By John Ballard
Jawaher Abu-Rahma, 36, died as the result of inhaling tear gas at yesterday's demonstration at Bil'in.
Jawaher Abu-Rahma, who was hurt Friday after inhaling tear gas during a protest in Bilin, died of her wounds on Saturday. Palestinian sources reported that the 36-year-old woman inhaled large quantities of tear gas and died in a Ramallah hospital.According to doctors, Abu Rahma was admitted suffering from gas poisoning and did not respond to treatment. After a long night the doctors were forced to pronounce her dead Saturday morning.
Jawaher is the sister of Bassam Abu Rahma who was killed two years ago during a protest in the same village. Their brother Ahsraf was once shot by an IDF soldier in a rally in Naalin.
The IDF said that soldiers used tear gas to disperse Friday's protest in a routine manner. The army added that an initial examination raises doubts regarding Abu Rahma's cause of death as she initially sustained light wounds, was released from hospital and later died of her wounds in her home.
The official Palestinian news agency also reported that Abu Rahma had died. Three other individuals were injured during the protest, which was attended by some 1,000 demonstrators. According to the Palestinians, dozens more were lightly injured after inhaling tear gas.
Among the protestors were Israeli, Palestinian and foreign activists including Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. They claim that prior to the protest, IDF soldiers hosed them with large quantities of tear gas. Rubber bullets were also used to disperse the demonstrators.
The village of Bil'in has a website.
Bil�in is a Palestinian village that is struggling to exist. It is fighting to safeguard its land, its olive trees, its resources� its liberty.By annexing close to 60% of Bil�in land for Israeli settlements and the construction of Israel�s separation wall, the state of Israel is strangling the village. Every day it destroys a bit more, creating an open air prison for Bil�in�s inhabitants.
Supported by Israeli and international activists, Bil�in residents peacefully demonstrate every Friday in front of the �work-site of shame�. And every Friday the Israeli army responds with violence, both physically and psychologically.
Bil�in residents have continued to withstand these injustices despite the frequent night raids of Israeli soldiers in the town followed by an increasing number of arrests of inhabitants and of activists. But now, the army has toughened the oppression by systematically arresting members of the Bil�in committee in charge of organizing the non-violent resistance actions. The aim of the arrests is to discourage Bil�in residents and reduce their resistance to the occupation.
By supporting Bil�in, you will help its inhabitants to continue their struggle and maintain hope in their fight for liberty. This site is dedicated to all people of good will - Palestinian, Israeli and the internationals who fight side by side against the injustices endured by the people of Bil�in.
Yesterday's All Things Considered had a short feature reporting on the BDS movement and Hamas' move to employ non-violent direct action to mobilize world opinion in favor of the Palestinian cause, with South Africa's anti-apartheid movement as a model.
Mr. HUSSEIN ZUMWAT(ph) (Fatah Movement): We need to start a South Africa-like international campaign, international solidarity movement, whereby this movement would put pressure on the occupation.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: There is already an international boycott disinvest and sanction campaign targeting Israel. But Hussein Zumwat from the Fatah movement that controls the West Bank government says that Palestinians want to create more momentum. To that end, Zumwat says, there's a lot to learn from how South African groups operated under apartheid.
Mr. ZUMWAT: We need to learn from their ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people around the world. We have a lot to learn from their non-violent actions to delegitimize injustice, to expose racism. And their number one message for us: do not invite Israel's security might. Face them in the moral arena.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This week, over a hundred Palestinian youths were sent to South Africa to learn strategy and how to use non-violent resistance to highlight the injustices of the occupation. And Palestinians are reaching out in the diplomatic sphere as well.
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Lisa Goldman's report of protests following the funeral More links and photos at the source.
Hundreds of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv Saturday night to protest the death of Bil�in resident Jawaher Abu Rahmah, who died on Saturday morning after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli forces during the weekly anti-fence demonstration.The 36 year-old woman was evacuated to a Ramallah hospital on Friday afternoon, after losing consciousness. Doctors attached her to a respirator and treated her for exposure to toxins found in the tear gas, but the patient did not respond. She died at 9 o�clock on Saturday morning, without gaining consciousness.
