Gideon Levy Palestinian Schoolteacher Mauled by Israeli Military Dog as Soldiers Watch
It’s
not an easy sight to look at. His wife shows us the photographs on her
phone: his wounded arm, battered and bleeding, mauled and mangled,
scarred along its entire length. The same with his hip. It’s the
aftermath of the night of horror he endured, together with his wife and
children.
Imagine:
The front door is blasted open in the middle of the night, soldiers
burst violently into the house and set a dog upon him. He falls to the
floor, terrorized, the teeth of the vicious animal gripping his flesh
for a quarter of an hour. All the while, both he and his wife and
children are emitting bloodcurdling screams. Then, bleeding and wounded,
he’s handcuffed and taken by the soldiers into custody, and denied
medical aid for hours, until he’s taken to the hospital, which is where
we met him and his wife this week. There, too, he had been under arrest,
forced to lie shackled to his bed.
That
near-lynching was perpetrated by Israel Defense Forces soldiers on
Mabruk Jarrar, a 39-year-old Arabic teacher in the village of Burkin,
near Jenin, during their brutal manhunt for the murderer of Rabbi Raziel
Shevach from the settlement of Havat Gilad on January 9. And if that
wasn’t enough, a few days after the night of terror, soldiers returned
again in the dead of night. The women in the house were forced to
disrobe completely, including Jarrar’s elderly mother and his mute and
disabled sister, apparently in a search for money.
The
orthopedics ward in Haemek Hospital in Afula, Monday. A narrow room,
three beds. In the middle one is Jarrar, who has been here for about two
weeks. On Sunday morning the schoolteacher was still shackled to his
bed with iron chains, and soldiers prevented his wife from tending to
him. The soldiers left at midday after a military court ordered Jarrar’s
unconditional release.
It’s not clear why he was arrested or why the troops set the dog on him.
His
left arm and his leg are bandaged, the searing pain that still
accompanies every movement is plainly visible on his face. His wife,
Innas, 37, is by his side. They were married just 45 days ago, the
second marriage for both. His two children from his first marriage –
Suheib, who’s 9, and 5-year-old Mahmoud – were eyewitnesses to what the
soldiers and their dog wrought on their father. The children are now
staying with their mother, in Jenin, but their sleep is troubled, Jarrar
tells us: They wake up with nightmares, shouting for him, and wetting
their beds out of fear.
Jarrar
teaches Arabic in Hisham al-Kilani Elementary School in Jenin. On
Friday, February 2, he and his wife went to bed about midnight. Asleep
in the adjacent room were his two sons, who stay with him on weekends.
At about 4 A.M., the family was awakened by an explosion that came from
the direction of the front door. Several windows in the house were
shattered by the force of the blast. Jarrar leaped out of bed and rushed
to be with the children. IDF jeeps were parked outside. A huge dog,
apparently from Oketz, the army’s canine unit, was brought into the
house, followed by at least 20 soldiers, according to the couple. It’s
not hard to imagine the horror that seized them and the children.The dog pounced on Jarrar, fastening its teeth
into his left side, knocking him down and dragging him along the floor.
At first the soldiers did nothing. His wife rushed to him with a
blanket, trying to cover the dog with it and to rescue her husband. The
children looked on and cried as their parents shouted for help; their
cries were very loud, they say now. Innas was unable to free her husband
from the dog’s grip.It took quite a few minutes, they recall, before
the soldiers also tried to pull the dog off, but the animal didn’t obey
them, either. Mabruk was certain that he was going to be ripped to
pieces and die; Innas also feared the worst.
The
soldiers tore Jarrar’s clothes off, apparently in an attempt to release
him from the dog’s clutches and finally succeeded – after about a
quarter of an hour, by his estimate. Then one of the soldiers punched
him twice in the face. He was wounded and reeling with fright and in
that state, the soldiers bound his hands behind his back. They took him
downstairs, at which point an officer arrived, asked Jarrar what his
name was, released him from the handcuffs and photographed his injuries.
