Yesterday, I posted two videos of January 2011 night raids in Nabi Saleh. The videos were taken during a ‘mapping operation’ conducted by the Israeli army. The operation was to photograph and catalogue all the male children in the village. There is no violence, just violation.
[vimeo width=”500″ height=”400″]http://vimeo.com/19782878[/vimeo]
The above is another video from Nabi Saleh, shot a couple of days after the night raids. It was taken on a Tuesday morning after Israeli authorities had completed another house raid. As the army and police were leaving, one police van stops and two border police officers jump out. 11-year-old Kareem Tamimi comes running into the frame, running towards his mother. The camerawoman begins shouting “Child! Child!” in Hebrew to the border police officers to no avail.
The border police officers capture the child, handling him as if he was a fully grown adult. Within seconds he is in the police van and on the way out of the village toward an undisclosed location. His mother’s cries as she slams her hands against the windows of police van are disregarded by the border police officers.
Kareem’s arrest was part of a strategy to apply as much pressure as possible on his 14-year-old brother Islam, who was arrested the previous day in a night raid, in order that Islam will deliver any script that his investigators wanted. The strategy worked, and Kareem was released later the same evening.
After this arrest happened, the army spokespersons unit alerted the media and twitter followers that another ‘wanted suspect’ was taken in for security questioning. They failed to mention that he was an 11-year-old child.
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Tomorrow I will post another video from the current wave of military repression of Nabi Saleh. These videos, seldom seen in the mainstream media, give the Palestinian perspective on life under Israeli Occupation. This is the price that Palestinians pay if they refuse to be silent under Occupation.