[wvns] Israeli Troops Murder Palestinian Fetus
And now, a fetus
Gideon Levy
Haaretz
20 May 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/860829.html
Memorial posters decorate the walls of the Rafidiya government
hospital in Nablus, covering earlier posters of countless young people
who have been killed. But this poster is like nothing we have seen
before: a fetus covered in its own blood, its tiny head blown up by
the bullet that struck its mother, and the caption - `Who gave you the
right to steal his life?`
The killing of the unborn child, Daoud, by Israel Defense Forces
troops raises a series of moral, legal and philosophical questions. Is
the killing of a fetus manslaughter? Is it murder? And how old is the
victim? But all these questions are dwarfed by the woman lying stunned
and injured in the maternity ward of the hospital in Nablus, in agony,
with all kinds of tubes attached to her, refusing to answer a single
question.
It is obvious that Maha Katouni is still in a state of trauma. Wounded
in the abdomen, she lies in bed, her elderly mother by her side. The
tube in her nose makes it hard for her to speak. She is 30 years old
and was in the seventh month of pregnancy, a mother who got up in the
middle of the night to protect her three small children, sleeping in
the other room, from the bullets that were whistling by outside. As
soon as she got out of bed, the bullet struck her. Bleeding, she fell
on the nightstand by her bed. Maha survived, but Daoud - as she and
her husband planned to name their son - was removed from her womb with
a bullet wound to the head.
`And babies?` a reporter once asked an American soldier who had taken
part in the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War. His succinct answer
was just as chilling as the question. `Babies.` And now, a fetus.
The day before, I had been in Soweto, near Johannesburg, South Africa,
accompanied by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour,
comparing the horrors of apartheid to the Israeli occupation in the
territories. The next afternoon I was here, in the Rafidiya maternity
ward, standing before the bed of the wounded Maha, who had lost her baby.
The biggest hospital in the territories is practically deserted,
barely functioning. It has been this way for two months now. Like the
other hospitals in the West Bank, Rafidiya accepts only emergency
cases, because of the economic boycott of the Palestinian Authority,
which also prevents the workers here from being paid. Only 20 of the
hospital`s 168 beds are currently occupied, and only about a third of
the hospital`s 380 staff members show up for work. In the emergency
room we saw just one patient, who had arrived that morning. The rest
of the beds were empty. In the past two and a half months, the workers
have received just NIS 1,500 per person, from funds provided by the
European Union.
Hospital director Dr. Khaled Salah says that the staff and patients
don`t come to the hospital because of the difficulties in getting to
Nablus and the cost of the trip, which has risen significantly because
of the checkpoints. The Hawara checkpoint and the Beit Iba checkpoint,
the two checkpoints on the city`s outskirts, are relatively deserted,
because of the difficulty in getting past them.
Maha lies in bed, her eyes closed. A green headscarf covers her head.
Her skin is ashen. Every once in a while she opens her eyes but then
quickly closes them again. Once in a while she also murmurs a few
words in a feeble voice and then goes quiet again. How are you?
Silence. Maha is a resident of the Ein Beit Ilma refugee camp on the
outskirts of Nablus. She is married to Rifat, a 36-year-old school
janitor, and the couple have three children: Jihad, 10; Jawad, 7; and
Jad, 3. Two uncles and her mother watch over her, not budging from her
bedside. For the father of the family, it`s too hard to be here. He`s
still in shock.
Last Wednesday was an ordinary day in the Katouni household. The
father went to work, the kids went to school, and in the evening
everyone went to bed - the parents in their bedroom and the three
children in their room in the third-floor apartment. Shortly after two
in the morning, Maha was startled awake by the loud sounds of gunfire
from the street. She didn`t even manage to turn on the light when she
got up to run to the kids` room next door, to reassure her three
little boys and keep them from getting scared. The gunfire was very
heavy. The window of her room was open and her bed was close to the
window.
Maha got out of bed, took one step, and then the bullet struck her in
the lower back. She fell onto the nightstand. Another bullet struck
the nightstand. Soldiers from the Nahal patrol battalion were standing
on the roofs of the surrounding buildings. `Wherever we are sent - to
there we go,` the poet Yaakov Orland once wrote in `The Nahal Anthem,`
sung by the Nahal entertainment troupe, which also sang `The Song of
Peace.`
Rifat rushed to call an ambulance. The children, who had awakened,
were hysterical, especially the youngest, 3-year-old Jad, at the sight
of the blood trickling from the front and back of their pregnant
mother, who lay wounded on the floor. The bullet had struck her from
behind, passed through the fetus` head and the mother`s intestines and
exited through the abdomen.
Family members say that about 45 minutes went by before the ambulance
from the Medical Relief organization was permitted to approach. In the
meantime, Maha`s mother, Umm Ibrahim, tried to leave her home nearby
to come to her daughter`s aid. Umm Ibrahim says that when she tried to
leave her house there was gunfire; she hurried back inside. `It`s a
miracle that I was saved,` says the woman in the white headscarf. She
could not reach her injured daughter and would not see her until two
hours later, in the hospital.
The pain is written all over Maha`s face. One of her brothers somehow
managed to cross the line of fire and get to her house; he tried to
stanch the gaping wound in her stomach with a towel. Her husband,
Rifat, was paralyzed with shock. Umm Ibrahim says that her son, who
tended to Maha, could see through the hole in her abdomen that the
fetus had been wounded in the head and was dead.
