Israeli atrocities against Palestinians

Of course, the last image above was not of an Israeli officer choking Mr. Abu Ein,
but merely is for comparison of those who use such methods either in reality or in fiction.

2014-12-10-aljazeera-abu-ein-death

Palestinian minister dies after confrontation with Israeli soldiers
by Al Jazeera Staff
america.aljazeera.com, 2014-12-10

[Interestingly, the above article does not appear very high
in google's listings.]

2014-12-10-WP-senior-palestinian-official-dies-after-clash-with-israeli-forces-in-west-bank

Senior Palestinian official dies after clash with Israeli forces in West Bank
By William Booth and Ruth Eglash
Washington Post, 2014-12-10

[This image was in the print edition,
and in a small format, in the web story:]



[From the WP story:

A reporter for Israel’s Channel 10, Roy Sharon, posted a Twitter message saying that he did not see Abu Ein being struck with the butt of a rifle and that if he had been hit with a gun, the blow did not appear to be deliberate or significant. Sharon said he was standing near Abu Ein ...

[If Sharon "did not see Abu Ein being struck with the butt of a rifle",
then how on earth could the rest of his statement be accurate?
If he didn't see it,
how would he know whether a blow he didn't see
was deliberate or significant?
Sounds to melike his credibility should be assessed as zero.]

2014-12-11-Independent-death-of-ziad-abu-ein-one-autopsy-very-different-findings

Death of Ziad Abu Ein: One autopsy, two very different findings
by Ben Lynfield
Independent (UK), 2014-12-11

Ramallah

Israeli and Palestinian pathologists announced very different conclusions about
the autopsy they performed jointly on senior Palestinian official Ziad Abu Ein Thursday,
with the Palestinian side saying
he died as a result of being struck by a soldier
and the Israeli side concluding
his death stemmed from a pre-existing heart condition
that made him vulnerable to stress.

The findings set the stage for ongoing acrimony over the death,
with the Palestinians believing Israel killed the official
and Israelis rejecting responsibility for the death.

Both sides agreed that Mr Abu Ein, 55, died from
a blockage of the coronary artery due to haemorrhaging.
But they differed on the causes.
The Israeli team, headed by Chen Kugel, director of Israel’s forensic institute,
found that Mr Abu Ein suffered from an “ischemic heart disease”
and that blood vessels in his heart
were found to be more than 80 per cent blocked by plaque,
according to an Israeli health ministry statement.
“This caused him to be more sensitive to stress,” the statement added.

Saber al-Aloul, head of the Palestinian forensic institute, said
Mr Abu Ein died as a result of being hit.
“The death is considered to have originated from injury and not natural causes,” he said.
“The coronary artery became narrower,
this is accompanied with a haemorrhage in the inner lining of the artery
and this is one of the signs of stress and agony
by which I mean the bruises in the neck and face.
There was stress, pressure and a sign of terror.”

Mr al-Aloul said that the bruises found on the neck proved that force had been used against it.
He added that some of Mr Abu Ein’s front teeth were knocked out.
The Israeli team said there were signs resuscitation had been attempted.
Palestinian Health Minister Jawad Awad said that
“the results of the autopsy show that the ones who killed the martyr Ziad Abu Ein
are the Israeli occupying forces”.

He said two Jordanian pathologists also signed off on those findings,
but not Israeli doctors.
Azzam Ahmad, a senior leader of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement,
voiced anger at the findings of the Israeli pathologists.
“Enough with their lying and cheating.
The report proved he was subjected to beatings.
The occupation is first and last responsible for this death.”

An Israeli official, who requested anonymity, said in response to the autopsy:
“It’s clear no one on the Israeli side wanted to see this death.
We’ve expressed sorrow and regret.”

2014-12-11-WP-israel-says-palestinian-died-of-heart-issues

Dispute emerges over cause of prominent Palestinian official Ziad Abu Ein’s death
By William Booth and Ruth Eglash
Washington Post, 2014-12-11

RAMALLAH, West Bank —

What happens next on the streets of East Jerusalem and the West Bank
may rest on one question:
What killed a prominent Palestinian cabinet minister
during a clash Wednesday with Israeli soldiers?

The already tattered relationship between the Israeli government and Palestinians
can, in fact, get much worse.
The death of Ziad Abu Ein —
a senior leader, a former prisoner, popular on the streets and known to young people —
led Palestinian officials to threaten again to curtail
security coordination in the West Bank between their forces and the Israeli military.
Israel fears such a move would unleash chaos for all.

