[Salon] The suspected offense: Throwing a firebomb. The punishment: Death - Israel News - Haaretz.com

[Todd Pierce <tepierce@outlook.com>]

Given so many “State Murders” in Israel lately, including of an American journalist, Gideon Levy is being kept very busy condemning them. And thank God for having a true hero like Gideon sharing this information to the public, like the kind of “Whistleblower” a journalist is suppost to be

With that said, 
Location, location, location, as they say in the real estate industry. If these “State assassinations” were done by German killers in WW II to Norwegians, or the French, et al., to people in “resistance movements,” US movies would be made about them, condemning the Germans (rightfully so) and celebrating the heroism of the victims of military occupation (rightfully so), like this one, and many more:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness_(1943_film)

But when the US has assassination programs, like in Vietnam with the Phoenix Program, seldom is cricism spoken, or in Israel obviously, where this is clearly a “targeted killing” (assassination) program, with this as one tactic: 

> "Abdulkarim Sadi, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, notes that this was the fifth case in recent weeks of lethal gunfire coming from armored vehicles – a door is opened for a moment, a soldier fires and the vehicle continues on its way.”
> 
This is made clear in this exchange: 

> "Two days after the fatal shooting, for example, an agent called one of the young men who’s now in the room and told him, according to the man’s account, “I am at the entrance to Azzun. Your friend has been killed, you took part in his funeral, you took part in stone throwing – let’s meet and talk about life.” To which the friend replied, “I’ve already spent four years in your prison, and I have no wish to be in contact with you.”
> 
> "Agent: “If you don’t obey and don’t show up, we will come to you and take you into custody.”


> "Young man: “My family depends on me for its livelihood – why would you want to take me in without a reason?”
> 
> "Agent: “We’ve just killed one, we will kill more.”
> 
> "That conversation took place last week."

"Its proximity to a highway used by many settlers has turned it into a sort of battlefield.” 

Obviously, the “National Conservative” Settlers, like Yoram Hazony’s comrades, must be allowed to exercise their “freedom,” to do whatever they wish, as the Nietzschean Ayn Rand would have upheld, to include stealing property and assassinating anyone who objects. 

"Let’s remind ourselves again: If that Molotov cocktail had been thrown by at a Russian armored vehicle a young Ukrainian, the Israelis would have viewed him as a hero who was not only brave but was also actualizing his right to resist occupation or invasion by force."

Instead, “resistance” of any degree, even by “expressive activities," is labeled as terrorism by the Israelis, just like the US does when it invades and occupies a foreign country. 



