Israeli paper, Yedioth Aharonoth, reported that two Israeli Policemen are facing charges after they abused and humiliated a Palestinian kidney patient, including hitting him with their rifles, at a military roadblock in the occupied West Bank.The paper said that, in 2010, the two soldiers, members of the Border Guard Units, repeatedly assaulted the patient by hitting him with their guns on his head, abdomen and kidneys despite the fact that they knew he was a kidney patient.
The soldiers, Le’el Shamir and Oren Levi, were sent to an Israeli court after the Palestinian, from the northern West Bank district of Nablus, filed a complaint with the Palestinian Police who then filed a complaint with the District Coordination Office.
The Palestinian victim was heading from Nablus to Heron when Israeli soldiers, stationed at the Container Roadblock, east of Jerusalem, forced him to step out of his vehicle and took him to a room used by the soldiers where he was violently assaulted.
A military surveillance camera at the roadblock shows the soldiers attacking the man. The soldiers kept beating the man until he started vomiting and could not breathe. A Palestinian ambulance was then called to the scene, and took the man to a hospital in Bethlehem.
The indictment against the soldiers state that they brutally attacked the man, and struck him with their guns despite the fact that he was screaming and trying to tell the soldiers that he is a kidney patient.
The soldiers “justified” the attack by claiming that the man bypassed a vehicle that was stopped at the roadblock.
There has been numerous similar assaults carried out by the soldiers against Palestinians trying to cross through military roadblocks, and in many cases fatalities has been reported, including when soldiers did not allow women in labor to cross, or ambulances tying to transfer patients who were seriously wounded, or who suffered heart attacks or strokes.
