ISRAEL/PALESTINE: Israeli “Firefighters” Shoot Palestinian While IDF Soldiers Do Nothing

Posted on May 21, 2012 by willyloman

by Scott Creighton

An Israeli peace organization B’Tselem has released a video of a shooting that took place this past Saturday in the Palestinian village of Asira al-Qibliya.

According to witnesses, Israeli settlers had come from their neighboring Izhar settlement to throw rocks at village houses and Palestinians and to set fires. Two of the settlers were armed and one seemed to be carrying a strange bottle of liquid which could have possibly been a Molotov cocktail. A spokesman for the settlement later called them “firefighters” there to “put out fires” so clearly fire was indeed an aspect of this incident though not included in the video below.

Palestinian youths then start throwing rocks back at the settlers and the settlers shot a 24-year-old Palestinian, Fathi Assayara. It is reported by B’Tselem that the young man is recovering in the hospital in stable condition.

The IDF soldiers seen standing around the settlers doing nothing while they throw stones and shoot at the Palestinians.

“From the footage of the incident, it seems that the soldiers that were present didn’t take any measures to stop the settlers from throwing stones, lighting fires, and firing live rounds at the Palestinians. The soldiers didn’t try to get the settlers to leave and in fact stood by them while they threw stones and shot at the Palestinians,”

Spokesman for the settlers spun it this way. They said that the group of settlers was actually a “firefighting crew” who were there to extinguish the fires, not to set them and that the IDF soldiers were standing around like that to shield the firefighters from the barrage of stones. Can’t you see them shielding the firefighters from the stone in the video below?

Yet in a still image captured from the video by the Haaratz news service, you can clearly see one of the settlers (the one with the automatic weapon) has a bottle of something in his hand. Is that typically what Israeli “firefighters” use to put out fires? One little bottle and an automatic weapon? Or does it make more sense that the Palestinians were correct, the settlers were there starting fires, and what is seen in the image is a Molotov cocktail?

 

Settler shooting Palestinian, 'Asira al-Qibliya, 19.5.2012, 

raw footage, 2nd camera

Firefighters, what a joke!!!