Today Israeli forces welded Aamal Hashem Dundes front doors shut. Living in a rented apartment across the street, her family had owned these two houses for centuries on Shuhada Street, most of which is closed to Palestinians.
Aamal sat on a chair, at times crying, as she, her daughter, Palestinian residents, activists and journalists, and internationals from CPT and ISM questioned the soldiers who were carrying out the illegal act. At one point she picked up her chair and sat in front of her house in an act of resistance, before she was forced to move.
Soldiers soon began pushing the crowd back across the street and away from the houses, violently shoving a CPTer who was taking photographs. Meanwhile, settlers were allowed to stand close and antagonize the crowd.
Aamal has high blood pressure and diabetes, and after fainting was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Aamal asked that a CPTer accompany her in the ambulance, but the IDF prevented the CPT from joining Aamal. By 1:30, the soldiers had finished welding the doors shut, and a few remained with a settler, who was seemingly in a jovial mood.
From Algemeiner:
In a striking illustration of the belief held by many Israelis of slanted, pro-Palestinian media reporting, footage uploaded on Monday by the 0404 News site shows a Arab mother in Hebron bursting into tears on cue for a group of press photographers as soldiers seal up the door of a nearby home.
Two weeks ago, Palestinians hurled two firebombs at Israelis living in nearby Beit Hadassah from within the nearby abandoned building, which had been unoccupied for several years due to a military order, according to the Srugim website.
One of the flaming devices ignited the exterior of a mobile home where Jews were living. The residents of the structure were lucky, however, and there were no injuries in the attack, which caused only minor damage.
However, when an IDF team on Monday came to seal off the entrance of the previously unoccupied building, a group of pro-Palestinian foreign and Israeli agitators quickly arrived – including the woman and her daughter – and began to harass the welding crew.
“Did you see?! He [a waiting photographer] asked her to cry during the photography, and she cried [on cue] – I can’t believe this,” one shocked Israeli man said, as he himself filmed the scene from behind the press gang, dubbed by some observers as “fauxtography.”
“And here’s her daughter instructing her to ‘cry, cry’ … she’s laughing as she tells her mother to cry,” the Israeli viewer noted with astonishment.
“Just take a look at this scene!” he exclaimed. “She [the daughter's] laughing as she tells her mother to cry,” as a photographer goes for a closeup shot.
Spokesmen for the ancient contested city’s Jewish residents said the incident was an glaring example of a trend by extreme left-wing squatters to take over such structures.
We report, you decide.
(h/t Bob Knot)
UPDATE: The final edited video product, courtesy PalMedia, with tight shots of the woman as well as pictures of her being placed into the ambulance that she obviously doesn't need.
Even in this video, at one point she looks up from her "crying" as if to ask "Is that good enough?"