Nadene Goldfoot
An unusual event happened to a few IDF soldiers. A Palestinian they had stopped was found dead later. The soldiers are being investigated. "The victim, identified as Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad, was still wearing a plastic restraining zip tie on one wrist when he was found early Wednesday morning in a village outside of Ramallah, according to Palestinian officials. Omar As'ad had been detained by soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda Battalion at an impromptu checkpoint, and died of heart failure. It is common in Israel to keep units together made up of friends, so opposite of practice in the USA where units come from different places. Israel has felt that they will protect each other more if they are best friends already.
Was he found walking with this group? They may have looked more like a suspicious squad of men. If they stop the group, certainly they had to check Omar as well. If he could be out walking with them, he certainly could withstand a quick search.
Why didn't the soldiers take off the other zip tie? Did they or didn't they? Was it added after the soldiers left by other Palestinians seeing an opportunity here to take advantage of these soldiers? Had they found Omar face down, dead? It's a possibility. He could have even had a stroke.
The unit the soldiers were in is also important. The 97th Netzah Yehuda Battalion, previously known as Nahal Haredi, is a battalion in the Kfir Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces. The purpose of the unit is to allow Haredi Jewish men to serve as combat soldiers in the Israeli military by creating an atmosphere conducive to their religious convictions, within a framework that is strictly observant of Halakha. The Netzah Yehuda's primary area of operations is in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank. The battalion was founded in 1999, and originally contained only 30 soldiers. It was started after about 18 months of discussions between a group of Haredi educators, led by Rabbi Yitzhak Bar-Chaim from Netzah Yehuda organization and the IDF. As of 2009, the battalion had grown to over 1,000 soldiers, and has reached the status of a fully functioning battalion. The battalion recently marked its 20th draft. I can take it, then, that things have run smoothly without any critical problems such as this one, although today's news is changing.
Being who they represent, were they over-zealous? Did they have it in for the population ? Or were they simply acting and carrying out their orders and conduct recently learned when joining the IDF?
The Israeli military confirmed Wednesday that As’ad had been stopped during a security check of the area and detained after he “resisted a check. An spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said that As’ad was held for only a short time and that he was alive when he was released."
My question is, why did he resist a check? If the question were in Arabic, he should have understood. It was his native language even though he had been away from it, living there for the past 10 years. After seeing all the TV programs in the US, he should know to cooperate with the police or expect them to get tough. Well, this happens to our US Black population often enough, too, though their mothers tell them to cooperate.
If I were the soldiers, I would have stopped anyone walking around at 3am in the morning, too. Why weren't they at home, sleeping? That might happen in any country. Omar was found to be 78 in some reports, 80 in others. He was a Palestinian who had lived most of his life in Milwaukee, USA and had been living near Ramallah for only the last 10 years. That seems odd to me. Why did he return to an unsettling situation? What was his business? He had a healthy appearance, looking like he could answer a few questions.
As’ad was returning home from visiting relatives when he was stopped in the village of Jiljilya by Israeli soldiers, according to a statement by the Palestinian health ministry. Witnesses told Palestinian media that he was handcuffed and led away about 3 a.m. Wednesday. I still ask, why were they all up so late? Midnight should have been late enough for visiting, I would think.
He could have known, coming from Milwaukee, Wisconsin that he had a situation with his heart. In Milwaukee, he would have had excellent care had he been on Social Security at his age with Medicare, hospitalization and the chance to have his heart stopped and started if he were in a-fib, or if it was too bad, could have even had a pacemaker which is inserted, needing checks constantly by technicians and the doctor after the 1st 3 months, once a year. What was the condition of his bad heart? If so, he should have been taking medication daily. Was he under a cardiac doctor's care in Ramallah? Then he should have been. With a bad heart, he should have taken a night pill of Eliquis or equivalent to keep from having a stroke.
I saw Palestinians in Safed's hospital all the time when I lived in Israel from 1980 to the end of 1985. He could have been under care at a Jerusalem clinic which was on the bus line, or 6 mi by car.
As for me, if I had been stopped and tied and questioned, my heart would have been racing. As we age, I find it doesn't take much to upset us, but then I'm a woman. A Palestinian man just might be more used to such things, not getting as upset as me.
Ramallah is a hot potato of a city, center of terrorists. Israel raided the offices of several Palestinian advocacy groups it had previously blacklisted as terrorist organizations in August 2022 early Thursday, sealing entrances and declaring them closed. Western diplomats visited one of the offices hours later in a show of support for the outlawed groups. The groups reportedly raided include al-Haq, a veteran, internationally respected Palestinian rights group; Addameer, which advocates for Palestinian prisoners; the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees; the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Bisan Center for Research and Development.
Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank that serves as the de facto administrative capital of the future State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, only 10 km (6.21 miles) north of Jerusalem. Muslims constituted a majority of Ramallah's 38,998 residents by 2017, with Christians making up a significant minority. On November 11, 2004 Yasser Arafat died at the Percy training hospital of the Armies near Paris. He was buried in the courtyard of the Mukataa on November 12, 2004. The site still serves as the Ramallah headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, as well the official West Bank office of Mahmoud Abbas.
Throughout 2005, while a Disengagement Plan was underway, some US government officials suggested to the Palestinian leadership to move the provisional capital back to Gaza, where it had been when the Palestinian Authority was first established in 1994. President Abbas, however, refrained from doing so, arguing that at this point, it was important to keep the administrative center in the West Bank in order to remind the international community that the West Bank was still awaiting a territorial solution. Ramallah is a very important city to Israel's security. Terrorist plots can be hatched from here.
"Israel agreed to pay NIS 500,000 in compensation of the family of the Palestinian-American man Omar As'ad, 78, who died of heart failure in January after he had been detained by the IDF. The agreement, the Defense Ministry said, came as part of an agreement to dismiss a court claim against the state on the matter."
Research:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/12/american-citizen-death-west-bank/
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-719237
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramallah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzah_Yehuda_Battalion
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-02-09/ty-article/new-photo-shows-final-moments-of-elderly-palestinian-detained-by-israeli-soldiers/0000017f-e503-dc7e-adff-f5af30450000
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