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Twilight Zone / Night raid By Gideon Levy Tags: hebron, b'tselem His whole body is covered with scabs, bleeding and festering, with flies hovering around them. His face, his legs, his hands - all are covered with sores and cuts, but one is especially large. Two weeks ago 10-year-old Musa, who suffers along with his siblings from the same hereditary skin disease, was injured while fleeing for his life. On that Saturday, stick-wielding settlers raided his family's encampment, and Musa had trouble escaping because of the sores that consume his body. He tripped and suffered a large wound in his thigh, which he shows us. Fair-haired, dressed in faded rags, including a threadbare shirt bearing the words "Don't worry," Musa was already living in misery, ostracized at school like a leper. Now he's also scared to death, afraid that the settler-attackers will return. Did the perpetrators of this attack from Asael - an illegal outpost of violent religious penitents - even take a look at their victims? Did they dare glance at Musa's sore-covered body before they brandished their clubs? Or at Bilal? Or at Hani? Or at least at little Majdi, just two years old and already covered with scabs? All these siblings have the same illness; all had difficulty trying to escape the hooligans, who ransacked their meager home and ruined their few possessions. No doctor has diagnosed the mysterious skin disease that has attacked the children of the Abu Awad family; the family has no money for a doctor. The four sick children lie on the burning-hot ground in the southern Mount Hebron area, without a diagnosis, without treatment. The entire extended family of 19 is currently crowding into a single cramped tent. There are just three mattresses for all of them inside. The family has nothing else left. And when we say nothing, we mean just that: not a thing. Just an empty white tent with a few rotting figs scattered on the floor. The settlers either destroyed or took away everything else, from the old tent down to the last dishes, from their flock's feeding and water troughs to the bedding, to the radio, which they shattered. Everything was lost in the attack. Advertisement Israel Defense Forces soldiers at the Yatir base, which is located a few hundred meters away and has a guard tower that overlooks the area, did not lift a finger to stop the attack, even when the family summoned them to help. The police who were called in didn't do their job, either. And no one has apparently been arrested in the interim. All this happened just one week after settlers from the same outpost assaulted 30-year-old Midhat Abu Karsh, a teacher and shepherd, tied him to an electric pole near their outpost and beat him severely. Volunteers from several international organizations photographed the bound and beaten man. Testimony of what happened to Abu Karsh was included in a report by B'Tselem field researcher Musa Abu Hashhash. Southern Mount Hebron has long been a lawless zone: Amid all the mortified expressions about endangerment of the rule of law in Israel, we would do well to take a good look at this particular area. The attacks here are endangering the rule of law just as much as the envelopes filled with cash. From the road, one sees the small white tent at the foot of a hill, at the edge of the horizon. The International Red Cross put this tent here, between the Yatir base and the Asael outpost, to house the newly homeless Abu Awad family. The parents, their 14 children, two daughters-in-law and one grandson wanted to have the tent put up several hundred meters away from their old encampment, so as to be out of the line of sight of their unwelcome and violent neighbors from Asael. At first, they lived in the mouth of an ancient cave, close to a well; now they're afraid to be there and only their sheep remain near the cave. Their new refuge is hidden from the settlers behind one of the rocky hills. The dirt path that leads to the tent is blocked by a mound of dirt dumped there by the IDF. There is no vehicle access so we walk through the fields of harvested wheat. Across the way is a curved, paved road with streetlights, ascending to Asael: a collection of a few trailers, a water tower, a ritual bath and synagogue, a few ornamental trees and a few parked cars. A road, electricity and water for the illegal settlers, but no road, no electricity and no water for the people who've been living here legally, on leased private land, for years. A picture of Israeli apartheid at its ugliest. Musa has been afflicted with the skin disease since he was just two weeks old. A doctor in Hebron who examined him once had no advice to offer and the family doesn't have enough money for treatment in Israel. Sometimes the boy is in terrible agony, unable to stand up, his nails blackened and his sores oozing. At school, he is made to sit in a corner of the classroom; no other child will approach the leper-like boy. His family lives off