On 7 January 2010, soldiers detained Musab Musa Raba’i after attacking him and members of his family as they were complying with the soldiers' order to move their flocks off their family-owned land.(See 8 January 2010 release, AT-TUWANI: Israeli soldiers attack and injure Palestinian shepherds and CPTers; arrest Musa Raba’i)

The same eight soldiers who arrested Raba’i and attacked his family took him to a military base at the nearby Suseya settlement.  For four hours, soldiers struck him in the back, in the face, and slammed him into walls.  The soldiers questioned him about his brothers.  Raba’i refused to give any information and refused to speak Hebrew with the soldiers, which infuriated them.  The soldiers told him that they would come to his house in the following days and beat or kill him and his brothers.  They tried to force him to say that they were the best soldiers in the IDF and beat him when he would not.  Raba’i told CPTers the soldiers tied his hands and feet, blindfolded him, and sat him on a chair.  Raba’i put his head in his lap, in an attempt to protect his head and his genitals, and refused to lift it.  He said that at one point, a soldier cocked his rifle and told him to lift his head or he would shoot him.  Raba’i refused.  When another soldier tried to bring him food and water, as the military is legally obligated to do in such situations, the soldiers who were torturing him swore at the soldier and told him to leave.  The soldiers also refused to allow Raba’i to pray.

      In a New Year’s morning action, fourteen Chicago area peacemakers raised concerns about 123 Colombian families forcibly displaced from their farmland in Las Pavas, Colombia by returning tainted gifts to a local Body Shop retail outlet.

      Gifts boxes with “product tainted” return labels lined the sidewalk outside the downtown Chicago store, pronouncing the human and environmental abuses of the chain’s Colombian palm oil supplier, Daabon Organics.  “Threats, Corruption, Eviction, Environmental Damage, Unemployment, Poverty,” read the oversize tags.

On the morning of Thursday 7 January 2010, Israeli soldiers attacked and injured Palestinian shepherds from the Musa Raba’i family, as they grazed their sheep in Humra valley, near the village of At-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills.  The soldiers also attacked the CPTers accompanying the shepherds and broke a video camera.  Before leaving the area, the soldiers arrested one of the shepherds, Musab Musa Raba’i.

At around 10:30 a.m., Palestinian shepherds were grazing their sheep on Palestinian land, for which they have legally-recognized deeds of ownership, when they saw Israeli settlers observing them from the outpost of Havat Ma’on.  A short time later, an Israeli army jeep came to the area.  After stopping to speak with one of the settlers, three Israeli soldiers approached the shepherds and ordered them to leave the area.  The shepherds explained that it was their land, but agreed to move further down into the valley.  The soldiers followed them and grabbed at one of the shepherds, so they all tried to leave the area quickly with their sheep.  A second army jeep came to the area, and a further three soldiers joined in the attack.  Soldiers hit the shepherds with their rifle butts, pushed them, and kicked them while other soldiers held them to the ground.

PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, Wed., Jan. 06, 2010

Give thanks that Iraqi legislators have approved a new national election law. Pray that the elections scheduled for this spring will be peaceful and lead to a stable and just government for all Iraqis.

Doug Pritchard
Christian Peacemaker Teams
Toronto, Canada

 At 6:50 pm Sunday 27 December 2009, the CPT Hebron team received a call from a neighbor who reported that someone had been beaten by Israeli settlers and shot at the Qitoun checkpoint.  Johann Funk, Kathleen Kern, Drew Herbert and Paulette Schroeder arrived at the checkpoint to find a military jeep, lights flashing, driving away from the scene.  Five soldiers were talking among themselves, and an ambulance and another jeep were standing by.

2 December 2009

    . . .

   Funk and Schroeder, returning from an afternoon patrol, met soldiers whom they had previously seen detaining five men against a wall.  This time, they were holding a young man known to CPT. Schroeder told the soldiers that he was their neighbor and a fine person.  The soldiers tried to make the CPTers go home, but they remained, moving back one step at a time while the soldiers searched the young man. Schroeder asked one soldier what the problem was, and he said, "He and his friends want to kill us."

15 December 2009

During team meeting after morning prayer, a soldier opened the CPT apartment door and said the soldiers had gotten a report that some "Arab" had tried to go to Shuhada St. from the team's apartment, and they therefore needed to search the apartment.  Schroeder said there is no exit door to Shuhada St. from the apartment and if they wanted to come in they needed a search warrant.  The soldiers dallied for a few minutes, made a call, then left and did not return.