Memorial ceremony for Abir Aramin
Coming Saturday, 10/2, we will hold a Palestinian-Israeli memorial ceremony for 10 year old Abir Aramin who was killed outside of school by Border Police soldiers on January 16th.Bassam, Abir's father, is one of the leaders of "Combatants for Peace" and has been working for several years on promoting dialogue and peace and on the non violent resistance to the occupation.
Bassam and his family will take part in the ceremony together with Abir's classmates from Anata. We wish to invite you to bring along also your children and to emphasize through this joint ceremony, that all children have a right to live and go to school safely. Especially now when the Israeli Police is trying to do everything in its power not to take the responsibility and indict the criminals we must send a clear message demanding that justice be served.
The ceremony will take place at Jerusalem's Damascus Gate (near the stairs) at 15:00.
For further information:
Itamar Shapira
"Combatants for Peace"
0548087440
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24 comments:
I agree children have a right to live and go to school safely, which is why their parents should not teach them hatred and to throw stones on Border Police and IDF Soldiers and/or otherwise confront security forces. Just so that you know, stones hurt and can kill as well. So what type of parents to these children have who teach them violence to start with?
myt, either you haven't bothered to read this post or there is a more serious problem.
Basam, 10 year old Abir's father teaches children to be paceful, he is a Palestinian PEACE activist. a Person who taught his daughter to engage in TALKING.
Little Abir was murdered when she just came out of school. She didn't throw stones, just a little kid, coming outof school.
Your callousness and lack of sensitivity are appalling. I have little else to say.
Myth, I simply do not see the logic of shooting someone because he/she throws a stone.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3358104,00.html
yudit: I am not claiming that this 10 year old girl was throwing stones, and certainly her father should be praised for being a peace activist!! But what was the reason a stun grenade or rubber bullet was fired? There were others throwing stones and this girl was a victim of stone throwing.
j.p. Do stones kill?
The above article starts off with
After an inconclusive autopsy Israeli police re-enact death of young Abir Aramin but say cause still unclear, though current police findings indicate girl may have been killed by rocks thrown by rioters
So stones not only cause injury but also kill! So should security forces stand there and be stoned to death or should they use rubber bullets, which can also injure as well as kill (unfortunately). Hope you start seeing the logic.
Myth, in Israel and a few banana- republics police and other security forces think it to be normal to shoot at people who's only defence is a stone.
There too have been riots over the past years in our part of the world but until now I did not read of police shooting at random, too if you see the clothing and helmets and the shields and the waterthrowers and the jeeps and the apc's and and and............................
I have to agree with you, a stone is an enormous offensive weapon!
Thats what you think. I've seen it in Israel and the reality is much different than what you believe. Even with a helmet and all the other things you have the ratio of 1:1 i.e. 1 soldier facing 10 stone throwers, needless to say in many cases there are gunmen shooting from behind the rioters which leaves soldiers no option but to fire.
As for your part of the world, I don't know which part of the world you are from, but I do have 4 citizenships i.e. India, Israel, Ireland and U.S.A. And then again I have also served in security forces and have also been shot at by a gunman cowering behind 10-16 year old kids, and the reason for that is that I did not have a way to shoot that b*&!ard hiding behind the kids without risking hurting one of the kids, so much so for random shooting. This is first hand experience and knowledge as opposed to your media based knowledge. And then again rubber and wooden bullets are often used in riot control and to disperse protests.
Everywhere.
Which is why children should not participate in riots or be near them. Why don't you ask the rioters as to why they decided to stage a riot near a school thereby endangering the lives of young innocent children?
So I guess Ireland is a banana republic, U.S. is a banana republic and India is a banana republic. Just so that you know, that India is the largest democracy in the world and in fact the only place where non violent protests started and succeeded in driving away the occupiers. So you don't need weapons to achieve your goals, if this protest was one the peaceful types like the ones of Mahatma Gandhi and the Israeli soldiers opened fired (like the British did, and still Gandhi and his followers went on with non violence), then I would have been amongst the first to protest at indiscriminate shootings.
Hope that whatever part of the world that you are from you will be able to teach non violence to these stone throwers and the gunmen who cower behind them.
As a side note. I have a question for you. Were you so agitated as you are right now when the so called "freedom fighters" who shot Tali Hatuel, her four daughters including the infant in the car seat, at point blank range, and then put another round in the belly of the pregnant mother in order to kill the unborn Jew? And when ...
