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The Israeli occupation soldiers in Hebron often shoot during the night.
They have unlimited amounts of ammunition judging by their firing
behavior. The shooting often starts at one post, and soon the posts on
the roofs all over Hebron follow in, with the result that often people
are wounded or killed while in their houses, and massive property
damage. Of course, it is not possible to sleep because the shooting is
so loud, especially when they shoot with bigger weapons, like automatic
grenade launchers, mortars, and high-caliber machine guns.
All the weapons and ammunitions used by the IDF are from U.S. origin
and payed for with American tax money. The weapons are either sold at
favorable rates or provided under different programs of military
assistance, or they are outright donated to Israel by the U.S. The
weapons and ammunitions are supposedly not supposed to be used by the
IDF for purposes related to the occupation, but it is improbable that
the U.S. would ask the IDF what they do with all those military
supplies. In the first clip below there may be a partial explanation as
to where and for what all these ammunitions are expended.
According to this
webpage, between 1990 and 2003 the military help to Israel
cost the
U.S. taxpayer US$ 27,8 Billion, financial costs excluded, and according
to this
webpage, as of 1999 the U.S. conveniently stored almost US$
500
Million in ammunitions in two secret "forward depots" in Israel.
(Click
on the images to view or download the videoclips)
A Night in Hebron
19 MB 5 Min 13 Sec .wmv file
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Filmed 2000,
at the
beginning of the Intifada. In this clip you see about 5 minutes of
shooting in the night. This happens in Hebron most nights. The shooting
can last for some minutes, hours, or all the night. The shooting
behavior of the IDF is like dogs in a village: when one dog barks, all
other dogs chime in. In the same fashion, when one IDF post shoots, all
other posts start shooting, most times not knowing why or at what. The
IDF posts will start shooting if they hear shots from the resistence,
or for no discernible reason at all. In this clip they are probably
shooting at the resistence because the characteristic "toc-toc-toc" of
their AK-47 rifles can be heard during lulls in the IDF shooting.
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The Morning After
7 MB 1 Min 48 Sec .wmv file
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Filmed 2000,
at the
beginning of the Intifada. Some of the consequences of the
indiscriminate shooting by the IDF can be seen here. A shot up
apartment, the owner gives some commentary, a child shows bullet pocks
inside the house; at the end we see a completely shot up car.
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Here are two
quotes from
recently published testimonies by IDF soldiers wo have served in Hebron
(source):
"About
shooting? You hear a shot, someone, a Palestinian probably, a
terrorist, shot at a certain post, or maybe not, I don’t
know. There’s
simply a shot... from the other side, the Palestinian side. And
gradually, at first it was more focused and they didn’t allow
us to
shoot back just like that, and when it slowly turned routine, this
whole business, it simply became like... A shot is fired from their
side, a barrage follows. We were in the Jewish neighborhood, and Abu
Sneina hill was in front of us. Simply shooting at the hill. There was
the... post, there were... all sorts of machine-guns, all sorts of
mortars, all these things, a sniper. It was a permanent post, and it
was from there that we shot the most. Each time there was a barrage, we
tried to aim at certain buildings, and sometimes we fired with no
specific targets. On the whole it was like this: one shot from their
side, a bombardment from ours."
"I
remember
an incident when there was shooting, I’m not sure whether the
shooting
was from Abu Sneina toward the Jewish neighborhood, or from the Jewish
neighborhood toward Abu Sneina , maybe it was an exchange of fire, I
don’t know exactly who was shooting at who. It was early
evening … we
got an order over the radio… that from now on the city is a
to be a
ghost town. Meaning everybody is to get in their houses, and we start
firing at “locations,” which are points from which
shots were fired at
one time, or are suspect and could be used as firing points. I remember
that we emptied magazines all night long, tons of ammunition, and I
remember that I personally fired on an empty school, or empty windows
or streetlights, just as a deterrent, just to instill fear. It was like
target practice, but with real targets. And this horrified me,
because…
it wasn’t justified, the quantity. If they want to deter, I
think it
was a bit more than a deterrent, it was grossly exaggerated."
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