Bil�in has been the site of weekly demonstrations on Friday afternoons since 2005, when the route of Israel�s security barrier was constructed so that it divided the village proper from much of its agricultural lands. Click here to read about Abdullah Abu Rahmah, Bil�in popular resistance coordiantor who has been in Israel�s Ofer Military Prison for more than one year.
[...] Waving mourning posters emblazoned with photos of Jawaher Abu Rahmeh and carrying placards with slogans in Hebrew and English, demonstrators chanted in Hebrew: �Citizens, awake! Fascism is already here!� �Barak! Barak! Minister of Defense! How many demonstrators have you killed today?!� ; in English: �Apartheid! Fight back!�; and in Arabic: �Min Ghaza el Bil�in, hurra hurra Falasteen!� (from Gaza to Bil�in, freedom, freedom for Palestine).
As the crowd grew and the chanting became more insistent, riot control police, who had previously stood indifferently in front of the area cordoned off for demonstrators, tried to disperse the crowd by wading in and pushing people. The crowd resisted by pushing back. Police quickly changed tactics and began to arrest demonstraters, pushing them to the ground and twisting their arms behind their backs in at least one case, as onlookers jeered and shouted, �Shame! Shame!�
Altogether, eight were arrested � including former Meretz MK Mossi Raz. A Hebrew-language Ynet report includes an embedded video clip that shows police arresting Raz. At one point, a voice can be heard yelling at the cops, �He�s a member of Knesset, you idiots!� Raz says to the police, as they push and drag him toward the police van, �Did you see me resisting arrest? Did you?!�
After the round of arrests, the remaining demonstrators staged a spontaneous sit-in on the road, blocking traffic at the intersection in front of the ministry of defense for more than an hour as police stood by, alternately threatening arrests and trying to negotiate with the apparent leaders of the demonstration. At one point, a young woman seated on the pavement shouted into a megaphone, �Return the people you arrested and we will disperse! Otherwise you will have to arrest all of us by force and there are a lot of us, so think about that carefully!� The demonstrators responded with shouts of approval and applause.
Eventually, after having brought traffic on one of Tel Aviv�s main thoroughfares to a halt for about 90 minutes, the demonstrators decided to move to the police station on north Dizengoff Street, where the arrested protestors were being held pending arraignment.
[...] According to the website MySay, the army uses a type of tear gas that is the most toxic and dangerous type available. The gas, known by the acronym CS, was outlawed in the UK as far back as 1964 due to concerns over its many side effects � one of which is the potentially deadly accumulation of fluids in the lungs several hours after exposure to the gas.
In a follow-up story Lisa Goldman illustrates how the IDF spins this event.
ReplyDeleteHow the army spin machine works in the Abu Rahmah killing
With the willing help of a rightwing blogosphere, they start the rumor mill and run with the �multiple accounts� trick that is the mother�s milk of conspiracy theorists and bloggers. Jawaher Abu Rahmah wasn�t even at the demonstration, wrote a �friend� of the family in a facebook post, she was at home 500 meters away. (Of course, even if that were true, that would be an indictment of the gas used by the IDF.) But how do we really know she even died from gas inhalation? Rumors start to fly that she was pregnant and that this was an honour killing. The IDF and the �responsible� rightwing blogosphere reports the libels as �unconfirmed� � but report them nonetheless.
And then, the insinuations begin�why won�t the Palestinian Authority release the medical report? What is it trying to hide? (By the way, has the PA ever received a medical report from the IDF?)
But � aw, crap � the PA then releases the medical report! So now the task is to use the medical report to try to discredit the testimony. She had been treated with doses of antibiotics � maybe that means she had leukemia. Ergo, she had cancer. Ergo, she died of cancer (by a remarkable coincidence, at the very time of the protest. ) And no postmortem was conducted; only the family�s word was taken for it. And the body was buried on the same day. What are the Pals trying to hide? Why can�t they be like Jews, who rarely conduct postmortems and bury their dead a long time after death?
All this information is presented by the army twice � first as fact to a select group of rightwing bloggers who will lap up any vomit (sorry, it�s a Biblical phrase) the IDF Spokesperson gives them. After all, there is a hasbara war. Then, as �questions� that the IDF will release late in the evening for the morning papers.
Etcetera... More at the link.