Violence at Abu Akleh’s funeral reveals a deeper problem – Nir Hasson

Policemen dressed in black who wear hard hats and protective gear and use batons to attack people carrying the coffin at a funeral procession. They hit them in the legs, until the coffin slips and nearly hits the ground. It is the spectacle that much of the world has seen, and it is this scene that much of the world will remember from the funeral of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which took place on May 13 in Jerusalem.

Many in Israel talked about it in the following days. The situation is problematic, they say, so much so that it almost represents a disaster in terms of image and public relations. But the real problem lies not so much in how the incident was perceived by the rest of the world, but in the unwarranted use of violence by the police.

It was one of the most extreme portrayals of the occupation and the humiliations that the Palestinian people experience on their skin every day: a prominent Palestinian journalist, known throughout the Arab world, who for decades has been reporting on the violence and crimes of the occupation. Israeli, dies in a firefight and Israeli soldiers are the number one suspect. It is the death of a Palestinian icon, her funeral is a national event, and just at that moment, at the height of the mourning, police officers armed with sticks burst onto the scene.

Sorry inconsistent
The police wasted no time and posted a video recorded by a drone during the funeral where two young men are seen throwing what appears to be a bottle of water at police officers before the charge begins. This is an inconsistent excuse for such conduct during an event that should have been handled with the utmost care. Commissioner Kobi Shabtai has ordered an investigation into the behavior of the police at the funeral. But this incident is just one of many in which the Israeli police have behaved in an unacceptable way, thus exacerbating the current situation and intensifying the humiliation of the victims.

On the day Abu Akleh died, policemen went to the bereaved family’s home demanding that they remove the Palestinian flags that were flying.outside their home, not to stop in the street and to lower the volume of the music played outside. On the day of the funeral, shortly after the procession, the police were caught while tore off Palestinian flags from cars. We will never know what was going through the minds of who sent the cops to the family home, or who pulled down the flags. How did they think bereaved family members or funeral attendees would react?

As if that weren’t enough, a young Palestinian, Walid al Sharif – who threw stones at police three weeks ago on the mosque esplanade and was seriously injured in the head – died on Saturday morning while hospitalized in the Hassadah clinic. Police said his injuries were caused by a fall, but did not provide any evidence. It’s hard to believe the cosmic coincidence that the death of a 21-year-old man was caused by a fall that occurred just at the same time that rubber bullets were being fired at him. With his death, Al Sharif became a “martyr of Al Aqsa”, the first victim on the esplanade since 2017, when two armed terrorists were killed after shooting and killing two policemen. This time, however, it was a young man throwing stones. From the Palestinian point of view, this is a much more serious case.

Here, too, the problem does not lie in how Palestinians or the world perceive the event, or in the risk that his death or funeral could unleash a new wave of terror in Jerusalem or the West Bank: the problem is this death. The idea that a stone can actually kill may be true when referring to a stone thrown at an unprotected car on the highway; but the chances of a policeman wearing a helmet and protective vest dying from a stone are insignificant. The cops weren’t risking their lives when Al Sharif threw rocks at them, and shooting him in the chest was an unwarranted violation of the rules of engagement.

Al Sharif was hit by a black rubber-tipped bullet. This 40mm bullet is designed to inflict intense pain and is the primary non-lethal weapon used by the police. But since 2014, when police switched from lighter blue bullets to heavier black bullets, cases where this “non-lethal” weapon has caused serious injury and even death have increased. In East Jerusalem, there are dozens of young people, children and adults suffering from the injuries caused by these bullets. Some of them have lost an eye or have gone completely blind. And in at least one case there was a confirmed death: the young man’s name was Mohammed Sinokrot killed by a bullet with a rubber tip that hit him in the temple.

The roots of the problem
In the early hours of May 14 there was a new tension. Police refused to hand Al Sharif’s body to his family for burial, despite the boy not being under arrest during his hospitalization for the past three weeks. And that’s because the Jerusalem court was supposed to handle the police request for an autopsy that same evening.

Israeli police have recently been commended for handling the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in Jerusalem compared to previous years. This time, in an effort to guarantee Palestinians freedom of worship and a party atmosphere, the police avoided setting up barriers at the Damascus gate and minimized the use of crowd dispersal tools, such as cannons. water that is usually loaded with a pestilential-smelling chemical liquid, stun grenades and tear gas – all forms of collective punishment.

This policy has proved fruitful: compared to last year, the violent clashes were limited to the southern part of the esplanade of mosques and did not extend to the Damascus gate and other Palestinian neighborhoods. Most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, both Israelis and Palestinians, celebrated the holidays in peace and the hospitals were not filled with people injured in the clashes. The commander of the Jerusalem police district, Major General Doron Turgeman, who said before Ramadan “This is not a war, but a holy month,” has shown that indeed things can be different. However, the devil is in the details, and when it comes to the police, his failure lies in the actions of the agents in the field, those of their commanders and their decisions.

From using batons on funeral participants with caskets on their shoulders, to sending policemen to the home of a grieving family to tear flags, to pointing the barrel of a gun at someone’s chest. There is obviously a problem in the police force. Perhaps some would argue that this problem lies in command and control systems, or in police training and recruiting methods. But it actually has much deeper roots. And it lies in the fact that police officers do not regard the Palestinians in front of them as human beings, nor do they feel the need to respect them or their pain. This is a terrible truth, and not just for Palestinians.

(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)