Yousef Amira, shot in the head by Israeli forces in Ni’lin, has died
August 4th, 2008
A Palestinian teenager, aged 17, who was left brain-dead on the 30th July after being shot in the head by Israeli forces, died this morning. His funeral will be held in Ni’lin later this afternoon.
Israeli forces shot Yousef Ahmad Younis Amera with two rubber coated steel bullets from close range, leaving him brain dead. Actual death occurred at approximately 10am today. Yousef is the second child killed in the village over the past week. On Tuesday (29th July) 10 year old Ahmed Husan Yousef Mousa was shot dead by an Israeli border policeman.
According to ISM volunteers staying in the village, confrontations broke out hours after Ahmed’s funeral. Villagers built five barricades of rubble and stones that blocked the main road into Ni’lin preventing Israeli forces entering the village. At about 5:30pm an Israeli bulldozer attempted to clear a path through the barricades.
About 50 Israeli soldiers then attacked with sound bombs, rubber coated steel bullets and tear gas. They shot Yousef twice in the head at close range at approximately 7:30pm. Two other men suffered head injuries from a rubber coated steel bullets, but these injuries were not life threatening. A total of 17 people were injured.
According to Israeli Human Rights organisation B’Tselem, “the minimum range for firing ‘rubber’ bullets is 40m… the regulations emphasise that the bullets must be fired only at the individuals legs and they are not to be fired at children…”.
For several months protests have been held at Nil’in against the illegal Apartheid wall that annexes approximately 2,500 Dunums of agricultural land. The people fear this latest land grab will make their village economically untenable.
Yousef is the 8th child and the 13th Palestinian killed protesting against the Apartheid Wall. The other 12 are:
Ahmed Husan Yousef Mousa, aged 10.
Mohammad Fadel Hashem Rayan, age 25.
Zakaria MaHmud Salem, age 28.
Abdal Rahman Abu Eid, age 62.
Mohammad Daud Badwan, age 21.
Diaa Abdel Karim Abu Eid, age 24.
Hussain mahmud Awwad Aliyan, age 17.
Islam Hashem Rizik Zhahran, age 14.
Alaa Mohammad Abdel Rahman Khalil, age 14.
Jamal Jaber Ibrahim Assi, age 15.
Odai Mofeed Mahmud Assi, age 14.
Mahayub Nimer Assi, age 15.
To date, no soldiers or border police have been prosecuted for killing demonstrators.
Over and over again....
The Grim Reaper has much in store for these zionist/neocon punks who are living high off the fat of the land.
10 to 20 times the pain recorded on their souls, because you can't erase what you've done to others.
They don't call it murder NOW...
but the zionist entity will know their murders in Time. Each and every one.
One of millions. =(
Here's the ending of the story you linked, Rhiannon.
I put off telling my sons about Rakan's death as long as possible. Inexplicably, in recent weeks, they began asking about him. It was almost as if they had some sixth sense. They would sometimes ask about Rakan in the same breath as their cousin Tim, who is serving in Iraq with the Army's 10th Mountain Division. They worried about Tim and Rakan equally.
"Do you think Timmy will ever meet Rakan?" Brendan, my 12-year-old, asked me out of the blue a couple of weeks ago.
We were driving, on the way to go fishing.
"I don't think so," I replied.
Rakan and Patrick, my 14-year-old, were peers. They sat next to each other at a Celtics game and shared a bucket of popcorn and talked easily, because for kids, language is never a barrier. Rakan arrived here not speaking English and by the time he left he had passable pidgin English. But with the boys, there was never a problem communicating. They intuitively understood each other.
Patrick kept asking when Rakan was coming back. There had been several scheduled return trips, so Rakan could get some follow-up care at Mass. General. We had planned to take him to Fenway Park, even though Rakan couldn't care less about baseball. He said he wore Red Sox stuff only because Senator Kennedy gave it to him as a gift and because it made Dr. Ronan, a member of the Red Sox medical staff, smile. But there was always a delay, a problem, a visa not obtained, a passport missing. Ronan kept trying, for nearly a year, to get him back, but something always fell apart on the Iraqi side.
And so we now will always wonder, and never know, if he had made it back to Boston, would he still be here, would he be alive?
I told Patrick the other night. His baseball team had just lost a playoff game, and we were driving home on Route 128.
"How did he die?" Patrick asked.
"I don't know," I said. "It's hard to get accurate information."
Patrick looked out the window and didn't speak for a while.
"Dad," he finally said. "Do you think he suffered?"
The question floored me, because of course Rakan suffered. He saw his parents die, their blood splattering him and his siblings in the back seat of a car that had strayed too close to US soldiers in fear for their own lives. He endured the pain of being shot, the agony of being paralyzed, the desperate realization that he was withering away in a corner. And when he got here, there was the heartache of separation, the isolating loneliness of not being able to speak or understand the language of everyone around him, the longing for the only home he knew, even if that home was in the most dangerous place in the world.
"Patrick," I said, "I don't know if he suffered. But I hope he didn't. He suffered enough."
It was harder telling Brendan. He is 12 but acts younger. Rakan loved Brendan the way kids love cartoon characters. Brendan made him laugh. Always. No matter how low Rakan was, he lit up when Brendan burst into his hospital room. Brendan would get in Rakan's wheelchair and whiz around the ward and scare the hell out of the nurses and Rakan would laugh so hard he'd almost fall off his crutches.
"Brendan," Rakan would say, pointing his index finger at his own head and twirling it around, "he's crazy."
I told Brendan on Friday, at approximately the same time Larry Ronan broke the news to Ted Kennedy.
Brendan fought back tears, bit his quivering lower lip and looked around furtively, as if the answers to all his questions were written somewhere on his bedroom wall.
"It's not fair," Brendan said.
And Brendan is right.
He is so right.
All these stories make me very sick and make me cry.
But thanks for finishing it for me cuz I might not have gotten around to it.
I do recall the coverage on CNN of an Iraqi family in a car getting riddled with bullets. It was a horrifying sight and it angered me so badly that I never forgot the scene. I can't remember if it was the summer/fall of 2003 or 2004. Anyway these people didn't know English and the soldiers didn't know Arabic.
Now WHY couldn't the soldiers have learned some basic Arabic??? Afterall, they were intruding on another land, creating madness and heartache for another people....if they could learn Arabic, and their intention was not to kill on purpose...those people would have understood not to proceed with their car and scare the soldiers.
Why should the Iraqis learn English?
And I'm sure there have been many of the same thing that has happened throughout the years in Iraq.
Yes, we all have a soul. The difference is, some people are very close with their soul and then you have others are very removed from it..types like the obvious ariel sharon.