An hour ago my friend came to Ibdaa asking me if I wanted to come to his family’s house. It turns out it was his house the soldiers invaded…
What I did not know is that while the battle in Deheishe was unfolding soldiers had entered the Abu Akar home and destroyed it from the inside out. What I did not realize is that I have a friend in this family. For the family this began when two IOF soldiers came into the Doha area dressed in clothes trying to appear as if they look Palestinian. This is a familiar story for many people hear as this is how my friend’s aunt’s husband was assassinated, along with three other Palestinian men, by Israeli security forces who entered Bethlehem in March. At the time her son was in jail and today he is the young man they were looking for. He was not at home; he escaped. But his family was terrorized. After the plain clothes Israelis entered the IOF soldiers followed by bombing the front door of the house down. Afterwards they shot hundreds of bullets all around the house–through the television set, through the clothes cabinets, turned over the furniture, and then they destroyed the bathroom. My friend’s aunt was made to take off all her clothes, she and her nice were beaten by the soldiers. There were many pieces of evidence left behind. Multiple kinds of bullets and grenades with Hebrew writing on them had been collected by the younger children in the family. The house still smelled like gas. The family had been making a big Saturday lunch of chicken and rice; the soldiers took the canister of cooking oil and dumped it all over the bathroom area.
