The Footage Doesn’t Lie,
Hashem Selith outside his jeep, this week. He was shot twice in the leg before being forced to climb onto his captors’ vehicle
Not one jeep but at least three different Israel Defense Forces vehicles. And not just one team of soldiers but at least three different teams who were convinced that it is both permissible and proper to order wounded Palestinians – unarmed and mostly not on Israel’s wanted list – to strip in their presence and then climb onto the burning-hot hood of their jeep, desperately holding on for dear life, while being transported to the army’s detention and interrogation site.
The video clip that went viral globally last week showed a wounded man, Mujahed Abadi, lying bleeding and helpless on the hood of a jeep driven by his captors and humiliators. He was unconditionally released shortly afterward and taken to a hospital in Jenin, where he is still being treated for his wounds. Abadi was not armed and was not wanted by the IDF. He was shot, beaten and taken by the troops, for no apparent reason, as his immediate release attests. Maybe the soldiers were bored? Maybe they were bent on revenge as has been common in the army since October 7? Maybe they decided to used the wounded as human shields?
The grim clip generated considerable resonance – it’s not easy to watch a wounded, almost-naked man sprawled on a broiling-hot surface – though much less in Israel, of course. For its part, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit tried, as usual, to cover up, whitewash and play down the incident. “The conduct seen in the video is not consistent with the IDF’s directives of what is expected of its soldiers,” it said in a statement, adding, “The event is being investigated and will be dealt with accordingly.”
While the army is “investigating” and “dealing accordingly” with all due energy – meaning in army lingo absolutely not lifting a finger – we visited the scene this week, high up in Jenin’s Al-Jabriat neighborhood, which overlooks the city’s refugee camp to the south.
A field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Abdulkarim Sadi, told us that in the investigation he conducted after the incident, it wasn’t just one wounded man who was subjected to this abasement by soldiers, on June 22. In fact, at least four men were forced to lie on the hoods of three jeeps. Now there is a suspicion that what was captured in the video of Abadi wasn’t an anomaly but a regular practice, dubbed the wounded transportation procedure.