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CounterPunch
November
26, 2002
Death and Lies
in Palestine
by ALI ABUNIMAH
I did not know Mr. Iain Hook, the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for the Palestine Refugees' (UNRWA)
official who was killed on November 22 by Israeli occupation
forces in Jenin Refugee Camp. But I do know many people --
Palestinians and internationals -- who have worked for the agency.
They are, to a person, amongst the most dedicated and compassionate
professionals I have the privilege to know. Through a sense
of humanitarian commitment they have helped Palestinian refugees
to meet their basic needs for more than fifty years, often in
the most dire and dangerous conditions. The vast majority of
UNRWA's staff are themselves Palestinian refugees, meaning that
the agency has not been a source of charity, but of empowerment
and work for those who through ethnic cleansing and war lost
everything.
Iain Hook was killed in the line of duty,
armed not with a gun, but with compassion and courage. Palestinians
mourn with Mr. Hook's family, and share their pain at his tragic
death. It should not take a tragedy like this to remind us
all to say thank you once in a while to the people at UNRWA
for all they do and have done.
When it became undeniable that Mr. Hook
was killed by an Israeli occupation soldier, Israel was quick
to produce excuses. When one excuse was exposed as a lie, another
was substituted. First, Israel claimed that Mr. Hook had been
killed in "crossfire" when occupation soldiers were
firing back at Palestinian gunmen shooting from the UN compound
where Mr. Hook was working. When it became clear that there
was no fighting in the area, another version emerged -- that
the soldier who shot him mistook the cellular telephone Mr.
Hook was carrying for a weapon.
The UN has categorically rejected Israel's
versions of events. Paul McCann, the UNRWA spokesman, said that
the preliminary inquiry into the killing "does not agree
with the statement that firing could have come from the UNRWA
compound. In fact, it is quite clear from our inquiry so far
that this report of firing coming from the compound is totally
incredible." McCann added, according to Ha'aretz, "the
compound is very small and at no stage did we lose control of
it. There were no Palestinian militants in the compound."
(26 November 2002)
UNRWA also said that prior to being shot
dead with a single bullet to the back at a time when there was
no military action in the area of the UNRWA compound, Mr. Hook
had been on his cell phone trying to arrange an evacuation from
the area.
McCann told the Independent on Sunday,
"we requested repeatedly to the Israelis that they cease
fire long enough for us to be able to evacuate not only UN staff,
but also a disabled woman who was living in the building opposite
the one the Israeli operation was centered on," but the
Israelis ignored the pleas. (24 November 2002)
Speaking from her hospital bed in Jenin,
where she was being treated for a gunshot from Israeli troops,
Irish eyewitness Caoimhe Butterly told Pacifica Radio's Democracy
Now that at one point she saw Hook come out of the UN compound
with a big blue UN flag, to alert the Israeli soldiers to the
UN presence, only to be told over a loudspeaker, "We don't
care if you are the United Nations or who you are. F**k off
and go home!" Butterly added:
"There had been resistance early
in the morning from a few fighters in the camp. I witnessed
personally the very small group -- who was fighting -- moved
to another neighborhood a good two hours before the Israelis
opened fire on the compound, before the sniper hit Iain...There
had been no gunman inside the compound... There had been resistance
going on close to the compound because a lot of Israelis stationed
in the camp were down in that area....it wasn't from within
the compound and it was a good two hours before the Israelis
opened fire into the compound."
After Hook was shot, Israel prevented
ambulances from reaching him for more than forty five minutes.
Israel's ever-changing story fits a clear
pattern of deliberate deception designed to mislead the international
media. This was most clearly on display recently when the Israeli
foreign minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed falsely that a November
15 ambush on Israeli occupation forces in Hebron had been an
appalling "Sabbath massacre" of defenseless "Jewish
worshippers." When this was exposed as fiction, Netanyahu
simply changed his story to the equally untrue claim that the
Palestinian fighters who had been lying in wait for the soldiers
had been trying to get inside the Israeli colony of Kiryat Arba
to attack defenseless civilians.
Israel's official narrative is that Israeli
occupation forces never shoot innocent, unarmed people. All
who are killed are by definition "terrorists," or
at least being used by "terrorists" as human shields.
