After Shooting a Palestinian With Down Syndrome, Israeli Soldiers Fled Without Looking Back
Eyewitnesses say Arif Jaradat, 23, did not endanger anyone when he was shot by Israeli troops. Jaradat, loved by all the children in his village, died of his injuries last week.
Gideon Levy Jul 02, 2016 8:04 PM
Whenever Arif Jaradat saw soldiers, he would start to shout: “No, my brother Mohammed!” On several occasions Arif witnessed the arrest of Mohammed, his older brother, at home or in the street, at night or during the day. The sight of soldiers prompted his frightened cry, which his siblings took to mean, “No, don’t take Mohammed,” or, “No, don’t arrest Mohammed.”
Mohammed has in fact been arrested five times, serving a total of 52 months in prison, some of them in administrative detention – he was arrested without charges or trial – and Arif lived in constant fear that the Israel Defense Forces would come to arrest him again. Mohammed’s detention in 2006 was especially burnt into Arif’s consciousness: Soldiers swooped down on the house in the middle of a freezing cold night and forced the family – including Mohammed’s infant son of 18 months – into the street of the town of Sa’ir, near Hebron. Snow covered the ground that night.
Mohammed was most recently arrested in 2013. It happened on the street, and Arif saw it from the balcony of his house. Horrified, he started to cry out again, “No, my brother Mohammed!” He shouted the same thing in the late afternoon of May 4, two months ago, when he saw a force of six or seven soldiers moving on foot near his house. Hearing the shout, his siblings were filled with apprehension. Then they heard a single shot. They rushed to the scene and saw their brother sitting on the ground, bleeding. The soldiers ran off, not bothering to check his condition or summon medical aid.
Arif died a month later, from complications of his stomach wound.
Arif was a young man of 23 with Down syndrome. We can assume that the soldier who shot him noticed this; it should have been obvious from looking at him. His brothers shouted to the soldier in Hebrew: “He’s disabled, don’t shoot.” But the soldier fired at Arif from a range of about 10 meters. His brothers found Arif sitting on the ground, on the rocky slope that descends to the road from which the shot was fired, blood streaming from his stomach, screaming in agony.
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