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By Kawther Salam • Oct 3rd, 2009 at 20:21 • Category: Children's Corner
In Palestine, under the Israeli occupation and the boundless criminal practices of the IDF, every unimaginable and never heard of horror is possible, while outside, most people never know or even imagines these things to be possible. In Palestine it is not enough to steal the land, to build colonies for Jewish squatters, an apartheid wall and increased military check points, to assassinate, to kill, kidnap and harvest the organs of victims, it is not enough to jail, torture, and to restrict the daily life of the people, but even the homosexual of the IDF get to rape boys in the middle of the street of the old city of Hebron after turning its heart into a theater of ghost. The events of this story are part of my memories, and they should be presented as evidence against the criminal commanders of the Israeli IDF.
On August 14, 1997, an Israeli homosexual and IDF officer with yellow hair, about 180 cm high, carrying two silver stars on his uniform, a member of the so-called “Israeli border Police” raped a Palestinian teenager in the old tunnel (Khozq El-Far, what could be translated “tunnel of the mouse”) in the old city of Hebron. The victim, aged 17 years, with blond hair, was wearing a blue t-shirt. He was on his way back home to the village of Yatta in the south of the district of Hebron city. The heart of Hebron city and Al-Shuhada street are the only way to Yetta and the other towns south of the city.
The story of the rape of the Palestinian boy by the Israeli homosexual officer from the border police was published in the Palestinian daily newspapers. It caused a huge reaction and controversy in the government of Israel, specifically at the IDF headquarters in Hebron, the Israeli Government Press Office at Beit Agron in occupied Jerusalem, and the Palestinian regional military commander office of Hebron, a thug of Israel. Everybody made great efforts to hide the crime under the pretext of protecting the so called “peace process” in Hebron, when actually there is no peace process but an unending string of crime from the Jewish squatters.
Instead of investigating the crime, punishing the Israeli homosexual officer and defending the defenceless boy, the victim who had been raped while he suppose to be protected under Fourth Geneva convention and the international treaties which Israel itself had signed. The criminal Israeli commander and his ally from the Palestinian Authority, Brig. Gen. Abdel Al-Fattah Al-Jaidi, (who died of cancer during the Al-Aqsa Intifada), coordinated between themselves to use their power to force me to deny the story which I had published in the daily newspapers.
General Al-Jaidi invited me to his military office and tried to put all kind of pressure on me to publish a new story in which I would say “after investigating the story of raping the child, I talked to his family and his father confirmed that the was not raped”. General Al-Jaidi said that he would not accept any evidence which confirmed the crime, and neither would he accept any kind of confrontation with his Israeli counterpart. He added that “this kind of shameful stories would bring negative impact and shame to the family of the victim in his village and on the Palestinian Authority”. He also told me that he would not accept that I threat his power by exposing this kind of story, and that he planned to submit a report to the PA military headquarter in which he would state that the story was not true.
General Al-Jaidi also threatened the eyewitness of the crime, and asked them to shut up about everything, and he invited the father of the victim and asked him to retract the story before me. What ever Gen. Al-Jaidi said and did had no impact on me and my sources, and the eyewitness who saw and talked with the homosexual IDF officer while doing his crime.
Parallel to the cover-up attempts of the general, the Israeli military commander in Hebron demanded that the Israeli government press office GPO use their power to end the story. He told them to threaten me with the confiscation of my press card which issued by their office if I continued to deny them to write a denial and to retract what I had published through newspapers and TV stations about the crime of this Israeli homo.
A meeting was set between me, Col. (res) Fawaz Kamal, director of the Arabic department at the GPO, Col. (res) Moshe Fogel, former director of the GPO, and the Israeli government spokesperson. The meeting was held at the Beit Agron Press Office.
Dr. Kamal, a Druze who speaks fluent Arabic, he asked me in a friendly way “why do you put yourself in the front line, facing everybody, and publishing stories which could bring war, while you can do your work very quiet and receive all our respect? Why do you not ignore the stories which could put you in danger and bring you hate and at the end you will loss your rights in our office?” Dr. Kamal also told me that the director of the GPO would confiscate my press card.
At the office of Gen Fogel, I let them hear the eyewitness testimony which I had recorded. The recording made Fogel quite. He said “I do not know if this recording is true or not”, and then, that the Israeli police should investigate the issue. He added “I am not against publishing the truth, and I will not confiscate your press card, but I will send an urgent letter to the Israeli police to investigate this issue and I will decide after I receive the final results of the investigation”. Fogel asked me “Why wouldn’t you report about the good relationship and coordination between the Palestinian commanders and the IDF commander?” We all decided (Fogel, Kamal and me) that the Israeli police would investigate the story of the homosexual IDF officer who raped the Palestinian teenager.
Some days later I met an Israeli police officer in Al-Shuhada St. near Qurtoba school in Hebron. He said: “we received a letter from the Israeli government spokesperson Moshe Fogel, in which he orders us to investigate the story of the IDF Officer who raped the boy. This letter was submitted to the Police commander”. He added that the Police commander, at that time Col. Efraim Arditi, had spoken with the IDF military Commander, then Col. Yigal Sharon, and that Col. Sharon “had recommended that we ignore this story”.
I asked him “why does your police commander and the military commander want the investigation unit to ignore this crime?”. He said that because it was shameful, and that it would bring trouble for everybody, and it was possible that an investigation could lead the soldiers to make revenge me, and “because you are living under the military laws, the final word in this issue is not ours, it is the word of the military commander Yigal Sharon”.
Walid Abed Al-Moneim Kafishe, then aged 53, was the eyewitness of the crime. He heard the loud screaming of teenager while he was being raped. He called the temporary international observers patrol “TIPH” and identified the IDF officer who raped the teenager to them, and then clashed with him and rescued the boy. Kafishe also took the boy to Palestinian-Israeli DCO office to file a complaint. Kafishe told the IDF officer: ”shame on you to hold that high rank on your shoulder and behave like animal”. He said that the child was not able to walk, had clear signs of fatigue and tiredness, and when he tried to stand up, he would sit back down and limp, and then he sat again on the floor and said that he couldn’t continue walking because the blond officer had raped him.
Under the strict pressure which both sides (Israeli military and PA military) used to force the retraction of the story, and after Police commander Col. Efraim Arditi did not investigate the crime and ignored the official letter of the Israeli government spokesperson to investigate the issue, I found out that:
The IDF military Commander of the time, Yigal Sharon, and the Israeli Police commander, Efraim Arditi, were friends at work before they were transferred to the occupation headquarter in Hebron. Col. Arditi told me this and added that Yigal Sharon was “very sweet like the honey and smoothe like a breeze of fresh air in spring”. I eventually found out that the settlers accused Yigal Sharon of being a homosexual, what was also confirmed by other sources.
I also found out that the Al-Jaidi was giving “secret lectures” at the Jewish squatter colony of Beit Hagai in South Mount Hebron in coordination with Col. Yigal Sharon. The lectures were behind the backs of the Palestinian population this collaboration happened despite their daily suffering, and were about the “PA plan to protect the Jewish settlers according the redeployment protocols”.(Al-Jaidi himself told me this secret and asked me to keep silence about it at that time.
Kawther Salam is a Palestinian journalist. She had a career of over 20 years working for various newspapers and TV stations in Palestine. She forced to live in the Exile in Vienna since 2002.
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