I’ve been accused of being too critical of “the Right,” which I plead guilty to, though noting my criticism extends the Democratic Party “Right,” the Biden/Clinton wing, with their Goldwater inspired “Scoop Jackson” ideology of extreme militarism. But I reserve even more scorn for those American right-wingers sharing moral culpability with the Radical Israeli Settler Right, meaning those falling under the Tikvah Fund/Kohelet Foundation umbrella, meaning all of the American Right today, and it’s Republican Party, all standing shoulder to shoulder with Israeli Settler Yoram Hazony and his Settler ideology of National Conservatism. With his adherents making up the “ideological infrastructure” that extremist political movements are reliant upon. With their “aiding and abetting”even if only ideologically/intellectually, making them equally culpable as the people who pull the triggers. Just ask the CIA! Thus, my vituperation toward them (and the CIA :-) https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/twilight-zone/2023-03-11/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/sameh-was-an-aid-worker-who-had-settler-friends-it-didnt-save-him-from-the-pogrom/00000186-cdf3-d739-a9cf-ddfb43a10000 Sameh Aqtash Was an Aid Worker Who Had Settler Friends. It Didn't Save Him From the PogromHumanitarian aid worker Sameh Aqtash had just returned to his tiny West Bank village from Turkey after organizing truckloads of food for earthquake survivors. He was shot dead when pogromist settlers heading for the town of Hawara passed by |
Here’s Reem, being fed milk from a baby bottle by Sameh. A soft, caressing hand is also seen in this family video, gently stroking her. Reem is a gazelle that Sameh Aqtash found in the wild and adopted. Reem is the Arabic word for that delicate creature, and it is also the name of Sameh’s 8-month-old daughter. Now he will no longer be able to care for either of them: An armed Israeli – perhaps a settler, but possibly a soldier – shot 37-year-old Sameh to death last week. “Murder” is the best way to define that horrific act. It was the night settlers ran amok in the town of Hawara, February 26, a day after two Israeli settlers were killed nearby by Palestinians. Some of those in the rampaging crowd, prevented from joining the pogrom by army roadblocks erected after some delay, decided to vent their rage on the inhabitants of the neighboring, tiny and tranquil village of Za’atara. When the villagers tried to protect themselves and their property against the rioters who were about to invade Za’atara, under the auspices of the Israel Defense Forces – someone shot and killed Sameh. He was a singular individual, a pious Muslim who traveled the world and volunteered to help those in need. Four days before he was murdered, he had returned from a 10-day stay in Turkey, where he aided survivors of the recent earthquake. A few years ago, he traveled through Asia and Africa, helping to build mosques and dig wells in Bangladesh and Uganda. Now he’s dead. And his death is likely to go unpunished. - Advertisment - Za’atara is home to 80 souls, all from the same family, who live in a dense cluster of homes on a hill north of the Za’atara Junction, also known as the Tapuah Junction. Highway 60 passes through there on the way to Hawara, leading to Nablus. Israel does not permit construction in the tiny hamlet, so most of the community’s younger generation are compelled to move to the nearby town of Beita. A fence encircles Za’atara; a tiny industrial zone is located near its entrance. There’s the metalworking shop of Sameh’s brothers, his cousin’s hardware store and the factory owned by Sameh himself, Abu Yusuf Stoves, which manufactures some 2,000 iron, wood-burning stoves every year and also imports models from Turkey. A stove made by Sameh costs 500 shekels ($140), an imported one goes for 2,000 shekels. The locally made stoves are the pride of Za’atara. They’re also sold in Israel – here’s a business card, complete with logo. His brothers, Abd el-Munaim, 49, and Rashdan Aqtash, 47, are standing in their gloomy factory, where they make metal fences, window bars and bus-stop frames. Their late brother was sitting on the bench of a bus stop on display in front just minutes before he was killed. The brothers resemble each other in their traditional robes, beards and facial expressions. They conduct a lot of business with Israel; Abd el-Munaim speaks a good Hebrew, as Sameh did. There are now five brothers and five sisters in the family; one brother lives in Bursa, in northwestern Turkey, the other siblings are scattered here, between Za’atra and Beita.  We are sitting with Abdulkarim Sadi and Salma a-Deb’i, two field researchers from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, in the office of a warehouse owned by Sameh’s cousin, Ayman Aqtash, in the industrial zone. Ayman is showing us footage from the security cameras that was taken on that Sunday night. That morning the family had worked as usual. Around midday two brothers from the settlement of Har Bracha nearby were killed; toward evening the Aqtashes learned via the social media that settlers were planning to avenge the deaths and to storm Hawara. The men of Za’atara gathered in front of the metalwork shop, inside the fence, and awaited developments. There were about 10 of them at first. When darkness fell they shut the iron gate and turned off the lights. They had never been attacked by settlers; in fact, they tell us, they had good relations with them – especially Sameh, who was friendly with a couple, Rachel and Yisrael, in Kfar Tapuah, a settlement on the other side of the road. He had even encouraged them to get married. When one of Sameh’s daughters fell ill with a heart ailment, Rachel brought her medication from Israel. His brothers add that Sameh used his 4x4 Land Rover to pull quite a few travelers, including Israelis, out of snow and sand.
