Israeli soldiers shot my teenage son
12 August 2014
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Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian youth following a weekly protest against the occupation in the West Bank village of Bilin in December 2013.
(Issam Rimawi / APA images)
In the past ten years of Friday demonstrations against the Israeli occupation in our West Bank village of Bilin, I have helped carry countless men and women to the ambulances, injured by Israeli rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas canisters and live ammunition.
But until 31 July, I never knew what this experience would feel like when the person I was carrying was one of my own children.
During a demonstration that day, I heard a gunshot, and then the scream of my sixteen-year-old son Majd.
A silence fell over me as I ran to him with many thoughts in my head. Where was he shot? Would he be okay? Why did the Israeli soldiers target him?
He was just standing there as the demonstration was ending. Did the soldiers shoot my son because they know I am one of the organizers of these protests?
It is in these moments of uncertainty that our greatest fears haunt us — moments that the people in Gaza have been experiencing on a daily basis.
Over the past few weeks, there have been demonstrations throughout the occupied West Bank to protest Israel’s illegal actions and to show our support for our brothers and sisters in Gaza. This is in response to the murder of more than 2,000 people and injuring of thousands more, where more than 80 percent of those killed have been civilians, including hundreds of women and children.
During these protests of solidarity, the Israelis have been particularly brutal in their responses and they have injured and killed many peaceful demonstrators.
“Why won’t they leave us alone?”
After visiting the hospital in Ramallah where many Palestinians injured during demonstrations are recovering, residents of Bilin knew we needed to have a special demonstration in our village to show our support for Gaza.
This demonstration was planned in honor of the children of Gaza, and our children in Bilin. We know that the children are affected most by this violence by the Israeli occupation.
Three weeks earlier when the bombings first started and everywhere on the news there were discussions about children being killed in Gaza, my eight-year-old daughter Mayar was having trouble sleeping. She would keep waking up and come to wherever I was so that I would hold her. She was afraid.
Late one night, she started to ask me questions that no father ever wants to hear: “Why is Israel bombing Gaza? Why won’t they leave us alone? Why are they killing kids my age? Why won’t anyone stop them?”
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The author with his son Majd after the latter was shot with live ammunition on 31 July. (Facebook)
I did not have an answer for Mayar. There is no good answer that can explain what is happening.
I was ashamed to tell her that so much of the world is asleep while people in Gaza are being killed. At this moment I understood in a new way that her childhood, her life — like the lives of so many other Palestinian children — would be forever changed as a result of these massacres in Gaza.
I cannot protect her from this reality.
My child is wise, and her questions are important for many of us to consider. It is because of these questions that we must continue to resist. So that our children and our children’s children do not have to face such harsh realities of occupation, imprisonment, death and destruction all their lives.
“Am I going to die?”
On the day of the latest demonstration, hundreds of people from Bilin joined together to march to the apartheid wall that still separates us from our agricultural land. As we approached the wall, the heavily armed Israeli soldiers met us in their jeeps and began shooting tear gas canisters at our peaceful demonstration.
As the demonstrators began to scatter to avoid suffocation from the tear gas, the soldiers started to come into our village. As we were turning toward home, I saw an Israeli commander point his rifle in our direction, take aim and then fire.
I could instantly tell from the sound that it was live ammunition, and in the next moment I saw who he had been aiming at — my son.
It is not easy to describe the feeling of hearing your child scream in agony.
“Am I going to die baba?” he asked me breathlessly, as I rushed to hold him and see where he had been shot.
It was very difficult to lift him up, even as his leg was dripping blood, and then to carry him to the ambulance. Maybe the most difficult of all, was calling my wife Tesaheel from the ambulance and try to explain to her what had happened to our son, trying to sound confident as I told her that his injury was not too bad, that our son would be okay, that everything would be okay.
I felt like I was being choked, that I was being strangled and the words would not come out of my mouth. I never want to tell my wife that our child is in danger — but this is our life, our everyday experience.
In those moments after he was shot, I was not thinking about the commander that shot him. I was not thinking about the occupation or the war in Gaza. All I could think about was my son.
I was not sure if he was being brave, scared or was in shock, because while we were in the ambulance he was very quiet the whole time. He has been shot before with a high projectile tear gas canister and rubber-coated steel bullets, all of which can kill, of course — but those times he never bled this much, and I had never before been so afraid that my child could be dying.
No other choice
When we finally arrived at the hospital, the doctors said that the bullet hit a nerve in his leg. He could not feel his foot, and he would need to have surgery in Israel or Jordanbecause they do not have the type of medical equipment needed for this surgery in the West Bank.
I did not leave his side the whole time he was in the hospital. Many family members and friends came to visit and it has been wonderful for Majd to see how much all of these people love him and support him. His body is healing and he is able to move around in a wheelchair. He is now back home.
We are all relieved and so grateful he is alive, but this experience is not over. And this was only one small taste of what so many here must endure.
During the past couple of weeks I have thought a lot about my son, my family and my work organizing demonstrations against the occupation.
I realize it is not helpful to blame, or get angry at myself — but I have wondered if he would have been shot if I was not organizing the resistance in Bilin.
The truth is, many children are harmed and even killed without any political connection. I feel the desperation of a parent who wants to, but is not able to protect his children. It is beyond my control — I am not the one that chose to shoot an innocent young boy. I am not the one that gave the order to shoot tear gas at peaceful demonstrators or to drop bombs on homes, schools and hospitals in Gaza.
This is our life living under occupation. My son is no different from the thousands of others who have been shot during this conflict. As a leader of popular resistance protests, my family joins with me in demonstrations, knowing that any one of us could be arrested, injured or even killed as a result.
But we do it anyway, because we have no other choice — we will never achieve our freedom unless we struggle for it and sometimes pay for it with blood and tears.