> https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-the-suspected-offense-throwing-a-firebomb-the-punishment-death-1.10798191?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_content=author-alert&utm_campaign=Gideon%20Levy&utm_term=20220513-18:39 <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-the-suspected-offense-throwing-a-firebomb-the-punishment-death-1.10798191?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_content=author-alert&utm_campaign=Gideon%20Levy&utm_term=20220513-18:39>
> 
> The Suspected Offense: Throwing a Firebomb. The Punishment: Death
> 
> Arrested for the first time at age 14, Yahya Adwan spent the rest of his short life in jail for throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at Israeli troops. Last week a soldier shot and killed the 27-year-old Palestinian
> 
> Gideon Levy </misc/writers/WRITER-1.4968119>May. 13, 2022 6:15 PM
> First there was his arrest at the age of 14, and then two-and-a-half years in the Megiddo and Hasharon prisons. He had been in ninth grade before his incarceration and never went back to school. About 18 months after being released, in 2014, he was sentenced to four more years, again due to various charges involving disturbing the peace. In 2018 he was imprisoned for an additional year and a half. All told, eight years in Israeli jails since the age of 14. Last week he was shot to death by an Israel Defense Forces soldier, at age 27.
> 
> That is a résumé of the life and death of Yahya Adwan, who made a living collecting scrap metal from garbage.
> 
> One of the earlier photographs of Yahya was taken in the Salem military court in the West Bank four years ago. His hands and legs are shackled, and he is being led by a policeman wearing a white kippa. Four of the youth’s five brothers have also been incarcerated over the years; one of them, Zaid, 26, is still in prison – he has another seven months to go.
> 
> The fifth brother, Umayer, has not been arrested yet; his future is still ahead of him. When we meet him this week, Umayer is already wearing a black T-shirt that bears the image of an M-16 rifle: The symbol is the latest hit in West Bank fashion, the new Nike of Palestine.
> 
> 
> The Adwans, from left: Umayer, Abed, Ali and Mohammed. Credit: Alex Levac
> This is a fighting family. Now also a bereaved one.
> 
> Azzun, which lies east of the city of Qalqilyah, is a tough town – militant, steeped in suffering and a frequent target of raids by the Israel Defense Forces. Its proximity to a highway used by many settlers has turned it into a sort of battlefield. When we arrived this past Monday to visit the Adwan family, we encountered two armed soldiers at the town’s main entrance, their rifles trained on every vehicle going in or out. A cloud of army-issue tear gas hung in the air, stinging the eyes and choking the throat. Some hours later, when we were set to leave, Israeli troops had lowered the yellow barrier, blocking entry to the village.
> 
> A scent of the past wafts over Azzun, the scent of intifada.
> 
> Is blood of iconic journalist redder than blood of anonymous Palestinians? </opinion/.premium-the-killing-of-shireen-abu-akleh-now-you-re-appalled-1.10793446>
> Jews don’t have a ‘holiest’ site </israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-jews-don-t-have-a-holiest-site-1.10797092>
> At the entrance to a one-room structure, a kind of guest room next to the home of the dead man’s family, a group of young people – Yahya’s brothers and friends – sat, their faces grim and angry. After Yahya was killed, a few of them received threatening calls from Shin Bet security service agents. Two days after the fatal shooting, for example, an agent called one of the young men who’s now in the room and told him, according to the man’s account, “I am at the entrance to Azzun. Your friend has been killed, you took part in his funeral, you took part in stone throwing – let’s meet and talk about life.” To which the friend replied, “I’ve already spent four years in your prison, and I have no wish to be in contact with you.”
> 
> Agent: “If you don’t obey and don’t show up, we will come to you and take you into custody.”
> 
> 
> Yahya Adwan.Credit: Alex Levac
> Young man: “My family depends on me for its livelihood – why would you want to take me in without a reason?”
> 
> Agent: “We’ve just killed one, we will kill more.”
> 
> That conversation took place last week. In the meantime, this handsome young man is sitting here, dressed in black. “That’s how they provoke the young people,” says Yahya’s 55-year-old father, Ali. That same agent, he adds, called another of Yahya’s friends – following the clashes between local residents and security forces that erupted after Yahya’s funeral – and threatened that he would become a cripple one day. “We will break your legs,” the agent threatened the friend.
> 
> On Friday night, April 29, immediately after the attack on the settlement of Ariel, in which an Israeli security guard was killed <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-man-killed-in-shooting-outside-israeli-settlement-assailant-flees-1.10771116>, army forces entered Azzun as part of the hunt for the terrorists. Initially, two jeeps (the catch-all term used for all armored vehicles) drove through town, and shortly afterward a larger force of three or four jeeps arrived. It was close to midnight, and all the town’s young people were in the streets – a custom following the meal that ends the daily Ramadan fast. At the sight of the armored vehicles hurtling down the main street against the direction of the traffic, the young men threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the forces.
> 
> 