In 2003 on Jewish New Years eve, seven month old Shaked Abraham was shot dead in her crib by an Arab murderer who forced his way into her parent's house as the family was celebrating the New Year.
A ten-month-old Jewish baby, Shalhevet Pass, was shot in her father's arms by an Arab sniper in 2001.
The following year, a five-year-old girl, Danielle Shefi, was shot to death at point blank range by an Arab killer, while cowering under her parents' bed.
That same year, two boys, four- and five-years old, where shot dead together with their mother as she read them a bedtime story, in a kibbutz, by Arab terrorists.
Children , like five year old Gal Eisenman , have been incinerated in buses by Arab homicide bombers.
Needless to say these children were not throwing stones as a defensive mode.
I am as agitated now as I was then, Children should be kept away from any kind of hatred and violence! If you were not agitated back then as you are now, I don't know which part of the world you come from and what kind of banana republic you are a citizen of.
More food for thought, would you be agitated to know that a 10 year old girl, who worked as a live in maid servant in Mumbai was sexually assaulted and bled to death. She wasn't throwing stones. She came from a poor family and was working so that they would have money. Why was she murdered in this brutal manner, again not because she was throwing stones, but because as a 10 year old she decided to use the make-up box on the dresser.
I for some reason did not see a J.P. commenting on that anywhere. Seems to me you are focused on one particular part of the world. Whereas there are millions of children around the globe who are brutally murdered not because they are throwing stones at soldiers and police.
Another thing for you J.P. MYT are my initials and thats what I using, and I am not an idiot who wanted to spell myth but got it wrong, so I would expect you to respond to MYT and not someone called myth.
Got the feeling somebody just dropped a large stone on your toes, Mumbay ???, Bombay you mean.
What does J.P. stand for Junky Pervert or Junky Provoker?
If you don't have anything intelligent so you come out with trash talk?
It's obvious you can't read. First when I write MYT you refer to myth. Then when I say I was shot by a coward hiding behind children, you say "Got the feeling somebody just dropped a large stone on your toes, Mumbay ???"
As for "Mumbay ???, Bombay you mean." Firstly I wrote Mumbai and you write it as Mumbay. Secondly please go learn geography in whatever language that you do know so that you will have enough sense next time not to try and teach names of cities in a country to a citizen of that country.
As for the rest of the material in the comment. I guess you didn't understand much, so you are unable to respond OR that since you can't put forth a counter argument so you are trying to provoke.
It's obvious you can't read.........
Than how do we explain me to print these, I might say myself, reasonable lines on the screen.
Mumbay or Mumbai, it has allways been Bombay so what is your point.
You should get yourself another hobby,you are far too aggressive and do not open yourself to other people's opinion, what about bloodhounds?
myt, when reading your various comments, there appears to be a line in thme. you started off with accusing the 10 year old schoolgirl and her parents of being violent.
In this case that ddn't work, because of the very simple fact that they were all very active as well as very wellknown peace activists deeply involved in non-violent dialogue & activities.You then went on to quote border police-fed untruths from that well-known source of "truth" Yediot. That didn't work either.
you see, there are more sources than yediot, and Abir's body was checked by a wellknown and experienced pathologist. No, that was not a stone, it was a rubber bullet, shot from a short distance.
Rubberbullets aren't "safe". They are not paintballs, they are metal balls with a thin cover of plastic or rubber. shot at the head and/or from a short distance, espacially at achild, they are lethal. Simple:
Abir was killed by a rubber bullet.
You made all kind of suggestions.
Perhaps it is unpleasant for you to admit that some borderpolice and more than a few soldiers are murderers. Yes murderers, of little children.
And usually they can get away with it.
there have been enough cases in which they did.
Then, sometimes, they don't. Because there were witnesses. Because there was ample proof. Because they selected "the wrong victim".
There are those rules called "horaot ptiha be'esh", you know. When a soldier can fire and how.They are quite problematic BUT
the case of Abir did NOT meet these requirements. Even by those rules, there was no reason to shoot. But there was shooting.
Then you go on using that old technique of saying "well you don't live here" so you do not understand.
One wonders. Byt that reasoning we should critisize what goes on in Darfour or in Ruwanda, after all, we don't live there either.
But human rights are universal.
When that didn't work YOU started talking about Mumbay. True horrid things, but by youir own critique: you don't live there so how can you know what it is like?