As the flag-draped coffin carrying Abu Ein
was carried from the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah
in a massive funerary procession Thursday,
Israeli and Palestinian authorities tussled over the precise cause of his death.
At issue was whether the chain-smoking, hard-driving Abu Ein
died of cardiac arrest brought on by
the stress of a confrontation with Israeli troops —
or had been killed by
a blow struck by an Israeli soldier and a choking blast of tear gas.

It was the latest example of a long-standing theme whereby
the two sides rarely agree on the same set of facts.

Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh
told Voice of Palestine radio that a late-night autopsy found that
Abu Ein died from “being struck, inhaling tear gas
and a delay in providing medical attention.”
At an emergency meeting Wednesday,
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas waved a photograph of
Abu Ein being clutched by the throat by an Israeli soldier.

Israel’s Health Ministry, however, announced Thursday that
the same autopsy showed that Abu Ein’s death
was “caused by a blockage of the coronary artery due to
hemorrhaging underneath a layer of atherosclerotic plaque.”
The forensic report concluded,
“The poor condition of the deceased’s heart caused him
to be more sensitive to stress.”

The autopsy was attended by Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian pathologists
in an attempt to avoid this very fight.
Saber Aloul, the Palestinian pathologist who attended the autopsy,
told the Associated Press that
the “cause of death was a blow, and not natural causes.”

Chen Kugel, chief of the Israeli National Institute for Forensic Medicine,
told reporters there was no real difference in the versions —
that a stressful event led to a heart attack.
The Israeli news Web site Ynet quoted Kugel, who took part in the autopsy, as saying that
the disagreement with the Palestinians stemmed also from
damage on the victim’s front teeth, tongue and windpipe,
which could have been the result of resuscitation attempts or an attack.

Speaking in Jerusalem, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said that
the country “is committed to carry out a careful examination
into the events which led up to Abu Ein’s death.”

After Abu Ein’s funeral, Palestinians threw rocks and bottles
at Israeli soldiers near the Jewish settlement of Psagot,
according to the Palestinian news agency Maan.
The Israeli troops responded with rubber bullets.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
charged that Palestinian leaders, including Abbas,
were using Abu Ein’s death to incite their constituents.
In a statement, Israel’s top diplomat
called the Palestinian assertions about the use of excessive force
“contemptible” and “baseless.”

The dispute over the cause of death —
and sensational videos taken at the scene that show
an Israeli Border Patrol officer holding Abu Ein by the throat —
could quickly become a flash point for further Palestinian protests and political fallout.

Tensions in the region are already heightened after months of Palestinian terrorist attacks, a 50-day war in the Gaza Strip and recent clashes over a contested holy site in Jerusalem.

Abu Ein, 55, was an immensely popular Palestinian government minister who directed the agency tasked with opposing Israeli settlements and the barrier separating Israel and the West Bank. Until recently, he had served as a spokesman for Palestinians serving long sentences in Israeli prisons for terror attacks and other activities.

Thousands of mourners crowded into the official government compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah to attend Abu Ein’s funeral.

“Everyone knows Abu Ein,” said Yazmin Israyah, 19, a media student.

She said she hoped that his death would not just be another sad day for Palestinians, “but a spark.” Israyah said that she would support whatever Abbas did but that if it were up to her, she would end all cooperation with the Israelis.

Palestinian National Council member Tayseer Naserallah, who spent several years in an Israeli prison with Abu Ein, said that his death could represent a turning point in the rise of popular resistance among Palestinians.

“We have wasted a lot of time trying to make peace with the Israelis,” Naserallah said.

“There is no value in an Israeli apology,” he said. “There is bloodshed every day.”

Abu Ein was a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, also known as the Abu Nidal Organization, which carried out terror attacks against Israelis in the 1980s. He was given a life sentence in Israel in 1982 after being extradited from the United States over the killing of two Israelis in Tiberias in 1979. He was released in a prisoner swap in 1985.

Abu Ein spent a year in detention in 2002 without being charged when he was a leader of the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in which thousands of Israelis and Palestinians died and Palestinian suicide bombings against civilian targets were commonplace.

Eglash reported from Jerusalem. Sufian Taha in Ramallah contributed to this report.