Friday, June 11, 2010

10 Meters or 100 Meters?

What are the facts about the loss of Emily Henochowicz's eye?

The 21-year old student, from Maryland, is becoming a new icon figure of martyrdom (see: “They clearly saw us,” said Sören Johanssen, a Swedish ISM volunteer standing with Henochowicz. “They clearly saw that we were internationals and it really looked as though they were trying to hit us. They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face.”).

Here is Avi Isserchof's account in Ha-Ha-Haaretz, the most reliable newspaper on the issue of Arab anti-"occupation" activities, as we know:

Last Monday at approximately 11:10 A.M., photographer Daniel Bar-On and I were heading to the Qalandiyah crossing to cover a demonstration in Ramallah's Manara Square to protest the raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla and support Turkey.

Right after we passed the crossing, we saw a group of Border Police that arrived in a rush. Some youths threw stones at the army position at the crossing.

Nearby were several dozen demonstrators who raised many flags; the Lebanese one sticks in my mind. Daniel got out of the car and began taking photographs and I looked on - fairly bored, to be honest - at yet another meaningless confrontation between Palestinians and police.

The police fired a tear gas grenade, and then another and another. I remember that what surprised me was the volley of grenade-fire directly aimed directly at the demonstrators, not at the sky.

After the fourth grenade, if I am not mistaken, a shout was heard about 100 meters away.

All the photographers began running in that direction. Someone was moving a young woman away from the melee. Daniel captured the injury of that woman, who we realized only afterward was Emily Henochowicz. Her eye was bleeding badly. She was taken by a Red Crescent ambulance.

We went on to Ramallah, where it was a lot calmer. On the way to Manara we learned that the young woman had lost her eye. All because she had raised a flag.


Besides the fact that Emily did not lose an eye "All because she had raised a flag", but rather because she participated with one of the most violent and radical of groups, the Anarchists-Against-the-Wall for that is the group of Jonathan Pollack, and with the ISMers, and was in proximity with stonethrowers (and we'll hold on the Border Guard claim that there was no direct aiming and/or the pellet ricocheted)

Jonathan seems to confirm the main elements:

Henochowicz was hit in the face by a tear gas canister shot by an Israeli border policeman, said witness Jonathan Pollak. He said Palestinian youths were hurling rocks, but Henochowicz didn't participate in any violence and was standing at a distance.

But here, the distance is much less:

At the West Bank protest where Henochowicz was injured, other demonstrators who witnessed the incident said the canister was fired directly at Henochowicz from about 10 to 15 yards away. She was holding a Turkish flag and was not near the five or so Palestinian youths throwing rocks, the witnesses said.


I will ignore for now those who note that her family is 'observant' since she stopped believing in God three years ago:

Henochowicz grew up in an observant Jewish household and had her bat mitzvah at Potomac’s Har Shalom synagogue. Her father was born in Tel Aviv, and his parents are Polish Holocaust survivors.


nevertheless, she was engaged in a protest that became violent.

What was her duty - to continue to protest and hold high the Turkish flag (who gave her that?) or to cease and engage in non-violent activity?

And how far away was she?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"she participated with one of the most violent and radical of groups."

They are fairly radical (which is not a crime in itself), but violent? How many people have been killed by these anarchists? How many Palestinians, by comparison, have been killed by violent settlers. Yet would you call any settler violent? Someone whose acts must be met by violence? Your political colors are showing too much. Your ideological enemies deserve to be shot and injured, even when their "violence" is limited to throwing rocks; your friends ... well their violence is always justified. If the border police had shot the eye out of one of those nutcases from Yizhar while they were shooting at Palestinians or burning down olive trees, would be calling them radical,violent people who must be treated with a heavy had? Of course not. In fact, you would probably dismiss the BP version of the event (even though above you accept it uncritically) and accuse them of oppressing settlers. A double (ideologically based) standard.

Juniper in the Desert said...

Dear Anonymous, isn't it amazing how many many people are FIXATED with Israel! Looking at the map it is a tiny country trying to protect itself from internal and external attacks on its very REASON for existing!

No comment is made by you about the everyday horror of the Taliban murdering huge swathes of other muslims, and hanging a 7 year old boy yesterday, for purely territorial gain.

No comment is made by you regarding the genocidal killings of Coptic Christians in Egypt, killings of Christians in Pakistan BECAUSE they are Christians, by muslims, and on and on without respite. Or the rape, mutilation and murders, visited on their own people by the Iranian regime!

And people like you are fixated, in a psychotic fashion without rationale, but blindly, on a tiny country in the Middle East from which the basic laws which govern civilised behaviour, in the West, come from.

Please don't spout the lies about the poor people of Gaza, because that is a DOCUMENTED lie!

It is all pretence in order to cover for your completely IRRATIONAL Jew-hatred. I pity you.
Shame on you all.

YMedad said...

Oh, and I didn't accept any version but simply pointed out a major contradiction of the version the ISMers are pandering around.

Anonymous said...

If it was Yitzhak Shapira, he needs more than his eyes shot out.