> The West Bank town of Azzun.Credit: Alex Levac
> Yahya was one of those on the main street. He may have thrown a Molotov cocktail. Video footage shows a young man throwing a firebomb that flared up as it hit a jeep before fizzling out; according to one account, Yahya threw it. Let’s remind ourselves again: If that Molotov cocktail had been thrown by at a Russian armored vehicle a young Ukrainian, the Israelis would have viewed him as a hero who was not only brave but was also actualizing his right to resist occupation or invasion by force.
> 
> That night in Azzun, a jeep stopped and a soldier opened the door and fired three live rounds in Yahya’s direction. Two of the bullets hit him, one from behind near his waist, another entered his back and exited from his chest. The wounds indicate that he was shot as he fled. He fell to the ground and died instantly. His leg was broken, too, possibly from the fall.
> 
> Abdulkarim Sadi, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, notes that this was the fifth case in recent weeks of lethal gunfire coming from armored vehicles – a door is opened for a moment, a soldier fires and the vehicle continues on its way.
> 
> The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated in reply to a query from Haaretz this week: “On April 30, during the pursuit of the terrorist squad that perpetrated the attack in Ariel, an IDF force operated on the outskirts of the village of Azzun, which is in the Ephraim Territorial Brigade. A violent disturbance developed there, in which stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown at the force. The soldiers responded with gunfire at one of the suspects and identified a hit. The circumstances of the case are undergoing clarification.”
> 
> Sitting next to Ali, who occasionally works as a farmer and is the father of six sons and two daughters, is his son Mohammed, 31, who lost the vision in his left eye in an Israeli prison. The family maintains that an eye disease he had was not treated properly during his incarceration. At the time Mohammed was detained for interrogation, in 2011, he had an appointment for surgery at the St. John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem. He never got there. By the time he was released, 40 days later, the eye could no longer be saved. It’s gray and glassy, lifeless.
> 
> 
> Azzun, this week.Credit: Alex Levac
> As to Yahya, Ali says that after his release from his first prison term, he had become aggressive and occasionally violent. “He came back a different person,” Ali says. “He was arrested at such a young age and was sent to a prison, not a hotel – and you know what it means to be in prison.”
> 
> Yahya tried to study for the matriculation exams while in jail, but never took them. After his second arrest, he took part for a few days in an inmates’ hunger strike while he was undergoing interrogation. His father says he lost his fear: both of prisons and interrogations.
> 
> Before his death, the young man had almost completed construction of his own apartment, on the floor above Mohammed’s home, in a building near their parents’ house. He had intended to find a bride soon.
> 
> The walls of the small guest room where we are sitting are light blue, there’s a sound system, chairs and beds. The last time the army came here to look for Yahya was in March. The soldiers were told that he was in the apartment under construction. Yahya was taken in for questioning and released a few hours later. On his last day, Yahya ate the pre-fast meal in his apartment, brought up to him by Mohammed. Yahya was especially attached to Mohammed’s daughter, Shams, who’s 2 and a half. The little girl now enters the room in a black muslin dress, gold earrings and white muslin socks. On Friday, hours before his death, Yahya had asked Mohammed to send Shams upstairs for a visit. That was their last time together. Her father says that she was even more attached to her uncle than to him, and that since Yahya’s death, she hasn’t stopped asking about him. Mohammed explained to her that Yahya has gone away and will never come back.
> 
> No tears are shed here, certainly not in the presence of strangers. Mohammed says he saw Yahya on the street about 40 minutes before he was killed. The bullets struck him at around 12:40 A.M., early Saturday morning. The Fatah movement adopted him, publishing his death notices; in prison, too, he was always in the Fatah wing.
> 
> 
> Shams, Yahya Adwan’s niece, in the family home in Azzun, this week. The little girl and her uncle had a special bond.Credit: Alex Levac
> The last photograph of him was taken in the Azzun garbage dump. Three of the brothers – Yahya, Mohammed and Abed – are next to a garbage truck that has arrived from an Arab locale in Israel and is disgorging sand and construction debris. The trio stand on the newly dumped mound of sand and garbage, scrounging for scraps of metal.
> 
> Video clips show Yahya singing – in his car and at home. One photo shows the new clothes he bought for Eid al-Fitr, spread out on the bed ahead of the recent holiday, which he didn’t get to celebrate.
> 
> He had been standing on one of the main streets of Azzun, not far from home, at the entrance to the Paradise supermarket, when he tried to flee the shots that were fired at him; he collapsed next to the store’s old refrigerator, which stands outside.
> 
> Now spray-painted graffiti images of Yahya adorn almost every wall in Azzun, along with his name and the word shahid, or martyr, inscribed below.
> 
> His intention to establish a family kindled hope in his father that he would settle down. “If he hadn’t loved life,” Ali says now, sadly, “he wouldn’t have been building his new home.”