Israeli soldiers executed Palestinian who posed no danger
Ahmed Erekat
Maureen Clare Murphy reports in The Electronic Intifada:
Israeli occupation forces executed Ahmad Erakat while he posed no danger at a checkpoint last June, an investigation by the London-based research outfit Forensic Architecture supported by the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq has concluded.
Erakat was denied medical care that could have saved his life and his body was treated in a degrading manner in the aftermath of his shooting, according to the report.
Israel continues to withhold Erakat’s body, preventing his family from holding a burial. Nor has Israel provided an autopsy report.
The 26-year-old was slain on 23 June after the car he was driving crashed into a booth, lightly injuring an Israeli soldier, at a checkpoint between the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem.
The infrastructure of Israel’s military occupation and its settlement colonies are frequently the site of deadly violence against Palestinians.
The Israeli government immediately branded Erakat a terrorist, claiming that he had intentionally attacked soldiers with his car. That narrative was rejected by Erakat’s family, who said the young man was running errands before his sister’s wedding later that day.
The crash
The iconic Black intellectual and liberation activist Angela Davis narrates the investigation’s findings in an 18-minute video documentary.
Erakat’s killing coincided with the “global Black-led protest against police brutality” that erupted after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Davis notes in the video. “It illustrates both the entangled struggles of Palestinian and Black liberation as well as the disposability of Black and Indigenous bodies in hyper-militarized settler colonies” like Israel and the US.
Forensic Architecture built a virtual 3D model of the checkpoint and reconstructed the path, speed and acceleration of Erakat’s car based on security camera footage released by Israel following his death.