Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Congresswoman Asks For Investigation Into Israeli Shooting Of Two Palestinian Teens

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) has requested the State Department open an investigation into whether the killing of two Palestinian teenagers last year by Israeli security forces warrants withholding of military aid under the conditions of the Leahy Law.

“The murders of Nadeem Nawara and Mohammad Daher highlight a brutal system of occupation that devalues and dehumanizes Palestinian children," she wrote in a letter to two State Department officials, referring to the teenagers who were shot and killed May 15, 2014, during a protest at the Ofer prison in the West Bank. “It is time for a strong and unequivocal statement of U.S. commitment to the human rights of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation,” McCollum continued in the letter, which was publicly released on Monday.

The protests were part of the annual remembrance of Nakba Day, the Palestinian term for the day after Israel declared itself a state in 1948. The Israeli military initially denied using live ammunition at the protest, insisting that security forces only used rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. But a bloodied bullet was found in Nawara’s backpack, and an autopsy showed an entry and exit wound in his body. At his family’s request, Daher did not have an autopsy.

A compilation of live video footage from news outlets and closed-circuit television from a local business show that neither boy was actively participating in the protest or posing a threat to Israeli soldiers when shot.
Nadeem Nawara shooting at 1:45 p.m., May 15, 2014.
Mohammad Daher shooting at 2:59 p.m., May 15, 2014.

The Israeli military said the footage had been edited in a "biased and tendentious way" and did not "reflect the violent nature of the riot."

A subsequent video, compiled by the London-based Forensic Architecture group, overlays the closed-circuit television footage of Nawara being shot with CNN footage of two Israeli security officials, showing the trajectory the bullet traveled to hit the 17-year-old.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: Jessica Schulberg

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