2000 Ramallah lynching

Yosef "Yossi" Avrahami (; ) was a 38-year-old chief sergeant and toy salesman. He was born in Ramla and moved to Petah Tikva following his service in the Israeli Artillery Corps. He had a wife and three children. Vadim Nurzhitz (, ; ) was a 33-year-old corporal and truck driver. He was born in Irkutsk and made aliyah in 1990 after learning Hebrew. He lived in Rehovot and Netanya before eventually settling down with his parents in Or Akiva. He married his neighbor a week before his death. ==Lynching==

Nurzhitz set out at 7 a.m. in his Ford Escort, picked up Avrahami and phoned his father at 9 a.m., stating that he had been ordered to turn up at an army base near the Israeli settlement of Beit El. towards their unit's assembly point near the settlement of Beit El. They had little army experience, were unfamiliar with the West Bank road system and drove through the military checkpoint outside Beitunia and headed straight into the Palestinian town of Ramallah 2 miles east of the checkpoint. The arrest and detention coincided with the conclusion of a funeral service, attended by thousands of mourners, for 17 year old Palestinian Khalil Zahran who had been killed by Israeli forces two days earlier. and four days earlier, the badly beaten body of 36 year old Palestinian Issam Hamad had been dumped outside of the city after being run over by a car, an autopsy revealed. His death, according to Marwan Bishara of Al Jazeera, was attributed by locals to settlers in Halamish. Rumors quickly spread that Israeli undercover agents were in the building, and an angry crowd of more than 1,000 Palestinians gathered in front of the station calling for the death of the Israelis. Word that two soldiers were held in a Ramallah police station reached Israel within 15 minutes. According to Roni Shaked, the IDF itself thought initially that the two must have been "undercover agents". Jamal Tirawi, the Palestinian Intelligence chief at the Mukata'a nearby, only intervened hours after the second soldier lay dying. Soon after, the crowd dragged the two mutilated bodies to Al-Manara Square in the city center and began an impromptu victory celebration. Police officers tried to confiscate footage from reporters. ==Reactions and military response==

The brutality of the murders shocked the Israeli public, intensifying Israeli distrust of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. The event also deeply damaged the Israeli left-wing's faith in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Israeli writer and journalist Amos Oz said In response, the Israeli military launched a series of strikes against Palestinian Authority targets in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces sealed off several Palestinian cities and deployed troops, tanks, and armored vehicles. IDF helicopters fired rockets at two PA police stations in Ramallah (the police station where the lynching took place was destroyed); the Beit Lahia headquarters of Tanzim, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades; and buildings near Arafat's headquarters in Gaza City. Israeli Navy gunboats were reportedly seen offshore. Six Palestinian Authority naval boats were destroyed. Later in the day, Israeli helicopters destroyed the Voice of Palestine radio station in Ramallah. According to Palestinian sources, a total of 27 people were injured in the attacks. Israeli authorities state that the PA was warned before the attacks, and that a warning shot was fired before every attack, in order to empty the buildings about to be attacked. ==Media coverage==

An Italian film crew from Mediaset, Italy's largest private television station, captured footage of the lynching. British photographer Mark Seager attempted to photograph the event but the mob physically assaulted him and destroyed his camera. After the event, he said, An ABC News team also attempted to record the incident but the mob also prevented them from doing so. ABC News producer Nasser Atta said that when the crew began filming the lynching, "youths came to us and they stopped us with some knives, with some beating." RAI scandal Following the lynching on 16 October 2000, Riccardo Cristiano, the deputy head of the Jerusalem bureau of Italy's state television channel RAI, published a letter in Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority (PA). In the letter (entitled "Special Clarification by the Italian Representative of RAI, the Official Italian Television Station"), Cristiano denies that RAI had any involvement with the filming of the incident and that one of the station's Italian competitors was responsible for the footage. He wrote, The Italian correspondent also praised the PA, declaring, As a result of the letter, the Israeli Government Press Office suspended Cristiano's press card. The Israeli Foreign Ministry stated, Cristiano's letter, which effectively identified Mediaset as being responsible for the footage, necessitated Mediaset to withdraw its staff out of fear of Palestinian revenge attacks. In response, Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi, whose family holding company controls Mediaset, said, "The letter is indicative of an anti-semitic attitude in elements of the Italian left." The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera declared it a shameful day for Italian journalism. ==Criminal proceedings==

After he assumed office, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the Israeli security services to find and arrest the lynchers. Israel subsequently arrested suspects: • Aziz Salha was arrested in 2001. He admitted to being one of those who broke into the police station and to choking one of the soldiers while others beat him bloody. When he saw that his hands were covered with the soldier's blood, he went to the window and proudly displayed his blood-stained hands to the mob below, and was photographed while doing so. In 2004, an Israeli court convicted him for the murder of Nurzhitz and sentenced him to life imprisonment. In October 2011 he was controversially released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. Salha was deported to the Gaza Strip. On 3 October 2024, during the Gaza war, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. The IDF claimed that Salha was active in Hamas and had been involved in advancing attacks in the West Bank from Gaza in recent years. • Muhammad Howara, a Tanzim militant, was arrested in 2001. He admitted breaking into the police station and stabbing one of the soldiers. • Wisam Radi, a Palestinian policeman, was arrested by Israeli security forces and indicted before a military court in 2005 for killing Yosef Avrahami and abusing the body of Vadim Nurzhitz. In 2010, he was acquitted of Avrahami's murder on grounds that a critical piece of evidence was inadmissible in court. He was, however, convicted of mutilating Nurzhitz's body and sentenced to seven years in prison. An appellate court later overturned the decision not to convict him of murder following an appeal by the military prosecution. • Marwan Ibrahim Tawfik Maadi and Yasser Ibrahim Mohammed Khatab, two Hamas members, were arrested by Shin Bet and Israeli Police during the breakup of a Hamas network in Ramallah and the Binyamin region. During the interrogation, they confessed to participating in the lynching, and in August 2012, they were indicted before a military court. ==See also==