THIS WAS SENT TO US BY ONE OF THE PALESTINIAN WOMEN WHO WAS THERE:
I hope this email finds you well. What I'm writing you is my personal version of the homecoming that I definitely did not expect but was forced to go through. Since I do not have all the contacts that you have, can you please forward it to as many people as you can. It was the highlight of going back home and it is no different from the stories we were telling, only we were the protagonists this time.
Four shots. It took them 4 shots to kill an innocent man, who was eager to go home. Unfortunately, his family did not know he was. He was planning on surprising them. And it took them more than 10 hours to investigate, interrogate, insult, and handle things inhumanely. They succeeded on interrogating 55 person but did not succeed on erasing the brutal images from our minds. We will always carry Eze'eter in our hearts and minds, even thought he was a complete stranger to us, but he was still one of us. One of the many Palestinians who were killed for so many alleged reasons, especially the one that is going spiral now on every news channel: "He approached the Israeli soldier and tried to snatch the gun from him".
You can find more details on the story in the following paragraph. But, I am not writing this to be pitied. I'm writing this to all of you as a continuous storytelling of what we were doing in the UK.
While on our way to the Israeli border lines, Raed Eze'eter, a Palestinian living in Jordan, was murdered with cold bloods. A young naive Israeli soldier who might be 18-years-old shouted at him, pushed him to the ground, and when Eze'eter tried to stand on his feet, the Israeli soldier started to retreat back and shoot bullets at Eze'eter. The first bullet was a miss, but three others penetrated through his body.
What was worse is that he was left on the ground bleeding to death, an ambulance arrived only to show that they have some degree of "humanity", but then they announced him dead!
Next, we all get interrogated by the Israeli intelligence. Every inch of our bags and bodies was fully searched. We were asked unrelated questions, such as: "What year in school are you?" and they did not believe it you when you say "I did not see anything that happened, just heard four bullets being fired."
To make matters even worse, they go up to the bus we were punished to stay in and tell us that they are going to blow up his belongings and bags just in case! We were asked not to fear the bombing sounds, and that it was a normal procedure to secure the area!
How could he be a suspect of anything when he was the victim who was murdered with the iciest bloods ever! We all went home broken to pieces to see such incident. Yes we are used to such actions, but the scenery of a man dying helplessly in front of you is not a very encouraging one.
I had this urge of defending him, even if it meant dying, but the shock just leaves you hanging there unable to help, to scream, or even to cry. In such situations you only have two options. Either you scream and cry out of fear, or you block those feelings, push them back in your mind and move on. I chose the second option, not because I was not human enough, but because most of the people chose option number one and they needed somebody stronger than them. I'm not saying this to seem heroic but because this is me. Yet, I still regret how I did not feed that urge to help Eze'eter.
**Please note that the whole process took them to hold us up from 8:30 AM till later than 7:00 PM.
This will not be the last story you will hear/read. This is only one of many that must not be forgotten.
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