I think you 've run into a problem here. We don't all believe the sotries printed in thqt yellow rag called yediot. For a olong time we know and have witnessed tha acts of policemen and soldiers who have become EXTREMELY and criminaly violent. True, not all of them, a minority, but they are there.
And if we don't stop them, they'll use that violence aleswhere as well.
As human beings it is our duty to stop the murderers amongst us, not to justify their acts by unbased reasoning.
These people are dangerous, to you as well.
Typical Israeli left- when you can't argue, then try to understand whatever the person says the way you want. And accuse the person of whatever you want.
BTW. I divide my time between 4 countries that I am a citizen of.
As for Bombay,are you living in the 1980's? Maybe thats the reason you think it's Bombay and maybe thats the reason that you think the way you do.
Neither of you address the issue as to why do these people have violent demonstrations and why do they deliberately include children in it? A blog quoting Gandhi should advocate peace from both sides not just one.
Neither of you even address the Israeli children brutally murdered.
So no further comment. Have fun with your lives, blame it on one side and then promote yourselves as peace activists.
Yeah >YT, now we're seeing your true side: when people don't agree with you (a simple democratic right) you leave the discourse.
Stating they are mislead, or, funny enough accusing them. Abir's family lives the dialogue.
Abir was murdered. But still they feel it is better to talk.
They want a discourse, but YOU keep on the one hand inssitnig "they" are violent (and murder Israeli children, which ofcourse is just as horrible as murdering Palestinian children) and then you stop talking yourself.Now how peace loving is that?
Isn't making peace about talking with people and trying to come to an understanding with people who do not necessarily agree with you?
About compromise?
You prfere to believe the zionist narrative and i respect that belief, although i do not share it.
I am in favor of a dialogue, of talking, just like Abir was and her parents still are.
you keep trying to accuse themof being violent, in order to perhasp (?) justify why little Abir was murdered.
I'm, still in favor of a dialogue. but you appear to be nor really acable of accepting that some people have different opinions. the fact that you live in four or ten or twenty countries and i live only in the Middle East doesn't justify a thing.
You run away from dialogue, and that says a lot, about you.
Calling your "opponents" or partners stupid or naive (or implicating such) doesn't make it true or valid.
And something more about abir: http://www.forward.com/articles/a-plea-for-peace-from-a-bereaved-palestinian-fathe/
Yudit I think you should read what MYT is saying:
\\\"Neither of you address the issue as to why do these people have violent demonstrations and why do they deliberately include children in it? A blog quoting Gandhi should advocate peace from both sides not just one.
Neither of you even address the Israeli children brutally murdered.\\\"
I\\\'ve been following this talkback since yesterday and it obvious to me that you seem to misunderstand him altogether. He is asking you a simple question. Why do people involve children in violence? He also seems to be asking you whether it means nothing to you when Israeli children are brutally murdered? or are you as provoked when an Israeli child dies at the hand of a Palestinian?
I think if you (and not J.P.) answer him on those he will be happy to have a dialog with you, as much as you would like.
Robert
Robert, two simple points: what or who do you mean by "these" people?
Abir's family are deeply involved in peace making efforts.
So who are you referring to? Abirs family quite clealry are not vioent people.
Secondly i MOSt clearly stated i find it appalling when ANy child dies, Palestinian or Israeli, chinese of African.
the problem is that in this conflict there are far more Palestinian child victims than Jewish child vicitms (and once more, for the sake of clarity) any childvictim, in fact any victim of violence i do mourn.
I cannot see why people continue to refer to Abir's family as violent. Abir came out of school, a little girl, on her way home. She was shot and died.
Her small sister witnessed it. I added a link to an article written by her father.
What else....
The murderers opened fire against the instructions. Ther was no justifiable reason for opening fire.
And just for a comparison: when the ultra religious Jews throw stones at people driving their car in Jeruslaem on shabat,no one wuld THINK of opening fire.
It's quite obvious why not.
No Abir was not demonstrating, she was on her way home.
So please for once, stop referring to her and her family as "them" and accusing "them" of things they never did.
Perhaps one of the rpboelms is that it is nice when Israelis can say "there is no one on the other side to talk to", where are the Palestinian peaceniks?" Well here they are: Abir's family and they still want to talk, and they still want to meet Israeli children in a meeting in memory of Abir.
so you see: they want a dialogue, they want to talk, the don't throw stones nor shoot...
so let's have that dialogue, instead of accusing "them" of "sacrificing their children".
