Recall this incident in October 2010 in which a Jewish resident of Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood was ambushed by stone-throwing 'Palestinians' and photographers who had been tipped off about what was going to take place.
The 'Palestinian Authority' recently claimed that the ad above was made from a picture of the incident and asked that it be removed. There's just one problem: No one knows who made the ad. Could it be the 'Palestinians' themselves?
A Subaru logo sits in the bottom right-hand corner of the ad, accompanied by the sentence, “Let’s see who will stand in your way.”
A spokeswoman for Japan Auto said on Thursday that the company had nothing to do with the advertisement, saying, “We strongly condemn these elements that are trying to harm the good name of the company.”
She added that the company did not plan to take any action over the advertisement, as it has no idea where it originated from.
The advertisement, which does not appear to have been published in any mainstream media outlets, was sent to media this week by the PA Government Media Center, which called on Subaru to “take all necessary steps to stop the circulation of this despicable and disgraceful ad and condemn it.”
However, the PA, although not revealing where it had obtained the advertisement, also acknowledged that it is not clear whether the ad is genuine or whether someone not connected to the company has made use of the Subaru logo without its approval.
Finally: 'Palestinian' given eight months in jail for throwing rocks at Jewish car
One of the reasons that 'Palestinians' continue to throw rocks at Jewish cars (on Sunday night they stoned a bus bringing friends of the Fogel family home from their funeral) is that they are rarely caught, and when they are caught, they are treated leniently. This also allows the 'Palestinians' to maintain the myth that their actions are 'non-violent' even though they often throw stones at cars.
Please recall this incident from October. Let's go to the videotape.
Notice the adult in the black shirt and the jeans throwing a rock at David Beeri's car as he is driving off (it's around when the narrator is pointing out photographer number 4). That adult was sentenced on Sunday to eight months in jail for the incident you just saw. It's about time. But it's only a beginning.
The 22-year-old who was involved in the attack admitted to throwing a rock at Be'eri's car, but claimed that he was not part of the mob that attacked Be'eri – with cameras filming the whole time – but rather, was innocently making his way home from prayers when he stumbled into the situation. He attacked Be'eri after seeing him hit a child with his car, he claimed.
“I'm sorry for what happened. It was a reaction to what I saw, I didn't recognize the driver. Apparently I made a mistake,” the man said in court. His attorney argued that what had happened was “an unusual incident.”
The court decided to sentence the man to jail despite his claim that the attack stemmed from a simple mistaken interpretation of what was happening. Prosecutors had argued for a 10-month jail sentence, “for the purpose of both punishment and deterrence: punishment for the severe and dangerous act described in the indictment, and deterrence so that he does not do this again.”
Notice the attitude. If you - God forbid - see a car hit someone, do you start throwing stones at the car? Of course not. Civilized peoplr (i.e. not Arab savages) would write down the license plate number of the car and call the police. Civilized people don't adopt vigilante and mob violence tactics.
But the sentence is too short. What's the punishment for attempted murder? Surely more than eight months or ten months.
And for those of you wondering what happened to the kid who ran in front of the car to throw a stone at it....
Be'eri was detained for questioning after the October incident, but police quickly released him as video evidence showed that the child Be'eri hit had deliberately run in front of his car. MKs suggested that the parents of the children involved in the attack on Be'eri should be questioned instead; the child hit by Be'eri's car then began to claim that he could not remember the incident.
Of course. And he got off scot-free. Great education they give these 'Palestinian' kids, isn't it?
The picture in this post is my screen capture from a video (which I learned from the article linked below was shot by al-Jazeera - who else?), but the still photograph of the event has been honored in an international photography competition for the “spot news” photo of the year.
The dramatic photo of a boy being thrown onto the hood of Be’eri’s car earned Ilia Yefimovich, a photographer for the Russian News Agency Itar-Tass, an award of excellence. The final winners of the Pictures of the Year International competition will be announced on February 23.
Yefimovich said he wasn’t surprised that his photo was cited, because “it so perfectly captured the moment” in an otherwise “lame” year of news in Israel.
The photo was greeted with suspicion around the world, with many accusing Yefimovich and the other photographers of “setting up” the situation, and even encouraging the youths to throw rocks so they would have something to photograph.
“I went to Silwan every week for the past eight months, every single Friday,” he told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
“So it’s not like, ‘Whoa, what were the journalists doing there?’ They send us to these places because things happen here.
“I pass there lots of times, and kids throw stones not because photographers are coming to shoot them, they do it because they want to do it.
You can see them not just on Friday, but on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, morning, noon, and night.”