In addition to claiming that fire was coming from the UNRWA
compound, an Israeli army statement about the killing of Hook
contained the usual lurid and infantile claim that "In
two cases terrorists opened fired while using civilians as human
shields. In one of the cases, a terrorist opened fire while
taking cover behind a woman holding an UNRWA flag." (23
November 2002)
It is no wonder that Israel grabs for
the most implausible excuses, given the enormous number of children
it kills and injures on a daily basis. On November 19 in Tul
Karm, 15-year old Amr Qudsi was shot dead by the occupation
forces. Israel said he was throwing bombs. On November 25,
8-year-old Jihad al-Faqih was shot dead in Nablus, when Israeli
occupation forces opened fire on schoolchildren breaking the
permanent curfew that has been imposed on the city for six months.
Witnesses and hospital officials said the boy had been standing
in a side alley when he was shot. "The IDF [Israel Defense
Forces]", according to Ha'aretz, "said the boy threw
two explosive devices at troops carrying out operations in the
Casbah." (26 November 2002)
On the same day that Hook was killed,
12-year-old Muhammad Bilalweh was also shot dead in Jenin by
Israeli occupation forces. Three other children were injured
by Israeli bullets and shrapnel, according to the human rights
group LAW. The Israeli army statement said absolutely nothing
about the children it had killed and injured, and expressed
"regret" at the death of Mr. Hook without even bothering
to name him. Meanwhile, a clear sense of where the army's priorities
and values lie was demonstrated by its admission that "Three
IDF jeeps and the personal gear of an Israeli soldier were
damaged." (23 November 2002)
No matter what the case, whether it is
a 53-year-old British UNRWA official, or an 8-year old-boy standing
next to his house, the lie is always the same. The victim was
a "terrorist" or appeared to be a "terrorist,"
who with a cell phone, a rock, his bare hands, or even a Pepsi
bottle full of solvent, threatened the lives of heavily armed
occupation troops riding around in 65-ton Merkava tanks in the
middle of a refugee camp.
Because Mr. Hook is a senior UN official,
the Israeli claims were not allowed to pass unchallenged. But
in the case of so many hundreds of Palestinians, the Israeli
lie passes as "news" if the incident is even reported
at all. The child killed at the door of his home was "throwing
a molotov cocktail," the farmer killed while tending his
fields was an "armed terrorist attempting to infiltrate
an Israeli settlement," the Bedouin woman and her children
blown to bits by flechettes while sleeping in a tent were a
"terrorist cell." And so on.
Butterly, speaking to Democracy Now,
observed:
"The types of human rights violations
and war crimes that were seen so blatantly in April go on on
an every day basis and I think it's just the fact that internationals
were involved -- that Palestinian blood has been so cheapened
that it doesn't normally get mentioned -- that this is nothing
new. Really, the hospital is normally jam-packed full of the
casualties of the everyday struggle to survive in Jenin where
going to the market, or to the school, or to the mosque, is
a potentially suicidal act at this stage."
Earlier this year, UNRWA was the target
of a vicious campaign of incitement by Israel and some of its
staunchest allies in the U.S. Congress, who accused the agency
of assisting Palestinian "terrorists." Mr. Hook's
two sons had not yet arrived in Jerusalem to take their father's
body home before Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Israeli prime
minister Ariel Sharon, was launching new accusations at UNRWA.
The Associated Press quoted Avi Beker, Secretary-General of
the World Jewish Congress declaring that "UNRWA has been
transformed into a shield for terrorism." (26 November
2002)
While Iraq is threatened with invasion
if one of its officials so much as forgets to mention something
to a UN official, will Israeli troops be allowed to shoot a
UN official dead with total impunity? Will the UN give up on
its stated aim to investigate Mr. Hook's killing in Jenin as
quickly as it abandoned the UN Security Council-mandated investigation
into Israeli war crimes in the same camp earlier this year?
And will the media ignore the repeated lesson that when they
rely on Israeli government statements to justify and explain
the killings of so many unarmed men, women and children in the
Occupied Territories, they are habitually misleading their audiences?
Let us hope that the answer to all of these questions is "no,"
and that Mr. Hook's sacrifice will not have been in vain.
Ali Abunimah
is co-founder of ElectronicIntifada.net.
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