In a graphic video, shared widely on social media in mid-October, Ahmed Manasrah, 13, was shown lying on the ground in a pool of blood beneath his head in the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood of East Jerusalem while Israeli bystanders were heard hurling verbal abuses.
Except for the fact that Manasrah is alive, what happened to him both before and after that roughly two-minute video has been fiercely disputed and characterized on opposite ends of the spectrum. The ‘facts’ are simply too murky to determine whether or not Manasrah carried out stabbing attacks against Israeli civilians, including possibly, a child, before Israelis forces shot him dead.
Palestinian Facts
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas immediately broadcasted that innocent Ahmed had been “executed in cold blood” by Israeli forces, releasing a video of Ahmed being “killed”.
“We will not agree to continue the situation on our land, and not the policy of occupation and aggression by Israel and its settlers, who commit terror against our people, our homes, our trees, our holy places, and who execute our children in cold blood, as they did to the child Ahmed Manasrah and other children in Jerusalem and other places. We will continue our national struggle which is based on self-defense,” he claimed in a televised speech.
A cellphone video widely spread in Palestinian circles showed Israelis moments after the stabbing attack shouting expletives at the injured Ahmed, including “Die, son of a whore”, claiming that the boys were innocent victims.
Israeli Facts
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on his part, accused Abbas of spreading “incitement and lies” in his claim that Manasrah was killed after his October 12 stabbing of the 13-year-old Jewish boy. Israel has repeatedly stressed that both Manasrah and his cousin — who live in the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem — were “terrorists”.
“An Arab boy critically wounds a Jewish child and after that the security forces stop him and prevent him from continuing on a stabbing spree and he becomes a martyr supposedly executed unjustly? First of all, he is not dead, he is alive. Secondly, he was not executed; he was attempting to execute others. He tried to kill and murder, but the exact opposite is presented in a distorted and outrageous manner,” Netanyahu told the Knesset.
PA President Abbas intentionally lied about the boy because he wants a symbol to incite Palestinians to perpetrate more terrorists attacks.
— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) October 15, 2015
According to Israeli Police, 13-year-old Ahmed Manasrah, and his cousin, 15-year-old Hassan Manasrah, stabbed and critically wounded a 24-year-old Jewish man and a 13-year-old Jewish teen. While the cops shot and killed Hassan as he ran toward them wielding a knife, Ahmed was run over by a car. Israeli police released a footage showing the two brandishing knives and chasing a man before one is shot after trying to run at police. They circled the knives in red to highlight that the boys were not innocent bystanders.
The teen’s version
Was the stabbing staged? Manasrah said he was chased and run over by an Israeli police vehicle, and when he tried to escape, settlers at the scene struck him repeatedly on his head with a club and verbally assaulted him, before he fell helplessly to the ground, with blood pouring from his head, while settlers shouted extreme profanities against him and kicked him with their hands and feet.
He said he woke up next to find himself tied to a hospital bed, under police guard, who reportedly abused him physically and verbally throughout his stay at the hospital. He said that he was subjected to long hours of interrogation – with investigators assaulting him – while on his hospital bed, which further aggravated his excruciating pain.
The other voices
On November 10, Ahmed Manasrah appeared in a Jerusalem court, where he was charged with two counts of attempted murder.
Tariq Bargouthi, Ahmed’s lawyer, maintaining that Ahmed did not try to stab or commit a crime against anyone, said that the “intimidating” tactics used by Israeli Police against his client were illegal under Israeli law.
Lea Tsemel, another lawyer representing Ahmed, said she may contest the investigation based on the manner of questioning seen in the video. “You cannot terrify, or threaten, or tempt, for the purpose of achieving a confession.”
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld dismissed the suggestion that Israeli police used excessive force against Manasrah. “We’re perfectly aware of what is going on in social media, the incitement that is going around in and around the Israeli Arab community is coming from social media,” he told NBC News.
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Dirty Zionist dogs… The best kind of J o o is a dead one!