BREAKING: Israeli forces demolished a two-story home on Tuesday in the Palestinian village of Nahhalin near Bethlehem.
The home belonged to a family of 8, including 3 children.
As Israeli forces destroyed the home, soldiers tear-gassed village residents who protested.
The home is one of at least 834 Palestinian structures demolished by Israeli forces in 2021 alone.
(Source: OCHA)
Everyone deserves to live in their own home with dignity and safety.
Yet Israel has continued to destroy Palestinian homes, like this one, through the winter, leaving Palestinian families homeless in the bitter cold.
Demolishing Palestinian homes and businesses stifles the growth of Palestinian society and encourages Israeli settlers to takeover stolen Palestinian homes and land.
Palestinians have called on the international community to demand Israel stop displacing Palestinian families immediately.
THREAD: This year, Palestinians endured unbearable atrocities at the hands of Israel and emerged—with unprecedented international solidarity—ready as ever to resist Israeli colonization and ethnic cleansing.
In 2021 Israel:
- Took the lives of hundreds of Palestinians.
- Illegally refused to provide COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinians.
- Illegally demolished Palestinian homes as part of an ethnic cleansing effort in East Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan.
- Criminalized 6 of the most prominent human rights organizations in Palestine.
- Created a database of every Palestinian in the West Bank via mass facial recognition surveillance.
- Effectively encouraged a sharp rise in violent Israeli settler attacks.
After trying—and failing—to make living in the Palestinian town of Masafer Yatta so unbearable that Palestinian residents would leave on their own, Israel is demolishing their homes.
Israel frequently targets the town by forcing residents to evacuate during military trainings, flying low helicopters, enabling settler attacks, and refusing residents access to water and electricity.
Demolishing Palestinian homes is a war crime that Israel plans to continue not only in Masafer Yatta but Sheikh Jarrah, Al-Tur, and more if they are not stopped.
This video comes after several extremely alarming revelations about Israeli surveillance of Palestinians, namely that Israeli soldiers have been taking photos of Palestinians—including children—and collecting them in a surveillance database.
All the children in this video are extremely young—elementary-school aged. It's illegal for soldiers to take photos of minors, but that does not stop the Israeli army from doing exactly that as an intimidation tactic.
Though the soldier in this video was supposedly reprimanded, there is no word on where the photos are or what they were used for.
An Israeli dossier supplied to American and European governments lacks any evidence justifying the attack on 6 Palestinian human & civil rights orgs, according to multiple news sources who've seen the classified documents.
The dossier instead focused on an unrelated group: the Union for Health Workers Committee, which ran hospitals and health clinics before it was blacklisted by Israel last year.
Israel is hoping to do the same with the 6 human rights organizations it is targeting now.
Multiple European governments—including Ireland, Belgium, and the Netherlands—have chosen to continue their relationships with the organizations after finding Israel’s evidence unconvincing.
THREAD: Israel’s baseless designation of 6 of the most prominent Palestinian human rights organizations as “terrorist groups” is a blatant attempt to silence criticism and attack Palestinian rights.
The organizations targeted are: @DCIPalestine; @Addameer; @alhaq_org; The Bisan Center for Research and Development; The Union of Agricultural Work Committees; and the The Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.
The work of these organizations includes tracking the murders of Palestinian children at the hands of the Israeli military, exposing human rights violations in Israeli prisons, fighting for women’s rights, advocating for sustainable food practices, and much more.