WATCH: Private Israeli security guard attacks protesters with live fire

By Joseph Dana June 4, 2011 | Edit

Israeli private security opens live fire on unarmed Israeli and Palestinians demonstrators. Army arrives and throws tear gas on the demonstrators.

This morning, roughly 40 unarmed Palestinians among with four Israelis, held a demonstration at an illegal Israeli quarry built on the land of the villages of Ni’ilin and Budrus. As the demonstrators approached the quarry they could see an Israeli private security guard screaming at them from a small distance. Within seconds, the guard opened live fire on the protesters. He even took time to aim at individual protesters. The below video was shot by one of the activists on the scene.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TESy_8Fqc6w[/youtube]

According to eyewitnesses, within five minutes three Israeli military jeeps arrived and told the protesters to leave and that the area was a closed military zone. Instead of disciplining the security guard for opening live fire on unarmed demonstrators, soldiers attacked the group with tear gas. Palestinians are reporting that one person was hit in the head with shrapnel. The below video is from a demonstration held in the same area earlier in the week.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYP-Ak2pVxc&NR=1[/youtube]

UPDATE:

The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which had members on the ground at the demonstration, has a report of the demonstration.

Despite the entirely peacful nature of the demonstration, fire was quick to be shot. As soon as the quarry’s security guards noticed the procession, form a distance of about 200 meters, they opened fire with live ammunition. Initially, the guards fired a vollies of bullets in the air, which caught the protestes by surprise and caused them to freeze in their place. Some laid down on the ground, while other stood up and shouted at the guards in Hebrew calling on them to stop shooting. In response, the guards took aim, and started shooting directly towrds people.

When the protesters realized they are acctually being shot at, they started running away, which did not bring the guards to stop shooting. As the bullets riddled the ground, one demonstrator, a 47 year-old construction worker from the village of Budrus was hit with a shrapnell in his left eyebrow.

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Joseph Dana was a contributing writer on +972 Magazine from August 2010 to December 2011. This is an archive of his work.

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TEST TEST GAL Our team has been devastated by the horrific events of this latest war. The world is reeling from Israel’s unprecedented onslaught on Gaza, inflicting mass devastation and death upon besieged Palestinians, as well as the atrocious attack and kidnappings by Hamas in Israel on October 7. Our hearts are with all the people and communities facing this violence. We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies. This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalized siege on Gaza. We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the fight of their lives. Can we count on your support? +972 Magazine is a leading media voice of this movement, a desperately needed platform where Palestinian and Israeli journalists, activists, and thinkers can report on and analyze what is happening, guided by humanism, equality, and justice. Join us.

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