It was a cold winter night, a few minutes after 3 A.M., but Omar Abdelmajeed As'ad was driving home. Since his return 11 years earlier from a prolonged stay in the U.S. for his old age, he often spent time with his childhood friends from the village, drinking coffee, playing cards and talking into the night, every evening with someone else. That is how it was on the night of January 12, 2022.
Jaljulya in the Ramallah District is a village of palaces. Most of the people live in the United States. At 3 A.M. the road is empty and dark. Suddenly, As'ad saw soldiers standing next to Ali's grocery store. They jumped into the middle of the road and stopped As'ad's car.
The 80-year-old man was frightened to death. He only wanted to go home in peace. The soldiers ordered him to get out of the car. He tried to refuse. One of them forcibly removed him, and his fellow soldiers cuffed his hands behind his back with black plastic ties that were found later.
The soldiers gagged him with a rag, covered his eyes and dragged him to a house under construction nearby. One of his shoes fell off, and he walked with one foot bare. As'ad was heavyset and had difficulty breathing.
His village was affluent and silent, and the soldiers went there just to abuse its residents. They decided to stop anyone who was driving that night on the road, from the village bread truck to the greengrocer. As'ad too. They searched his body; maybe the 80-year-old Palestinian-American was carrying IEDs. And he was left with a thin sweater on a cold night.
When they reached the building site's courtyard, where they had already brought a number of detainees, the soldiers threw him onto the floor. He fell, handcuffed, onto his stomach. They tossed him into the left corner of the yard, next to sacks of construction sand, as if tossing another sack of sand. "Why didn't they at least bring him a chair?" asked his brother, Amar, the next day when he came to visit from Racine, Wisconsin, after not seeing his brother for 11 years.
The courtyard had been turned into a holding pen for the men caught on the soldiers' hunting night: five innocent men. One, a greengrocer, Mamdouh Abd al-Rahman, told us that he lay in the courtyard, the soldiers standing over him with rifles drawn. He felt his body touching something motionless; he thought it was a dead man.
As'ad had died from fear and cold. At 4 A.M., when the soldiers realized he had died, they quickly removed his handcuffs to conceal evidence, and fled the scene. Their victim could have been their grandfather. Had a Palestinian abused a soldier's grandfather, Israel would have erupted: Animals, how they abuse old men!
I will not forget the events of that night, which we learned of when we arrived at the village. I will not forget the image of an old man thrown onto the floor cuffed and gagged. It soon became apparent that they were – again, yes, again – soldiers of the battalion with the grotesque name "Netzah Yehuda," Eternal Judea. The Haaretz archives are full of their abuses and crimes. Their luck ran out; this time their victim was an American. After more than two years in which no soldier was indicted for the old man's death, the Americans decided to break the silence when IDF soldiers kill their citizens.
Benny Gantz is shocked. He hastily called the U.S. secretary of state: How can you do this to the heroic soldiers of a moral army, and especially of a battalion that bears the name "Eternal"? This is precisely why we have Gantz.
Israel is insulted and shocked. Maybe the Americans will impose sanctions against more IDF units. Maybe they will discover that everyone who serves in an occupation army abuses, every day and every night.
I wish.