The gunfire finally subsided at around three in the morning and they
were able to take Maha out to the street, carried by her brother and
the paramedic from the ambulance that had parked in the nearby alley.
The brother says that on the way to the hospital they were stopped
twice by soldiers, who wanted to check the wounded woman`s identity
and to make sure there were no wanted men hiding in the ambulance.
Maha was barely conscious when she reached the hospital, but her
mother says she understood right away that she had lost the baby.
The family says the IDF enters the camp nearly every night and that
there is almost always gunfire. Umm Ibrahim managed to get to the
hospital at four in the morning, when her daughter was in the
operating room and the dead fetus had already been removed.
Dr. Ihab Shareideh was the surgeon who was summoned to the hospital in
the middle of the night to operate on Maha. He says that her recovery
has been more difficult and slower than usual, not only because of her
injuries, but because of her traumatized mental state. Fortunately,
not many blood vessels were injured, so the delay in getting her to
the hospital did not cause further damage. It is too soon to gauge the
extent of the damage to her digestive system, or to say whether she
will be able to get pregnant again. The fetus died as a result of the
bullet that penetrated its brain on the way to the mother`s intestines.
The anesthesiologist, Dr. Iyad Salim, a resident of nearby Hawara,
roams the hospital corridors. On his cell phone camera is a video of
the operation and the removal of the fetus. So close to being a fully
developed baby, with a bullet wound to the head. The memorial poster
shows the fetus bleeding from the head. The image is unbearable.
They were going to call him Daoud, after an uncle, and also after a
resident of the camp who was killed. At home they had everything
ready: new clothes, diapers and a crib passed down from his older
brothers. Daoud was buried in the camp cemetery. Only a few close
family members attended the funeral of the unborn baby.
At press time, no response had been received from the IDF
Spokesperson`s Office.
===
Hamas, PFLO Issue Joint Press Releases
The following is a communique jointly issued by the armed wings of
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Hamas
Movement on a joint operation they carried out near the Hawwarah
checkpoint, south of Nablus on the West Bank. The Hawwarah barrier
is considered the worst checkpont on the West Bank where dozens of
Palestinian have been killed or wounded due to harsh Zionist
military measures. (Translator's introductory note).
------------------------------------------------------
Military communiqué
13 July 2007
Issued by the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and the al-Qassam
Brigades.
Assaulting and Disabling a Zionist Humvee at the Hawwarah Barrier.
A joint unit of fighters from the Squadron of the Martyr Bashshar al-
Hanani of the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and of fighters from
the al-Qassam Brigades carried out an attack on a Zionist vehicle –
a Zionist Humvee type of jeep – using machine guns and bombs, this
Friday morning, 13 July 2007, as the vehicle was passing near the
Hawwarah military barrier. The gunfire lasted more than 15 minutes
and left the jeep completely disabled. Our heroic cavaliers
confirmed that they had inflicted casualties among the enemy forces
and the enemy admitted that the jeep had been disabled.
We in the Martyr `Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and the legendary
Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades pledge to God and then to the masses
of our people that we will continue our attacks on the positions of
the enemy and remain a shield to ward off any aggression aimed at
our land and people, faithful to the blood of the martyrs who have
fallen in the battles in defense of the land. We will carry on our
resistance until the last soldier has left our soil.
We pledge to continue our resistance!
Glory and fidelity to the martyrs! Freedom to the prisoners!
Victory to the heroic resistance!
Homeland or death! Victory or martyrdom!
Martyr `Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa
Brigades.
===
Military communiqué
10 July 2007
The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades attack a military patrol near
the al-`Ayn Camp to the west of Nablus, wounding three Zionist
soldiers.
Let the fight continue and let all guns be pointed at the face of
the enemy.
In continuation of our on-going offensive against the troops of the
occupation army and their settlements, one of our fighting units
mounted a pre-planned armed ambush on a military foot patrol near
the al-`Ayn camp west of Nablus. As the patrol passed by, our
heroic fighters courageously attacked and clashed with the members
of the occupation army's patrol, detonating two bombs by one of the
patrol vehicles and wounding three of their soldiers in the
approximately 40-minute battle. Also taking part in the battle,
which occurred at precisely 11:30pm Tuesday night, were fighters
from the al-Qassam Brigades. Our valiant knights then withdrew
safely from the area.
We in the Brigades of the legendary martyr Abu Ali Mustafa declare
our responsibility for this heroic attack and announce that we will
continue our resistance and attacks on this arrogant enemy until he
has left our land. At the same time we declare that the arms of the
resistance must remain pure and clean and dedicated to the
resistance and we warn against any mixing of this struggle with any
armed action employed in the service of some other goal, anything
other than the defense of our people.
We pledge to continue our resistance!
Glory and fidelity to the martyrs! Freedom to the prisoners!
Victory to the courageous resistance!
Homeland or death! Victory or martyrdom!
The Martyr Bashshar Hanani Squadron of the
Legendary Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades.
The military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine.
*********************************************************************
WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE
To subscribe to this group, send an email to:
wvns-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
NEWS ARCHIVE IS OPEN TO PUBLIC VIEW
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
Need some good karma? Appreciate the service?
Please consider donating to WVNS today.
Email ummyakoub@yahoo.com for instructions.
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wvns-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:wvns-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:wvns-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
No comments:
Post a Comment