An IDF soldier opened fire towards Yesh Din investigator, Muneer Qaddus, without any provocation. Yesh Din strongly denounces the shooting. MPCID was notified

Post by ‎Yesh Din ييش دين יש דין‎.

At the beginning of August, an IDF soldier opened fire towards Yesh Din investigator, Muneer Qaddus, without Qaddus endangering him in any way, and while he was video documenting the actions of the soldiers. The incident may be viewed in the video below; the shooting takes place at about 01:06.

Qaddus was on the scene to document an incident between IDF soldiers and children from the village of Burin. The children were trying to renovate an abandoned house that belongs to the village, but is very close to the illegal outpost of Givat Ronen. The arrival of the children there is regularly followed by a confrontation with soldiers or Israeli civilians, and Qaddus rushed to the scene. From a nearby hill, he documented the clash between the soldiers and the children; the soldiers were standing on the hill, the children below it. The children were throwing stones at the soldiers and burning thorns, while the soldiers were firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at them.

And then, as you can see in the video, one of the three soldiers turns rightwards about ten meters, turns his weapon directly towards Qaddus, and fires several shots. This, again, is despite the fact that Qaddus posed no danger or threat to the soldiers – and despite the fact that such a shooting is against the IDF’s rules of engagement.

The use of a deadly weapon for the purpose of deterring a person carrying out a rightful action, without any warning, is a violation of the law. When it is carried out by a soldier against a person documenting the actions of the military – note that we have no reason to believe the soldier knew he was shooting at a human rights organization employee – one must also ask what is it the military wants to hide. We further note that the soldiers did not arrest or detain anyone, which strengthens the claim that there was no proper cause for live fire – or for any sort of fire.

We should also remind you that the IDF has a history of harassing photographers, including firing a rubber-coated bullet at the spokeswoman of B’Tselem, Sarit Michaeli, as she was documenting a demonstration.

Yesh Din strongly denounces the attack on Muneer Qaddus, and we have notified MPCID in his name. We note that this isn’t the first time Qaddus is attacked in the line of duty: five months ago, he was attacked by Israeli civilians.