© All That’s Left: Anti-Occupation CollectiveIsraeli forces demolished 10 buildings in Sur Bahir on Monday, July 22, 2019
It was the middle of the night, but the residents of the occupied East Jerusalem town of Sur Bahir were not asleep. They were waiting for, dreading, the arrival of Israeli forces to demolish their homes.
At around 2:15am on Monday, the people's worst fears came true with the sounds of military jeeps, bulldozers, and heavy machinery rolled into their neighborhood of Wadi al-Hummus, on the outskirts of Sur Bahir, right next to Israel's separation barrier.
© All That’s Left: Anti-Occupation CollectiveHundreds of Israeli forces stormed Sur Bahir on Monday morning to begin demolishing 11 buildings in the area.
Locals told
Mondoweiss that
more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers and government workers descended upon the area, with force, and began the process of demolishing 11 buildings in the neighborhood.The buildings in question, containing some 70 apartments, were slated for demolition last month when the Israeli Supreme Court gave the final ruling —
after a seven year legal battle between residents and the state — that the buildings were to be destroyed
due to their proximity to Israel's separation barrier, citing "security concerns."
Comment: More footage of this blatant violation of international law:
The New York Times reported on the demolitions, but gives credibility to the Israeli claims that the buildings were "mostly uninhabited" and represented a "severe security threat" by providing "cover to suicide bombers and other terrorists [i.e. Palestinians]". Suicide bombings in Israel stopped years ago. As James North writes on
Mondoweiss:
But Kershner's most impressive effort at whitewash comes immediately, in the 4th paragraph. Here is her tortured sentence:
The decision to proceed with the demolition underscored the legal complexities and human difficulties caused by the absence of internationally recognized boundaries and competing authorities.
This sentence is a masterpiece of deceit. Here is what Kershner should have said: "Israel illegally occupies West Bank Palestine and refuses to negotiate borders. Even though the Palestinian Authority is supposed to be in charge of the area where Israel demolished the apartment buildings, and even granted building permits there, Israel simply overrode the P.A. and tore them down."
Kershner's euphemism about "human difficulties" is also repulsive. Her article continues, "By late afternoon, the police were still barring entry to the neighborhood to all nonresidents, including reporters."
So Kershner just gave up trying to talk to eyewitnesses, confining herself to quoting a couple of Palestinians who were outside the police perimeter. Contrast that with our own Yumna Patel, whose lengthy report includes comment from the Palestinian activist Hamada Hamada: "'The soldiers were really aggressive, pushing and shoving people, firing tear gas at us, and even beating some people with the butts of their rifles.'"
Two outstanding reporters from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Amira Hass and Jack Khoury, also managed to speak to the actual Palestinian victims:
"I built this house stone by stone. It was my dream to live in this house. Now I am losing everything," said Fadi al-Wahash, 37, his voice breaking as a bulldozer destroyed his unfinished three-floor house.
Hass and Khoury reported that Israel sent 700 police and 200 soldiers to destroy the homes — figures nowhere reported in the Times. The photo accompanying Kershner's article also left out this massive assault, portraying only a bulldozer in the distance and a couple of blurry army vehicles in the foreground.
There are other documented reports that Israeli soldiers celebrated and cheered as they blew up the Palestinian homes — a fact also unmentioned in the Times.
The Haaretz article hinted at the real reason for the demolitions. There was no mention of stopping "suicide bombers." Instead, Hass and Khoury quoted a left-wing Israeli activist who charged that the demolitions were part of Israel's "demographic war" against East Jerusalem, the ongoing effort to squeeze Palestinians out of the city entirely.
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