces send their officers over to Israel for ‘training’. As Azadeh Shahshahani, Ilise Benshushan Cohen write U.S. Police are Being Trained by Israel—And Communities of Color Are Paying the Price.
Eyad al-Halaq, who according to his family, had a mental age of a six-year-old child, was on his way to a school for children and adults with disabilities where he was a student when Israeli police spotted a “suspicious object that looked like a pistol.” In fact it was his mobile phone. A simple mistake to make except it's one that's never made in the case of Israeli Jews.
George Floyd was Murdered - Outrage – Iyad Hallak, an Autistic Palestinian was Murdered - Silence
Tony Greenstein
Five days after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, Iyad Hallak, an autistic 32 year old, was also murdered. This time by the Israeli Border Police, who are the most violent of all Israeli police units. But whereas the reaction to the murder of George Floyd has rightly been international outrage, riots and demonstrations, the reaction to the murder of Iyad is virtually zero...
American society is built on racism and slavery. The United States not only represses its own Black population but it exports its racist terror to a host of other countries, including Palestine.
Iyad Hallak was not the first disabled Palestinian to be murdered by Israeli security forces. There was for example Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, a double amputee who was shot dead by Israeli troops at the Gaza border fence in December 2017.
What is remarkable though is the lack of any international reaction to the murder of Iyad. His death at the hands of Israel’s police is one of a number involving disabled Palestinians who didn’t understand the instructions of Israel’s military/police. When he didn’t stop they simply mowed him down with gunfire.
There is however a difference. Medaria Arradondo, chief of the Minneapolis police, instantly fired all four policemen involved in the murder of George Floyd. Derek Chauvin, who was the police officer whose knee was on George Floyd's neck, has now been charged with 2nd degree murder and manslaughter. The other 3 officers - Tou Thao, Thomas Lane & J. Kueng - have been charged with aiding and abetting murder.
Contrast the situation in Israel. Not one of the Border Police who gunned down Iyad has been arrested, still less charged. One of the Police was put under house arrest, but he has since been released.
Of course there is a Police investigation but as Gideon Levy noted, when the Israeli Police investigate themselves they also acquit themselves. This time will be no different.
As the investigation of the murder of Israeli Palestinian school teacher, Yaqoub Mousa Abu al-Qia'an, in Umm al Hiran demonstrated, Israel’s Internal Police Investigation Department is corrupt and perfectly prepared to ‘lose’ and manipulate evidence in order to acquit those they are allegedly investigating. Where that is not possible they simply ignore the evidence.
The ‘investigation’ by Israeli Police is likely to find that it was a ‘tragic accident’, that Iyad was murdered. A case of mistaken identity. Of course this never seems to happen to disabled and autistic Israeli Jews. What Israel won’t do is to charge the murderers with the crime that they committed. After all their job is to prevent ‘terrorism’ and Iyad was a Palestinian which is as nearly good as being a terrorist.
If Palestinians in East Jerusalem where Iyad lived were to riot and demonstrate then there would be many more dead Palestinians. In Israel, the right to protest is a Jewish privilege. Unsurprisingly a Jerusalem court issued a ‘gag order’ preventing the naming of Iyad’s killers because Israeli courts are also part of the racist consensus.
In America, there is a thin sugar coating of democracy resting on a repressive and undemocratic state in which the Police are equipped with all the paraphernalia of an army. But even in the United States, despite the urging of Trump, demonstrators aren’t generally shot.
However the United States, Democrats and Republicans, are responsible for funding, arming and supporting the Israeli state. Indeed American Police forces send their officers over to Israel for ‘training’.
As Azadeh Shahshahani, Ilise Benshushan Cohen write U.S. Police are Being Trained by Israel—And Communities of Color Are Paying the Price.
Eyad al-Halaq, who according to his family, had a mental age of a six-year-old child, was on his way to a school for children and adults with disabilities where he was a student when Israeli police spotted a “suspicious object that looked like a pistol.” In fact it was his mobile phone. A simple mistake to make except it's one that's never made in the case of Israeli Jews.
Al-Halaq, ran away from the police out of fear. The response of the police was to shoot at him at least 7 times. Israeli police issued a statement saying that after they “neutralized” the “suspect,” they conducted a body search and found no weapon in his possession. Even the word 'neutralise' signifies that he was a terrorist and also not quite a human being.
One officer “suspected [al-Halaq] was a terrorist because he was wearing gloves” — something extremely common given the coronavirus pandemic.
“Israel has been on a killing spree,” Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement, referring to the case of al-Halaq, and the killing of 37-year-old Fadi Aqed 24 hours earlier.
Aqed was gunned down by Israeli soldiers at a bus stop outside Ramallah after the soldiers claimed he tried to ram them with his car. No soldiers were injured in the incident, while Aqed’s family said that he was on his way to pick up his wife when his car skidded off the road.
“The latest execution-style killing brings, to at least 21, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces in such senseless acts of violence since January,” Ashrawi said. She added that “murders, land appropriation, home demolitions, and other acts of structural violence are on the rise.”
The only measures taken against the police officers, according to Haaretz is that one officer was released “under restrictive conditions” while the other was placed under house arrest.
B’Tselem said that : “Those responsible for harming Palestinians go unpunished, and the victims receive no compensation for the harm they suffer. The few, isolated exceptions serve only to amplify the illusion that the law enforcement systems in place are functioning properly.”
See Killing of unarmed, autistic Palestinian in Jerusalem sparks outrage, Yumna Patel, Mondoweiss, 31.5.20.
Tony Greenstein - original article here
