The images, recorded on a mobile phone, capture just 25 seconds of three hours that seemed “endless” to Palestinian Myahed Abadi. But they are so shocking that they went around the world, garnering outrage and condemnation, including from the spokesman for the United States Department of State, Matthew Miller, who called them “absolutely unacceptable.” In the video, an Israeli military vehicle can be seen advancing through Wadi Burqin, a town on the outskirts of Jenin, in the battered north of the West Bank, with Abadi – exhausted and wounded by a bullet – on the hood. The soldiers had arrested him in one of the raids they launch daily in towns in the West Bank, which has been occupied by the military since 1967, and were on their way to hand him over to the Palestinian Red Crescent, which they had previously prevented from accessing the site with ambulances.
When the images were disseminated, two things were assumed: that the young man was tied to the vehicle and that he was being used as a human shield, so that no other Palestinian would dare to throw stones or open fire on the people. jeeps during the retreat. “What I was doing was holding on with all my strength to the railing that protects the front windshield of the car. jeepAnd I don’t think they used me as a human shield, because nothing was happening. There were no young people. [milicianos]“No one was shooting at them. I think they just wanted to show their strength,” he told this newspaper, lying in bed at Ibn Sina, the hospital in Jenin where he is recovering from his wounds, surrounded by family members and visitors who keep coming and going. It is the same hospital where Israeli special forces entered last January, disguised as women and medical personnel, to kill three militants.
Abadi, 22, says he was with his nephews at his uncle’s house and learned from a WhatsApp group that Israeli troops were raiding Wadi Burqin. It was last day the 22nd, while the bombings left more than 100 dead in Gaza, in one of the deadliest days in weeks. He left the property with one of his nephews and another young man (both arrested today and also injured) “to see what was happening.” “We thought they would be further away. As I came out, I suddenly saw the soldiers right in the building opposite. Before I knew it, I was shot in the arm. I felt how I was falling, how I was losing strength,” he remembers. It is the right one, the one that is bandaged and with signs of blood, pending an operation in the coming days. In the video you can see how he grabs the grille of the military vehicle with the other one, the left one.
He then ran to take cover behind an all-terrain vehicle parked in front of the house. Just before he arrived, he felt another bullet penetrate his right leg and two agonising hours began. He was alone, bleeding behind the vehicle and unable to receive help. The soldiers brought a drone with a loudspeaker (which they usually use when they want to avoid risks to the troops) to repeatedly urge him to leave immediately. “I shouted that I was injured, that I really couldn’t move and that I needed help because I was bleeding, but they didn’t pay attention to me,” he protests.
That’s when he came into the picture. jeep The soldier who appears in the video came closer to him. So much so that Abadi is convinced that he tried to run him over and that he didn’t because – despite the bullet wounds in his arm and leg and the blood lost – he moved to avoid him. “Four or five soldiers came out from there. The first one arrived and, without saying a word, hit me in the face with his boot. He checked where I was hurt and started to move, right there, to make it hurt more, while he told me: ‘I’m going to kill you.’ ben zone (son of a bitch, in Hebrew),” he says.
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Abadi says that the soldier went to a companion and they lifted him up between the two: one took him by both arms; the other, from the legs. They moved him from right to left to gain momentum and threw him against the hood of the vehicle, he says. “The first time they failed and I ended up on the ground. In the second, on the hood. One of them, I don’t remember which one, took a photo of me and asked my name.”
The hood burned his back, protected only by a T-shirt. Temperatures are over 30 degrees at this time of day. The feeling has stayed with him, because he mentions it up to three times, more than the pain of the shots or the humiliation of the moment.
“My obsession was not to fall”
The video, he explains, only shows the end, the moments before he was handed over. Not what Abadi describes as 15 to 20 minutes of the driver accelerating and braking suddenly to try to knock him to the ground. “My obsession was not to fall, because I was sure I would end up in front of the wheels and they would run me over, because they had already tried before. So I put all my energy into holding on as hard as I could, and not letting go at any time.” The soldiers transported him to a house where there were more troops, checked his details (if he was even the slightest bit suspicious, he would be under arrest, rather than in hospital) and handed him over to the Red Crescent.
The Israeli army issued a statement that same day admitting the authenticity of the video, which had been circulating on social media and in the media for hours: “During anti-terror operations to arrest wanted suspects in the Wadi Burqin area, terrorists opened fire on Israeli army troops, who responded with gunfire. During the shooting, one of the suspects was injured and detained. In violation of orders and standard operating procedures, the forces took the suspect away while he was tied on top of a vehicle. The conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values of the Israeli army. The incident will be investigated and dealt with accordingly. The suspect was transferred to the Red Crescent for medical treatment.” Asked whether it has since taken disciplinary measures against the soldiers involved in the incident, the Israeli army referred to the same statement.
Abadi still doesn’t understand what was going through the soldiers’ heads at that moment. “Me, the only thing he thought about then was whether he would end up dead or alive. What I am clear about,” he says, “is that they seemed very proud of what they did.”
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