their sheep, a flock of about 200 which grazes on lands leased from a resident of nearby Samu'a. Yellow, parched land during the summer months. The attack happened on Saturday, July 19. The eldest son, Mohammed, 22, says that at around nine o'clock in the morning, when the whole family was sitting in its tent, except for one son who was out with the sheep, they suddenly noticed a large group of settlers coming down from Asael toward their encampment. Faces uncovered, the settlers approached wielding big sticks. Maybe they'd just finished their Shabbat prayers and were looking for action. The Shabbat before they'd attacked Abu Karsh, after setting his fields afire. The Abu Awad family was terrified. The memory of what happened to their neighbor was still fresh. Mohammed says they feared the same thing would happen to them. "We were scared," he says. "We have four children who can't run because of their sores and so we decided to leave the tent right away." They headed for the main road, where the father of the family, Ahmed Abu Awad, hoped he would be able to stop a military vehicle and summon help from the army. While waiting on the road, the family watched the attack from afar. Mohammed says the settlers started by destroying the tent and that they danced among the wreckage. Then the attackers gathered all the family's belongings, smashed some, took some with them and went back the way they came. The family hasn't been able to recover any of their possessions. Meanwhile, several volunteers from organizations who live in nearby Tawaneh arrived. The commander of the Hebron Brigade considers them enemies and provocateurs. IDF forces and the police also arrived eventually. Two policemen took photographs of what was left of the encampment. Mohammed says the police and the soldiers drove to Asael afterward, but he has no idea what they did there. During the first nights after the attack, the volunteers stayed with the family, to act as a human shield and protect them. Since then, the Abu Awads have been all alone in the white tent. Most of the members of the family now sleep outside under the stars. They have no idea what they'll do in the winter. They only dare go near their old cave in order to get water from the well for the sheep. They haul their own drinking water from the neighbors, on the white mule tethered next to the tent. They now cook their meals over little fires made with twigs, which also serve as their only source of light at night. We walk toward the cave, striding silently over the rocky terrain. Asael remains in sight the whole time - repulsive, threatening, sinister. The sheep are wilting in the heat, some in the cave, some outside. And pieces of shattered troughs lie scattered about. Says Superintendent Danny Poleg, spokesman and assistant district commander of the Judea and Samaria District police: "On July 19 in the Hebron district, a complaint was received from the Abu Awad family, who claimed that a number of settlers arrived at their encampment and threw out food that was inside and also damaged the tent itself. The complainants did not submit a description of the suspects, since the minute they saw the group of them approaching the tent, all those inside fled and only returned sometime thereafter, and then saw the damage described. The Hebron police are investigating this incident in terms of intelligence, since there is not even a possibility of arranging a lineup in order to identify the potential suspects. "As to said incident in Asael, the Hebron police have arrested three suspects connected to it, two on the same day it occurred and one three days afterward. All three have been brought in for questioning to the district offices during the period of their detention. At the time of this writing, they remain in custody until another decision is made." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Party for a killer Arabic TV station hosts birthday party for convicted child killer Samir Kuntar. Hamas to blame Noam Shalit says his son Gilad is holding Gaza hostage, and not the other way around.   1.   How do they sleep, these savages 20:28  |  Marilyn 01/08/08   2.   Pure fiction told by the Fakestinians. Arabs are born liars. 11:28  |  Arabrthesettlers 02/08/08   3.   Jewish children are constantly attacked by Arabs. 11:31  |  Palestiniansareamyth 02/08/08   4.   marilyn 1 12:19  |  potobac 02/08/08   5.   How can Israel as a state can bear that? 12:28  |  Francoise 02/08/08   6.   to 3 12:32  |  Francoise 02/08/08   7.   Provocateur for the moon god 17:23  |  YoAv 02/08/08   8.   Yo #2--a little news for you 19:09  |  Isaiah 02/08/08   9.   Like I really Care Anyway 20:44  |  Ralph Levy 02/08/08   10.   And how should settlers respond to Arab attacks and thievery? 21:50  |  Yaakov K. 02/08/08   11.   Ralph...You Should Certainly Care 22:15  |  Baruch HaShem 02/08/08   12.   no. 10 16:11  |  quiet 06/08/08   13.   no. 10 16:12  |  quiet 06/08/08

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