Israeli activists caught on film an attack by an Israeli settlement security guard on a Palestinian shepherd Monday, near the Palestinian village of Susya in the southern West Bank on Monday.The shepherd was identified as Na’al Abu Aram, but the Israeli security guard, apparently from the Israeli illegal outpost called ‘Avigail’ that was built on stolen Palestinian land, was not identified.
The guard beat, punched, kicked and shoved the shepherd, then ran after his flock of sheep to scare them. Two Israeli soldiers were present at the time of the beating, but they did not intervene.
Avigail was established on stolen land by former Israeli soldiers in 2001. The soldiers entered the land, which belongs to local Palestinians, and installed trailers. They moved in, heavily armed, and began to harass the local villagers and shepherds. No attempt has been made by the Israeli government to remove the trespassing Israelis from the land that they illegally seized by force.
In Monday’s incident, the security guard told reporters with Ynetnews, which obtained and published the video of the incident, that he was being unfairly slandered, and that it was the shepherd who attacked him.
He claimed that the local residents were being accompanied by ‘anarchist activists’ who try to ‘incite provocations’. The guard was apparently referring to Israeli human rights workers who arrived on the scene to try to document abuses reported to them by local Palestinian residents.
