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Palestinian victim of alleged near-lynching Ziad Hilal Al-Majaydeh (Khaled al-Astel) is seen throwing rocks at Israelis before he was injured.
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners July 6, 2005 |
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| From right: Members of the Israeli media stage a "photoshoot" in which they instruct the "victim" how to pose for maximum effect. |
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Evidence that has accumulated over the last week -- including photos, an interview with the victim himself, and eyewitness accounts -- suggests that the government's version of the story of the near-lynching of the Palestinian youth by Israeli settlers is not the whole truth. On the contrary, it may have been cooked up in an attempt to cover up the IDF's role in the attack.
Just yesterday, IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz, in an interview with Haaretz, commended soldiers for their morality and strength in demonstrating such restraint during the disengagement, referring specifically to the photo snapped while an IDF soldier in Muasi appeared to be shielding with his own body the Palestinian teenager, Hilal Ziad Al-Majaydeh (or, as his name was reported in Ynet Khaled al-Astel), who was the victim of an alleged lynching by far-right activists last week. (See photo, lower left)
"The photograph of the soldier shielding the boy with his body is a most important image which reflects the values which we, as soldiers, abide by and want to live by," said Halutz.
But, according to the victim himself, it was actually an IDF soldier that was responsible for the attack. In a radio interview (in Hebrew) with Gabi Gazit, Israeli journalist Avi Sacharov -- who interviewed the victim -- says that at least initially, the attack was not perpetrated by settlers, but instead by a soldier, to whom Al-Majaydeh assigns 100% of the blame.
Here's the transcript of the interview in English:
Gabi Gazit: Good morning, Avi.
Avi Sacharov: Good morning, Gabi.
Gabi: Ok, a few minutes ago you spoke to... What is the name of the guy?
Avi: Hilal Ziad Al-Majaydeh.
Gabi: Exactly. He is the victim of the lynch which almost succeed, but in the end, he stayed alive. So, let's hear the conversation.
Avi: Because the interview was held in Arabic, I will try to play short segments and then translate them. But first, some basic information about Al-Majaydeh: He is 18, lives in the area of El- Malwasia. I asked him a few personal questions: if he belonged to [terror] organizations or whether he attended rallies in the past. He responded, "I am pretty much a simple guy," and he really does sound like one. He said, "I just wanted to earn a living and bring some bread to the table. This has nothing to do with politics. I am not a big Palestinian organizations expert. On that fateful day [the day on which I was attacked] I had gone to the beach to go fishing, which is my profession. When my net came up empty, I changed our location at the beach. It was then that I noticed a crowd of residents and soldiers, and approached them to see what was going on."
He said that when he arrived to the place, nearby his house, he saw a religious settler trying to get into the house, so he hit him in the head.
After that -- and this is the important part -- one of the soldiers came and took him to an isolated place and hit him in his stomach and head.
I asked him: "Are you sure it was a soldier?"
He answered: "Yes, the soldier. Not a settler. In my head and stomach."
According to Al-Majaydeh's claim, the first one to hit him was a soldier. Even before those now infamous TV pictures. The soldier hit him with his M16.
Gabi: But we didn't see that on TV...
Avi: No, we didn't see it, but... the part we saw on TV he said he doesn't remember.
Gabi: What did he tell you about the part that we didn't see?
Avi: He said, "The soldier took me to that isolated place. He caught me."
Gabi: At that same place where we saw him lying down?
Avi: Right. He said, "He put me right near the wall, and let other people hit me. Those little kids came and they hit me until someone came from behind, he hit my head with a stone and I lost consciousness."
But, he attributes everything that happened to him up to that minute that he lost consciousness, to that specific soldier. We don't know yet know who that soldier is.
On the other hand, he admits that he wants to be a martyr, and says that he would be happier if he would have died. I asked him why he would be happier, and he explains that life in El-Malwasia isn't life at all. "The settlers won't stop chasing us, he says, and peace with the Jews won't happen because we don't like you and you don't like us."
A string of photos (see top) suggest that the Israeli media, in kahoots with the IDF, staged photographic evidence to illustrate Al-Majaydeh's victimhood, presumably to shift the public's focus onto the settlers.
At best, the Israeli media's coverage of the happening was unbalanced in favor of Al-Majaydeh, given photographic evidence of his involvement in a stone-throwing battle prior to his injury. (See above).
One eyewitness, who preferred to remain anonymous, said, "The media ignored attacks on Jewish teens which took place previous to the incident in which a Palestinian youth was hit by a rock thrown by Jewish teens. The rock attack was part of a battle, not an unprovoked incident as portrayed by the media. The Jewish teen who defended himself has been arrested, but the Palestinian stone-thrower is free and is treated like a hero.
In the meantime, after a second main suspect was arrested today, and one officer accused the IDF of "adopting norms of deceptive reporting" (according to an Arutz Sheva report), 18-year-old settler Shimon Cytryn remains the only one of three suspects whom the police have apprehended for the alleged attempted lynching. The Be'er Sheva Magistrate's Court just extended Cytryn's remand by one week. Police are still searching for two other suspects.
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