So we must continue to resist, for my children and for all our children, in the hopes that our efforts today will create a future for Palestinians in which we are safe and free.
Iyad Burnat organizes regular protests against Israel’s wall in the West Bank village of Bilin.
Iyad Burnat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Iyad Burnat | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1 September 1973 Bil'in, Palestine |
| Ethnicity | Palestinian |
Iyad Burnat (born September 1973) leads Bil'in's non-violent struggle in the occupied West Bank. He is the head of the Bil'in Popular Committee against the Wall,[1] which has led weekly demonstrations since 2005 against the Israeli West Bank barrier.[2] He is also head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bil’in,[3] a pro-Palestinian organization with the stated aims of building a "wide network of people from all over the globe who support Freedom and Justice for all"[4]
Activism[edit]
In 1990, at 17 years, Burnat was charged and sentenced for allegedly throwing stones at IDF soldiers and was jailed for two years. He has been arrested and imprisoned for peacefully protesting Israeli actions several times since.[5][6][verification needed]
In 2004, the Israeli military built a wall separating village farmers from their lands, removed 1000 olive trees and restricted travel in the name of protecting Israeli settlers. Since 2005, Bil'in villagers have been engaging in weekly Friday demonstrations against these activities, along with Israeli citizens and international peace activists. Burnat has been leading the demonstrations.[7]
In September 2007 Israel's high court ruled that the wall on the outskirts of Bil'in unnecessarily interfered with the residents without offering any security advantage. Burnat said: "It's not easy for the Supreme Court to return land. This is a historic step...The steadfast peaceful resistance of the villagers of Bil'in resulted in the decision to partially remove the wall in the village." The Washington Times compared Burnat's philosophy of Palestinian protest tactics to the writings of Martin Luther King orMahatma Gandhi.[8]
In 2007 Burnat described his choice of nonviolent protest, saying "The belief in one's rights is more important than anything else. If I am confident about my rights, nothing will make me despair...When you resist an Israeli soldier by peaceful means, their weapons become irrelevant." The Christian Science Monitor reported that "the strategy paid off" when Israel's Supreme Court issued a ruling on the path of the fence around Bilin.[9]
In November 2008 Burnat and a group of American peace activists were denied entry into the Palestinian town of Ni'lin. He later was arrested in a November 21 morning raid.[10] He was fined and released in December 2008.[11]
In the May 15, 2009 march, Iyad Burnat was severely injured along with eight others.[12]
In March 2010, Burnat was questioned by officers from Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, after he sent an emailed report about the previous weeks protests titled, "The Third Intifada is knocking on the door".[13] That year he also was banned by the Shin Bet, for security reasons, from traveling to Europe to participate in two conferences.[6][verification needed]
In April 2010 Burnat organized, with Luisa Morgantini, the former vice president of the Italian parliament, the fifth annual Bil'in Conference on non-violent popular resistance against the fence and the settlements. Twenty-five foreign consuls and envoys took part in the conference, including representatives of the United Nations and the European Union. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and lawmaker Dr. Mustafa Barghouti spoke, as did French Parliament Member Jean Claude Lefort.[14]
During a December 2010 protest, where activists dressed as the fictional blue-skinned, pointy-haired, long-tailed indigenous characters of the Na'vi tribe from the filmAvatar, Burnat proclaimed partial victory in their protests. Per the Israeli court ruling, Israelis had begun preparations for the construction of the wall's new route which returns to the village 30 percent of its land. He said "We feel relieved and feel the non-violent resistance is successful in its aim."[15] The Los Angeles Times quoted his saying: "Even getting back one inch is an accomplishment...But the wall is still being built on our land, and even the new route will cut down more of our trees. We are going to continue our fight against the wall until we move it all the way back to the 1967 line."[16]
In the July 15, 2011 march, Burnat was injured by rubber-coated steel bullets after international and Israeli supporters joined the villagers in the protest.[17] He led the August 31, 2012 weekly march, which included British Parliamentarians Martin Linton and John Lazman. It was done in solidarity with the family of Rachel Corrie.[18]
United States tour[edit]
Burnat went on a speaking tour of the United States to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from November 2012 to February 2013. He initially was denied permission from Jordan to board a flight to the United States. The National Lawyers Guild wrote a letter to the Jordan kingdom urging it to allow Burnat to travel from Amman toUniversity of Michigan.[19] After a week of continued protests, he was allowed to board a flight to Detroit, November 3, 2012.[20] During his scheduled stopover inFrankfurt, Germany, he was further detained by U.S. agents and subjected to several hours of interrogation.[21]
During a Tiffin, Ohio presentation, Burnat showed video clips of Israeli soldiers in riot gear pushing back and shooting rubber bullets and tear gasat unarmed demonstrators, beating an unarmed man, and using noise generation machines to drown out chants and disperse demonstrators. He also showed passive resistance protests of individuals chained to each other and to trees and fences. Burnat stated: "We are not against the Jewish. We are against the occupation."[5] During some presentations he showed the film "5 Broken Cameras" about the struggle in Bil'in, made by his brother Emad Burnat, a farmer.[22] The film won a Sundance Film Festivaldocumentary award[7] and Emad is the first Palestinian nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[7][23]
Personal life[edit]
Iyad Burnat is married and has four children.[5]
External links[edit]
- Iyad Burnat, Why Does Obama Get a Prize and Bush Got Shoes?, CounterPunch, October 12, 2009
- Uprising Radio interview, Interview with Iyad Burnat on Uprising Radio, January 18, 2013
- Samuel Lane (14 December 2012). "Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Carroll News sits down with Iyad Burnat". The Carroll News.
- Veena Brekke (19 December 2012). "Palestinian non-violent resistance leader speaks in Madison". The Madison Times.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iyad_Burnat
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