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Sunday, June 21, 2020

Story of Iyad Hallaq: What it tells about Palestinians under Israeli occupation

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Nishitha Mandava
Nishitha Mandava
MENA

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Article Contributor(s)

Nishitha Mandava

Article Title

Story of Iyad Hallaq: What it tells about Palestinians under Israeli occupation

Publisher

Global Views 360

Publication Date

June 21, 2020

URL

Mural of Eyad Hallaq, Bethlehem, Palestine

Mural of Eyad Hallaq, Bethlehem, Palestine | Source: Ameen Rammal via Wikimedia

The death of Iyad Hallaq, an autistic Palestinian man, who was shot dead by two Israeli police officers sparked several unrests in Jerusalem. Iyad Hallaq of age 32 was walking to his school of special needs in the Old City of Jerusalem. According to the statement given by the police officers, Iyad was wearing gloves which made them suspect he possessed a weapon. Iyad, who was diagnosed with low functioning disorder, had limited communication skills. Due to this out of panic, he fled, and the police personnel started firing. He tried to hide behind a dumpster where he was shot dead. It is suspected that one of the police officers might have kept shooting despite receiving orders from his commander to halt.

Following this event, the family’s house was searched without any consent for possible weapons. Later on, the family requested a Palestinian representative to be present during Hallaq’s autopsy. The family alleges that this representative was denied entry. The police sealed off the Old City and reported that the Police Internal Investigations Department would be taking over the investigation of the case.

Mansour Abu Wardieh, the victim's cousin, said the family is not optimistic about the police investigation and fears that the police would end up twisting the facts. This lack of trust in the police authorities could be attributed to the fact that firstly the police have shown their disregard to the family by their actions mentioned above and secondly, in the last ten years Israeli security forces have killed more than 3,400 Palestinians but have only been convicted five times.

These numbers prove that Iyad’s killing is just the tip of the iceberg of the atrocities faced by Palestinians that live under the Israeli occupation. Iyad’s case has created a trigger for the Palestinian Arab minorities in Jerusalem to channel out their frustration. The killing has not only been condemned by Palestinians, but also by Jewish Israelis and international figures. The protests against police brutality after the killing of George Floyd have been gaining momentum and protests in Jerusalem began to draw parallels between these two cases. The protests in Jerusalem resounded with several slogans like ‘Palestinian Lives Matter’ alongside the ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogans.

Though the demonstrations united the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews, it comes as little relief to the family and for Arab minorities. It was after more than a week that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke silence on this matter. Middle East Monitor reported the exact comments of the prime minister “What happened to Iyad Hallak is a tragedy. This was a man with disabilities, autism, who was suspected – and we (now) know wrongly – of being a terrorist in a very sensitive venue”. While the prime minister's comments fell short of an apology the Defence Minister Benny Gantz offered a public apology.

While the family and protestors remain un-optimistic about the justice being delivered insights shared by an Israeli Parliament member Ahmed Tibi, seem to shed some light on why Hallaq was killed. According to Tibi, Arabs and Palestinians were intentionally killed without any concrete reason, and for long this has been the policy of the Israeli forces. B’Tselem, a human rights organisation based in Israel said that most killings of Palestinians “were a direct outcome of Israel’s reckless open-fire policy, authorised by the government and military and backed by the [Israeli] legal system.”

The whole system in Israel seems to be designed to discriminate against its Arab minorities. Various senior political officials have openly spread hate against these minority communities. They have also encouraged their soldiers and police forces to kill Palestinians even if they have the slightest suspicion of them being a threat. It is a systematically built system that has subjected Palestinians to abuse and harsh punishments immemorial.

More than 150 instances were recorded between the span of October 2015 and January 2017 in which Israeli security forces have shot Palestinians under suspicion of carrying weapons. However, video footages or witness accounts have raised questions in many cases regarding the necessity of force. Repeatedly cornering these minorities have led to the death of 33 Israelis in the hands of Palestinian assailants in the same period. Hence this use of lethal force has had devastating effects on both the communities. Regulation of force by armed personnel and unbiased, neutral approach is required to curb down this violence. The authorities must also create rules that clearly define the boundaries for force used by armed personnel, and the state should actively denounce hate speech and illegal lethal force to avoid cases like that of Hallaq repeating.

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February 4, 2021 4:45 PM

How the failure of political leadership resulted in the explosion of pandemic in Brazil

With over 1.2 million active cases and over 51 thousand deaths as on 30th June 2020, Brazil is one of the worst coronavirus affected countries. Latin America became the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic in the latter half of May, largely due to Brazil’s incompetency in dealing with the pandemic. Due to the underreporting and low testing rates, the actual number of active cases and deaths are unknown.

The Brazilian Ministry started making changes to the number of cases reported, making it even harder to control the situation the pandemic has caused. The country’s response has been widely criticized in Brazil and outside. The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed the threat of the virus and the pandemic. OnMarch 26, 2020, he said that Brazilians are immune to the virus and even if they are drunk in a sewer they “don’t catch a thing.” He defied the guidelines set by his own health ministry and visited a busy commercial district in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, where he told all the elderly Brazilians to get back to work. He also went on TV many times and called it little flu and accused the media of hysteria. Even as the coronavirus crisis has worsened recently, some major cities have eased their preventive measures, like Sao Paulo opening up shopping malls in Mid-June and beaches getting crowded again. With all of this happening, hospitals are close to running out of intensive care beds.

In early March, Brazil declared a public health emergency, a few days after the World Health Organization. The Ministry of Health in Brazil urged the officials to cancel all the public events and reinforce the measures of social distancing as prescribed by the World Health Organization. Some experts thought that Brazil could handle the pandemic based on its records during past public health emergencies. Brazil’s health care system is underfunded, but it does not fail to provide robust coverage across the country. The efforts of the state government went awry when the President called the virus a “cold” and provided anti-malaria tablets as a solution to the virus. President Bolsonaro’s clash with the governors and officials led to two health ministers leaving- one was fired and the other one quit. This left the military general, with no public health training, in charge of the virus. The clash amongst the government left the citizens of Brazil uncertain about the importance of following the preventive measures kept in place to prevent the spread of the virus. This led to the defying of the measures, which in turn led to the pandemic’s rate being one of the highest in the world.

The Ministry of Health has not presented a comprehensive plan to beat the virus yet. One of the main initiatives by the Ministry of Health is to boost the production of hydroxychloroquine and has encouraged the doctors in the public healthcare system to prescribe the same. The country has struggled to import lifesaving instruments, like coronavirus tests and ventilators. The lack of tests, in turn, has made it difficult to track the spread of the virus. This might result in the undercount of cases of the virus in the country.  Between Jan. 1 and June 6, 23,171 people who were not diagnosed with the coronavirus died from acute respiratory infections, according to data released by Fiocruz, one of Brazil’s state-run health research institutes. Experts believe most of them died from coronavirus.

At a time when Brazil needs to be putting all its efforts into fighting the virus, the president has been wrapped up in his own political battles. The Supreme Court is investigating allegations of disinformation and intimidation by the President’s supporters. Investigations also state that he has interfered in federal police investigations to protect his family. Due to this, the tensions between President Bolsonaro and the judiciary are high.

During the past few months, politics have become bigger than the pandemic. Even though the health crisis is extremely important, the magnitude of the political scandals has had a huge impact on how the country reacts to the pandemic. There is anger over how President Bolsonaro is handling the crisis and at the same time, there is a fear as to where the country is headed after the pandemic passes.

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