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| Lieutenant-Colonel Shalom Eisner hitting a foreign peace activist in the face with a rifle in the Jordan Valley near Jericho on Saturday |
Israel’s military suspended a senior officer who struck a pro-Palestinian protester in the face with a gun, an army spokesman said yesterday, after video of the incident was put on the Internet.
The video showed Lieutenant-Colonel Shalom Eisner holding his M-16 rifle in both hands and shouting at a group of demonstrators taking part in a bicycle rally in the occupied West Bank, before suddenly striking a man in the face.
The demonstrator, a Danish national, fell to the ground and was carried away by activists. Israeli military spokesman Yoav Mordechai told Army Radio the incident happened on Saturday.
The protester, named as Andreas Ias, was treated in a Palestinian hospital for light injuries and told Israeli media yesterday that he was well.
“We were just walking slowly towards the soldiers, we were chanting Palestinian songs calling for the liberation of Palestine. I don’t believe that is a provocation,” he told Israel’s Channel 10 television.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the officer’s actions.
“This behaviour is not characteristic of IDF (Israel Defence Forces) soldiers and commanders and it has no place in the IDF or in the state of Israel,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said of the incident.
Mordechai told Army Radio the officer’s behaviour was unacceptable and he had been suspended following an initial investigation. However, he said the edited video did not reflect the whole story.
“These are harsh pictures, but I still can’t divorce the filmed episodes from the incident that lasted over an hour and which included violence by the anarchists and Palestinians, (though) this does not justify what we see.”