Perhaps when we all talk, we can also stop sacrificing our children
They said in Haaretz the little girl may have been hit by a rock
Yeah, wouldn't that be nice for our conscience:
So once more the link: http://www.forward.com/articles/a-plea-for-peace-from-a-bereaved-palestinian-father/
there were witnesses you see.
Yeah, wouldn't that be nice for our conscience
It has nothing to do with my conscience. I'm not even Jewish and I'm reading your blog from France.
You see, I don't share your politics but I enjoy reading your prose, let alone, watching your pictures. I even find you pretty informative.
I mentionned the Haaretz article because you dismissed Yediot's truth, as you put it. I assumed that Haaretz would be more acceptable as a source in your view.
But if you need to believe that this little girl was shot by an Israeli soldier to be happy, that's ok with me. After all, this is YOUR blog and the truth over here should be YOUR truth
Your link to the Forward didn't work for me Sorry, there has been an error in loading the article you requested. Please check the URL to make sure that you have spelled and capitalized everything properly. If you are confused or if you are still having trouble locating your desired page, try visiting the homepage (http://www.forward.com), or using the searchbox in the upper right hand side of this screen.
First of all, the link of Abir's father's article once more:
http://www.forward.com/articles/a-plea-for-peace-from-a-bereaved-palestinian-fathe/
I hvae very little to add beyond that
Yudit,
I agree that my first comment was not clear and so you got the impression that I was referring to Abir throwing stones. So I am really sorry for giving out that impression.
Having said that. I will try to answer your questions and be open to a dialog as long as there is no provocation or racial slurs posted by people, such as Mumbay and trying to give the impression that "in our part of the world but until now I did not read of police shooting at random" when not mentioning what part of the world. In answer to whatever part of the world this person lives I gave him the answer as to which part of the world I live in. As for this person stating
"Mumbay or Mumbai, it has allways been Bombay so what is your point.
You should get yourself another hobby,you are far too aggressive and do not open yourself to other people's opinion, what about bloodhounds?"
It speaks for itself as to who doesn't open up himself to other peoples opinion. Just a short lesson in history. The city called Mumbai was called Mumbai by local and it comes from Mumba Aie (Mother Mumba) The British deliberately changed the name of this city to Bombay to stick it into the face of the local people whose land they were occupying. In 1990 the major cities in India were renamed to their original names, Bombay reverted to Mumbai, Madras reverted to Chennai, etc. Now that I am done with this, I will not entertain any thing further from someone with a racial slur and someone who claims to be a peace activist and yet supports previous occupiers in history by calling cities names that these occupiers gave to humiliate the locals.
Now I'll get to the point of answering your questions.
1) I apologized earlier for mistakenly haven given you the impression that I am saying that Abir was throwing stones. She was a victim of violence.
2) Why do these people (the palestinians) have violent demonstrations time and time again (not this specific incident) and why do they deliberately include children in it, either directly or indirectly? What I mean is as follows
a) directly meaning sending children to confront soldiers and other armed forces with stones.
b) indirectly meaning staging these violent demonstrations near the vicinity of children, where there is a danger that a child might get hurt or even worse get killed.
So if they were to stop violence and demonstrate peacefully the Israeli armed forces would not have any right to open fire and if they did they would come under heavy pressure from the world.
Haven't we seen in history that we can achieve our goals through non violence?
I think that for someone like you who is a Peace Activist quoting Mahatma Gandhi should also advocate peaceful means from the Palestinians, and not legitimize stone throwing.
One last thing, since you say that Yedioth is a rag, I am not really a Yedioth fan or Haaretz fan, but these things are sources of information for me and the world looking at Israeli news. And as much as I deeply regret the death of Abir, truly a sad thing, you say that "there are more sources than yediot, and Abir's body was checked by a wellknown and experienced pathologist. " I am not a doctor, I work in the IT field and most people I know wouldn't take that sentence at face value because the name of the doctor is not mentioned. So giving the name of this doctor would help prove your claim. No one I know in India, Ireland, or the U.S. is going to take it at face value if you just say "a well known and experienced pathologist".
I don't think that was my issue to start with whether Abir died from a bullet, a stun grenade or a stone. My point is simple "KEEP CHILDREN AWAY FROM VIOLENCE" nothing else. So whether Abir died from a bullet, or a stun grenade or a stone (which as you say the zionist stance), the fact is that she still died because of violence. Whoever staged the violent stone throwing demonstration should have though about it and not done it near a school.