The officer, Jarrar says now, also seemed to be appalled by the
bleeding wounds, the torn and mangled arm and hip. After being handcuffed again, the teacher was
taken in a military vehicle to the detention facility at Salem, near
Jenin, where he says he remained for about three hours with no medical
treatment. Finally he was taken to Haemek Hospital, arriving there at
about 10:30 A.M. He was now a detainee, though it wasn’t clear for what
reason.
That
same night, his two brothers, Mustafa and Mubarak Jarrar, were also
arrested. Mubarak was released; Mustafa remains in custody. They all
have the surname of the person who was wanted for the murder of Rabbi
Shevach, Ahmed Jarrar, who was subsequently killed by the army. lso on the same night, a similar incident
occurred, involving different IDF forces, in the village of Al-Kfir,
near Jenin. At about 4 A.M., soldiers broke into the home of Samr and
Nour Adin Awad, the parents of four small children. Along with the
soldiers, an Oketz dog was brought into the bedroom, and it bit and
wounded both parents.
As
Nour explained to Abd Al-Karim a-Saadi, a field researcher of the
Israeli B’tselem human rights organization: “I held my 2-year-old son
Karem, who was crying, to my chest. I opened the door, which the
soldiers were banging on, and a dog attacked me, jumping on my chest.
Karem fell from my arms. Later I saw that my husband picked him up from
the floor. I tried to push the dog away after it bit me in the chest. I
managed to move it away but then it grabbed my left hip [with its
teeth]. I managed with all my strength to push him away. At that moment,
the soldiers looked at the dog, but did nothing. During this whole time
my husband was begging the soldiers to release the dog from me. One
soldier spoke to the dog in Hebrew and then it grabbed me by the left
arm [holding me] for a few minutes, until a soldier arrived from outside
the house and removed it. I was bleeding and in great pain.”
The
second intrusion by troops came a few days later, on February 8. Now
only women and children were in the Jarrar house: Innas, her husband’s
two children and also his mother and sister, who live in the same
building. It was 3:30 A.M. According to Innas, about 20 soldiers, male
and female, took part in this raid. They told her there was Hamas money
in the house and that they had come to confiscate it. They stepped on
the beds and ignored Innas’ pleas to stop. They asked where Mabruk was –
seemingly unaware that he was already in army custody at the time, in
the hospital.
Then
came the body searches. A female soldier took the three women –
Jarrar’s wife, his 75-year-old mother and his 50-year-old disabled
sister – into a room and ordered them to undress completely. The search
turned up nothing: no money, no Hamas. Afterward, the soldiers gave
Innas an entry permit to Israel, to visit her husband in Afula. She says
they told her that he was in Megiddo Prison. She went there the next
day, only to discover that he wasn’t there. She called B’Tselem’s Abed
Al-Karim a-Saadi, whom she describes as her kind redeemer. He made some
calls and discovered that Mabruk was actually hospitalized in Afula. He
was still under arrest when she got there, and she was only allowed to
visit him for 45 minutes.
In
response to a request for comment, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit this
week told Haaretz: “On February 3, 2017, security forces came to the
village of Burkin, to the house of Mabruk Jarrar, who is suspected of
activities that endanger security in Judea and Samaria. Once they were
at his home, the troops called him to come outside. After repeated calls
and after he did not come out, the forces acted according to procedure
and a dog was sent to search for people inside. The suspect had locked
himself in a room on the upper floor of the building together with
female members of his family.
“When
the door opened, the dog bit the suspect, injuring him. He received
immediate assistance from the army’s medical forces until he was
evacuated to the hospital. Thereafter other activities were conducted in
search of wanted individuals. We stress that in contrast with what is
claimed in the article, the women of the house were not stripped by army
forces.”
Jarrar
is sitting on his hospital bed, his speech strained, every movement an
effort. Innas arrives every day from Burkin. “How do you think I felt?”
he replies in answer to a question about what he felt during the dog’s
attack. “I thought I was going to die.”
Given
the ethnic composition of the physicians, patients, nurses and
visitors, this is effectively a binational Jewish-Arab hospital – like
most of the hospitals in the north of the country. But a Jewish
maintenance man suddenly enters the room, seething with anger. “Why are
you interviewing Arabs? Why not Jews?” he demands. The man threatens to
summon the hospital’s security officer, because wounded, mauled Mabruk
Jarrar was talking to us.