Yefimovich added that rocks were thrown at his own car on the way to Silwan that day, without any photographers present.
I'd bet that if they had no expectation of photographers showing up, there would be a lot fewer stones thrown. Does anyone really believe that the kid below isn't being encouraged by all the photographers?
Two months ago, we got a call one day from one of my children's school. One of our children, we were told, had been throwing rocks at passing cars, and could we please come get him. My oldest child is 27, so I have had children in school for a long time. This was the first time we had ever been called to school to pick up a child. We would have read the child the riot act (and the principal did read him the riot act), except that it turned out that the story was grossly exaggerated. The child and three of his friends were having a competition during recess to see who could throw the inedible fruit produce of one of the bushes the furthest. They threw too far and hit some parked cars belonging to some people who have an office in the school's basement.
Knowing how I reacted to hearing that my child was throwing rocks at passing cars - even though it turned out to be wrong - I cannot understand the indifference with which other parents in another part of town react when their children are caught throwing stones and the police come and get them at 3:00 am.
In a report to be released on Monday, B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, slammed the Jerusalem Police for “systematically violat[ing] the law” for treatment of east Jerusalem minors being investigated for their role in stone-throwing.
B’Tselem accuses the police of waking boys as young as eight in the middle of the night and taking them to the police station for interrogation, not allowing parents to attend their questioning, and using extreme violence and handcuffs on children.
B’Tselem said these rights for children were protected by the Youth Law, an Israeli law that adopts most of the UN’s positions on children’s rights.
The Jerusalem Police dismissed the report.
“It is known that the role of the police is to maintain public order and defend the peace, including in instances when the public order is disturbed by children,” the police said in a statement. The police said that they always gave parents the option of attending interrogations, and that children were only awakened in the middle of the night for questioning “for accepted operational reasons related to the good of the investigation.”
According to B’Tselem, from November 2009 to October 2010, 81 minors from Silwan were arrested or detained, many of them more than once. Nearly 40 percent of these boys were arrested or detained in the month following the September 22 death of Silwan resident Samer Sirkhan, who was killed by an Israeli private security guard.
Statistics from previous years were not available from either B’Tselem or the police, though police agreed there was a “worrisome increase” in violent incidents, especially rock-throwing, in the past year in east Jerusalem. The widespread problem was captured by the international media when Elad (Ir David Foundation) head David Be’eri ran into two youths who were throwing rocks at his car on October 8.
At a meeting of the Knesset’s Committee on the Rights of the Child following the Be’eri incident, police said they were frustrated that their hands were tied when dealing with younger and younger boys who were throwing rocks. In October, police examined the idea of holding the parents responsible for their children’s actions, but have not finalized any new plans.
...
In October, police called Gnaith’s father to tell him to report with Gnaith at the police station the next day for an investigation into a second stone-throwing incident. Gnaith was kept in detention for one day, and released after his parents left a NIS 5,000 guarantee, a check that the police did not deposit but will hold in case Gnaith is arrested again.
Well, how do you deal with these kids? No one here really knows. You can't exactly lock up an eight-year old. On the other hand, giving a 15-year old stone thrower a few days in jail ought to put a little bit of fear into him. But it doesn't.
The bigger issue is how to deal with parents who are apparently indifferent to the fact that their kids are in the streets throwing stones. Here's the end of this story. "Arouri" is Amer Arouri, B'Tselem's 'east' Jerusalem field worker.
Gnaith’s story is just one of hundreds. According to B’Tselem, the Jerusalem District Police opened 1,267 criminal files against Arab minors living in east Jerusalem who were accused of throwing rocks. Though the police only took action in a fraction of these cases, 32 youths from Silwan were arrested or detained in October 2010 alone. Some have been arrested several times.
The question remains, if the youth in Silwan are suffering so badly from the punishments and harsh treatment by police, why do they continue to throw stones at cars driving through their neighborhood every day.
“Even after the punishment, they still live in the same situation – there’s an occupation, there are settlers...there’s the wall, checkpoints, no work,” Aruri said.
The children will continue to throw stones, he said, because there’s no other action they can take. “There’s no hope in the future,” he said.
Sorry but I don't accept the last two paragraphs. An 8-year old doesn't know about the wall or checkpoints. A 15-year old may not either. These kids aren't throwing stones because they feel 'oppressed.' They're throwing stones because grown-ups - including their own parents - are sending them out to be canon fodder. For that, the parents should be sitting in jail.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
Recall this incident in October 2010 in which a Jewish resident of Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood was ambushed by stone-throwing 'Palestinians' and photographers who had been tipped off about what was going to take place.