I am glad to know that you are as agitated when other children are killed as well, I just wanted to clear that part. I have dealt with people in the past for whom Jewish and Israeli children meant nothing. Sick but true.
Hope I am clear this time, and if you want to have a dialog I am open for it.
Have a great week.
Yudit,
Since your link for some reason doesn't show up correctly, I am pasting the contents of that link here.
A Plea for Peace From a Bereaved Palestinian Father
Bassam Aramin
I fought with my daughter on the day she was shot.
On her way out the door to school, Abir announced, in that way children have of doing, that she would be playing with a friend that afternoon rather than coming straight home to study for an exam scheduled for the next day. She was 10 years old, smart, dedicated to her schoolwork and still a little girl.
She wanted to play. I told her to not even think about it.
If I could tell her anything now, it would be: Go. Do whatever you want. Play.
Because now, she never will. She will never laugh again, never hear her friends calling her name, never feel the love of her family wrapped around her at night like a warm blanket.
Abir, the third of my six children, was shot in the head as she left school January 16, caught in an altercation between Israel Border Guard troops and older kids who may or may not have been throwing rocks. She died two days later.
I know what the Israeli army has said about the incident, and I know what Abir’s older sister Arin saw with her own two eyes: Abir was running away from the troops when she suddenly stopped and fell, and blood splattered onto the ground. An independent autopsy confirms the most likely cause of death: a rubber bullet, through the back of Abir’s head. I have that bullet in my house, because poor Arin, watching her sister get shot, picked up the bullet and brought it home. I was not surprised when the Israeli army tried to blame Abir for her own death. First we were told that she was among the rock throwers; then we were told that “something” blew up in her hands — though her hands remained miraculously in tact— before she could toss it at the Border Guard jeep.
I was not surprised, but the anguish that such fabrications cause my wife and me is hard to express. Our baby was killed — must her name and innocence be desecrated, as well?
It would be easy, so easy, to hate. To seek revenge, find my own rifle, and kill three or four soldiers, in my daughter’s name. That’s the way Israelis and Palestinians have run things for a long time. Every dead child — and everyone is someone’s child — is another reason to keep killing.
I know. I used to be part of the cycle. I once spent seven years in an Israeli jail for helping to plan an armed attack against Israeli soldiers. At the time, I was disappointed that none of the soldiers was hurt.
But as I served out my sentence, I talked with many of my guards. I learned about the Jewish people’s history. I learned about the Holocaust.
And eventually I came to understand: On both sides, we have been made instruments of war. On both sides, there is pain, and grieving, and endless loss.
And the only way to make it stop is to stop it ourselves.
Many people came to support and comfort us as Abir lay dying, her small face chalk white, her eyes forever closed. Among those who never left my side were a number of men I have recently come to love as brothers, men who know my past, and who share it. Men who, like me, were trained to hate and to kill, but who now also believe that we must find a way to live with our former enemies.
Israeli men. Every one of them, a former combat soldier.
These men and I are members of Combatants for Peace. Each of us, 300 Palestinians and Israelis, was once on the front lines of the conflict. We shot, bombed, tortured and killed. We believed it was the only way to serve our people.
Now we know this not to be true. We know that to serve our people, we must fight not each other but the hatred between us. We must find a way to share this land each people holds in the depths of its soul, to build two states side by side. Only then will the mourning end.
I will not rest until the soldier responsible for my daughter’s death is put on trial, and made to face what he has done. I will see to it that the world does not forget my daughter, my lovely Abir.
But I will not seek vengeance. No, I will continue the work I have undertaken with my Israeli brothers. I will fight with all I have within me to see that Abir’s name, Abir’s blood, becomes the bridge that finally closes the gap between us, the bridge that allows Israelis and Palestinians to finally, inshallah, live in peace.
If I could tell my daughter anything, I would make her that promise. And I would tell her that I love her very, very much.
Bassam Aramin lives in Anata, just outside of Jerusalem.
I wanted to add that even according to Bassam in his own words
"Abir, the third of my six children, was shot in the head as she left school January 16, caught in an altercation between Israel Border Guard troops and older kids who may or may not have been throwing rocks. She died two days later."
It is disputed that there was rock/stone throwing. But poor Abir was caught up between an an altercation between Israel Border Guard troops and older kids.
So I think the best way to avoid such tragedies in the future can only be achieved through non violence and if demonstrations are needed then they should be non violent demonstrations.
MYT, thanks for Bassam's words
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