24 February 2010: Suspicion that soldiers shot Faiz Faraj to death in Hebron as he lay wounded, endangering nobody
Source: B'Tselem
On Friday, 12 February 2010, at around 4:00 P.M., soldiers shot Faiz Ahmad Sa’id Faraj, a 41-year-old resident of Hebron, wounding him seriously. He died about an hour later from his wounds. The incident took place in the a-Sheikh neighborhood in Hebron. Faraj, who owned a shoe factory and had a permit to enter Israel for business matters, was married and had nine children.
According to announcements by army officials that were published in the media, an IDF force opened fire at Faraj, who had tried to stab one of the soldiers. He was severely wounded and he died from his wounds on the way to receiving treatment at a hospital in Israel.
B'Tselem’s investigation revealed a different picture. Eyewitnesses related that a force of about six soldiers had come from the a-Sheikh neighborhood and were heading toward New a-Shalaleh Street. The soldiers and Faraj got into a physical altercation at a road leading up from a-Shalaleh Street. The witnesses stated that he stumbled and then began to walk away, and that the soldiers called to him to stop. When he didn't, the soldiers fired several shots into the air and then shot him in the legs, from approximately ten meters away. He was struck in the right leg and fell to the ground. When Faraj got up and tried to move further away from the soldiers, they fired again, striking him, and he fell again. While lying on the ground, Faraj moved his hands, and then the soldiers shot him a third time. In all three shootings, the soldiers stayed in the same spot and did not approach him. They fired a total of about ten shots. Faraj was hit by bullets in the right thigh, in the stomach, and in the left hand. According to information B'Tselem received, when the gunfire stopped, Faraj lay on the ground for a number of minutes without moving and was bleeding profusely in the right leg. None of the soldiers made any effort to provide him first-aid.
Several minutes later, a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance arrived at the scene, and the Red Crescent paramedics gave Faraj first-aid. They managed to slow the bleeding and then put him in the ambulance to take him to the nearby governmental ‘Aliyah Hospital. At that point, an army vehicle pulled up, and an officer got out and ordered the ambulance, which had already begun to move, to stop. The soldiers aimed their weapons at the ambulance and prevented it from moving any further. When the ambulance stopped, the soldiers removed Faraj, put him into the army vehicle and drove south on a-Shalaleh Street. Half an hour later, around 5:00 P.M., the vehicle was seen at Gross Square, in Hebron, next to a Magen David Adom [Israeli] ambulance. Around 5:45 P.M., Faraj’s body was moved from the Magen David Adom ambulance to a Red Crescent ambulance in the area of Ras al-Jura, north of Hebron.
The circumstances of the incident, as they appear from B'Tselem’s investigation, contradict the announcements issued by the army. First, although B'Tselem’s information regarding the events preceding Faraj’s walking away from the soldiers is incomplete, it is not clear what danger he them at the time he was shot, after he had moved away from them. Second, even assuming that he posed some danger to the soldiers, the initial gunfire, in which he was struck in the leg and fell to the ground, was sufficient to eliminate the danger. Once wounded, he no longer posed a danger to the soldiers, and they could easily have prevented him from getting away.
In addition, B’Tselem’s information indicates that the soldiers delayed medical treatment that may have saved Faraj’s life. First, they did not give him any first-aid, and second, the officer who arrived at the scene prevented Faraj’s evacuation by ambulance to ‘Aliyah Hospital, only a short distance away, an evacuation that could possibly have saved his life. The officer’s order to transfer Faraj to the floor of an army vehicle, in which he could not receive adequate treatment, was unreasonable. Even if the objective was to take him to a hospital in Israel, the added complication of evacuating him in an army vehicle and transferring him to a Magen David Adom ambulance resulted in significant delay in time that might have been critical in saving his life.
Given the findings of the investigation, B'Tselem wrote to the Judge Advocate for Operational Affairs, demanding a Military Police investigation into the shooting of Faiz Faraj and the delay in medical treatment.
