Israelis threaten to gas Palestinian villagers: Journalist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Richard Silverstein, a journalist and political commentator from Seattle, to ask for his take on the number of Palestinians injured by Israeli live rounds and rubber bullets in October.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: We’re hearing about all these significant numbers 2600 Palestinians have been wounded and they’ve been shot with live and rubber bullets in the occupied territories in one month. What does this tell us about the international community not standing up and not doing enough to end this conflict, which is not about yesterday, it’s not about lost month, it’s been going on for decades now?

Silverstein: Yes, that’s true. I want to just remind your audience that over the course of the last two weeks or so 10 Israelis have been killed in the attacks and nearly 70 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli security forces in spontaneous popular uprising against the occupation.

 And two days ago, an eight month-old Palestinian baby living in a village near Bethlehem was killed by tear gas. And these are the kinds of events that have been enfolding inside occupied Palestine.

Another incident that happened was that in a different village outside Bethlehem. And the Israeli army petrol came through the village in the early morning hours and warned the villagers that if they did not stop demonstrating that they would be gassed and that they would be died from the gas.

And this invokes memories for ... as the American Jew of the Holocaust. And the Israeli army is threatening to gas a Palestinian is just an apparent atrocious incident. And many of us heard about this first story, first didn’t believe it could be true, but it was actually conformed by Israeli media that this event has actually happened.

A soldier on a bullhorn did use these terms to speak the Palestinian villagers. He even told them that there was a Palestinian who was captured and that they would be forced to watch him being killed by the Israeli forces.

There is just something incredibly brutal, incredibly uncivilized about the Israeli response to this problem. And we can also see that the recent talks with Secretary Kerry and the king of Jordan which were aimed to quiet the unrest have done nothing. The unrest continues. Palestinians continue to engage in these kinds of acts to protest the occupation and nothing is being done to bring reason to the situation.

Press TV: How are stories related to Palestine and Israel being reflected in the mainstream media?

Silverstein: The mainstream media of course underreport all these stories and largely report from, what I call, liberal Zionist perspective or pro-Israel perspective. When I reported that story about the threats to exterminate the Palestinian village, it was the refugee camp of Aida by the way.

I in effect goaded the New York Times’ correspondent Jodi Rudoren and told her that I knew that she would not cover the story, and in fact, she has not covered it. So, that is the kind of coverage the we can expect from I’m sorry about ...

That is the kind of coverage that we can expect from the mainstream media. The Israeli media is a little bit better about reporting it, but it is certainly very limited. It does not report any source from the perspective of Palestinians, which means that Israeli citizens do not hear or do not feel the suffering of the Palestinians and there’s little hope that their government will do anything to resolve this situation.

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