At about 8 P.M. a few dozen settlers were spotted striding along Highway 60, not far from Za’atara, Abd el-Munaim and his cousin Ayman tell us. As they marched, they shouted vilifications and curses against the Palestinians, including the de rigueur “Death to the Arabs!” Some were armed with pistols, some were masked. Around 10 of them veered off the road and approached Za’atara’s fence in a menacing manner. They were holding jerricans and apparently intended to set fire to a crane owned by the Aqtash family, which was parked outside. The village men decided to chase them off. They emerged from their hiding place in the metalwork shop, surprising the settlers, pounding the tin walls of the building to frighten them and throwing stones to scare them away. The settlers fled, but the villagers became petrified with fear that they would return. The men called the council head of Beita to tell him about the settlers and the fear that they would return. At their behest, he called the Palestinian Coordination and Liaison Office, and also recruited about 100 residents from his town, who arrived in short order to assist the group from Za’atara. The settlers indeed reappeared, about an hour later, this time in far larger numbers, together with a settlement security coordinator in his vehicle, probably from Tapuah. A few IDF jeeps also approached; their occupants initially observed the events idly from the highway. The security camera footage shows dozens of settlers on the road, some trying to bedazzle the besieged inhabitants by training flashlights with green laser beams on their facers. Then bursts of gunfire are heard. The villagers estimate that dozens of rounds were fired at them; the walls of the metal workshop are riddled with bullet holes. The only settler who was armed with a machine gun and not a pistol was the security coordinator, as were the soldiers, who after a time apparently also joined in the shooting. Before the shots erupted, Sameh had approached the rioters and tried to persuade them to leave. He and the security man shouted at each other. “Take your crazy people and get out of here,” Sameh yelled, and the man screamed “You get out!” “I’m in my home,” Sameh retorted. The shouting between the two intensified. For this reason, Sameh’s brothers think the security coordinator was the one who fired the fatal shot. Some of his relatives say they saw a figure in civilian attire position himself on the road in a firing position, but the video footage doesn’t show who shot Sameh. “A boy who’s holding a sandwich that someone comes and grabs,” says one of his brothers, “will try to get the sandwich back by force. They wanted to burn our houses and so we started to shout at them and throw stones. After the first stone they started to shoot at us with live ammunition, not rubber-tipped bullets and not tear-gas grenades, only live fire.” A video clip posted on the Haaretz website this week by reporter Hagar Shezaf shows that soldiers were present when Sameh was shot and did nothing. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit told Haaretz that “the circumstances of the deceased’s death are being clarified.” A clarification, not even an investigation. Sameh was hit in the stomach and collapsed. All the roads were blocked by the IDF, and Sameh had to be transferred from one private vehicle to another, via dirt roads, until they managed to reach the small hospital in Hawara. There was little the physicians could do there. The bullet had exploded in Sameh’s stomach and wreaked havoc. Sameh has left behind his wife Ahlam, 32, and five children: Assiya, 15, Yusuf, 12, Huda, 10, Yunis, 5, and little Reem. The family had accompanied him some weeks beforehand to Turkey, where they stayed in the home of his brother, Yasir, in Bursa. The brothers organized two truckloads of food, received a permit from the relevant authorities and proceeded to the disaster areas in Antakya, Iskenderun and Reyhanli to help in the rehabilitation efforts. When visiting, we see a remarkable family that’s displaying great equanimity in response to the disaster that has befallen them, owing to their faith. “This is what Allah has allotted us,” Abd el-Munaim says simply. Without tears, the siblings talk about their brother, who they say was always determined to help others. They recall that when one of the stores Abd el-Munaim owned in the market in Beita was torched in riots that erupted there in 2014, against the background of a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israel, Sameh immediately brought the skeleton of a truck he owned to the metalworking factory. From it he fashioned a temporary structure to replace the store that had burned down; he brought it to Beita without saying a word to his brother. “He didn’t want to take a shekel,” his cousin Ayman says. “You wouldn’t believe it. That was Sameh.” Now his siblings have mobilized to take care of his fatherless children – and Reem, the little gazelle. Click the alert icon to follow topics: |
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