"Stayin Alive In Hebron" Trailer:
"opheliasmedia | July 29, 2010
Stayin' Alive in Hebron tells the stories of five families that live in the H2 sector of Hebron in the West Bank. H2 is known by the United Nations Report as the most violent area in the West Bank because of the relationship of the Israeli settlers to the Palestinians, who have lived there for generations.
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Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog
Friday, July 30, 2010
Selected Videos
- ***Alnakba [The Catastrophe] - [P1] The Threads of the Conspiracy [P2] Crushing the Revolution
- ***Alnakba [The Catastrophe] - [P3] Ethnic Cleansing [P4] Nakba Continued
- **Al Nakba [La Catástrofe] - [P1] Los Hilos de la Conspiración [P2] Aplastar la Revoución
- **AlNakba [La Catásrofe] - [P3] Limpieza Étnica
- *A Palestinian Woman
- *Azmi Bishara - Interview:
- *Azmi Bishara on Israeli Apartheid
- *Azmi Bishara: The Last Colonial Question
- *Blood & Religion, Unmasking the Israeli State
- *De Facto State of Lawlessness
- *Drying up Palestine
- *Edward Said - On Orientalism
- *Edward Said: Lecture The Myth of 'The Clash of Civilzations'
- *Edward Said: Memory, Inequality and Power: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights
- *Edward Said: Palestine, Iraq and U.S. Policy
- *Francis Boyle - Palestinians and International law
- *From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State 1 - Diana Buttu"
- *From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State 2 - Amira Hass"
- *George Bisharat - Ending the Palestinian Nakba
- *Ghada Karmi at Yale
- *Ghada Karmi: Why Israel is a Failed State
- *Ilan Pappe - Interview
- *Ilan Pappe - Israel's 1967 Plan for the West Bank and Gaza Strip
- *Ilan Pappe on the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
- *In the Spider's Web
- *Interview: Ghassan Andoni
- *Israel's Secret Weapon (Israel's WMD)
- *Jeff Halper - Israeli Apartheid and the Paths to a Just Peace
- *Jeff Halper- The United States, Israel and the American Jewish Community
- *Jenin Jenin
- *John Pilger - Palestine is still the issue
- *John Pilger - The War on Democracy
- *Landscapes of Occupation in Palestine
- *Muhammad Jaradat & Eitan Bronstein: 1948 and the Right of Return
- *Noam Chomsky - Middle East Crisis
- *Noam Chomsky on Gaza - MIT
- *Norman Fikelstein - The Israel-Palestine conflict: what we can learn from Gandhi
- *Norman Finkelstein speech at Columbia University (3 parts video)
- *Occupation 101
- *Off The Charts - If Americans Knew
- *Palestine Street -1- The Lost Bride
- *Palestine Street -2- The Bride in exile
- *Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: Media & the Israel-Palestine Conflict
- *People and The Land: The Story of a People Under Occupation
- *Phyllis Bennis - "Dual Occupations: Iraq and Palestine in Bush's Empire"
- *Rachel: An American Conscience
- *Rashid Khalidi - Palestine: 40 Years of Occupation, 60 Years of Dispossession
- *Rep. Paul Findley Dares to Speak Out -- Again! AIPAC exposed
- *Salman Abu Sitta: Atlas Palestine
- *Salman Abu Sitta: The Geography of Occupation
- *Secret WMD in Israel
- *Technical Error at Beit Hanoun
- *Tegenlicht ('Backlight') A Documentary on the Israel Lobby -
- *The Bases Are Loaded: US Permanent Military Presence in Iraq
- *The Easiest Targets: The Israeli Policy of Strip Searching Women and Children
- *The influence of the Israel Lobby on American foreign policy
- *The Iron Wall
- *The Israeli Wall in Palestinian Lands
- *The Killing Zone
- *The Unrecognized
- *This is Not Your War
- *Wall of Shame
- Watch "If Americans Knew" Videos
- Watch Alternate Focus Videos
- Watch B'Tselem Videos
- watch ISM Videos
- Watch pdxjustice Videos
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