Press Release: Erekat Family Statement on the Extrajudicial Killing of Its Son, Ahmad Erekat

Press Release: Erekat Family Statement on the Extrajudicial Killing of Its Son, Ahmad Erekat

Press Release: Erekat Family Statement on the Extrajudicial Killing of Its Son, Ahmad Erekat

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following is a press release from the Erekat family on the recent killing of its son, Ahmad Erekat. Read the Arabic version here.]

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 29, 2020

Contact: Dalal Iriqat
dalal.s.iriqat@gmail.com

Erekat Family Statement on the extrajudicial killing of its Son, Ahmad Erekat

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.” - Martin Luther King.

Abu Dis, Palestine - The Erekat family mourns the tragic death of our son Ahmad Erekat, who was killed in cold blood by the Israeli occupation on June 23, 2020. Our son Ahmad is the eleventh Palestinian to be killed this year alone, and among hundreds slain in the past two years, as a result of Israel’s extrajudicial shoot-to-kill policy. As individuals, families, international organizations, and states, we must work together to put a stop to Israel’s repeated cold-blooded killings of Palestinians.

In order to ensure an end to Israeli crimes against our people and to help prevent another tragic killing, the Erekat family makes clear the following:

As is evident in the one released video footage, the Israeli military committed four distinct crimes against Ahmad Erekat that are punishable under international law and the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court:  One, in the moments leading to his death, the Israeli military used lethal force and shot at Ahmad as he stepped out of his vehicle attempting to put his hands up indicating that he is unarmed and defenseless. Two, after shooting him, the Israeli military left Ahmad to bleed on the ground for more than an hour until his death.  Three, the Israeli military prevented the ambulance and medical staff of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society from attending to Ahmad and refused to allow him the medical care needed. Four, as with a number of other Palestinian martyrs, the Israeli military detained Ahmad’s body and is now withholding Ahmad’s corpse as a form of cruel punishment.

Only a few weeks ago on May 30, 2020, Israeli forces shot and killed Iyad Al-Hallak, an autistic thirty-two-year-old Palestinian man from Jerusalem, while he was on his way to his special needs school.  Iyad was carrying only a toy in his hands and he ran away from the soldiers out of fear who chased and shot him to death.  In 2018, the Israelis also shot and killed Razan Al-Najjar, a paramedic wearing a clearly marked medical staff vest and later doctored a video to suggest that al Najjar represented Hamas and was, therefore, a legitimate military target.

We ask you to not only question the circumstances of Ahmad’s and Iyad’s and Razan’s killings, to name only three of the hundreds killed, but to also reflect on how normalized such killings have become, where another Palestinian tragedy has become a question of when rather than if. 

Israel’s murderous practices are utterly devoid of humanity, and we must, therefore, challenge the international community’s acceptance of Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy under the guise of security.   

In the course of the so-called, “Knife Intifada,” Israel systematically used lethal force against alleged assailants, citing defensive force. In 2016 alone, Israel killed 95 civilians, including 36 children and labeled the incidents as ‘alleged stabbings’ despite evidence demonstrating the absence of any means to carry out a lethal attack. In its 2017 session, the Human Rights Council concluded that Israel often used lethal force against Palestinians “on mere suspicion or as a precautionary measure.”  Finally, human rights organizations have noted that these extrajudicial assassinations are only openly endorsed by Israeli leadership, and “are accompanied by a failure of Israeli authorities to investigate the incidents, a denial of autopsies for the deceased, a failure to release their bodies, and other policies that contribute to an environment of impunity for state violence.” 

These killings are taking place in a broader context of apartheid and settler-colonial expansion. So rather than asking about the details of what happened in the moments prior to Ahmad’s death, the more important question to ask is why is there a checkpoint between two Palestinian areas being controlled by Israelis? Why has the international community failed to sanction Israel even after it expanded its colonial settlements, laid claim to East Jerusalem, and is preparing to annex significant tracts of West Bank territory?

In addition to Israeli accountability for its shoot-to-kill policy, the Erekat family demands the following:

  1. The release of the body of our son Ahmad Erekat in order for us to allow him a proper and dignified burial and to allow our family to bid farewell and mourn in peace. Ahmad’s body is one of 63 bodies of martyrs currently being detained by the Israeli state.

  2. The release of all recorded audio and video footage available from various angles of the moment of the car accident and the killing of Ahmad Erekat.

  3. An international investigation into the murder of Ahmad Erekat by the International Criminal Court and the UN Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Killings in order to expose the truth of Israel’s field executions, and achieve justice for Ahmad and the rest of the Palestinian martyrs.

  4. The immediate international protection for the people of Palestine. 

May we build a world where justice prevails for all.

* * *

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412