Palestinian wasn't forced to play violin, Israel says

By Seattle Times news services

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian filmed by a human-rights group playing his violin at an Israeli military checkpoint was not forced to do so by soldiers, the Israeli army said yesterday, summing up an internal investigation.

Footage of Wissam Tayim making music last week near the West Bank city of Nablus struck an emotional chord in Israel, where the local media drew comparisons to Jewish musicians forced to play at Nazi death camps.

In an interview with Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, Tayim said a soldier demanded he take his violin out of its case and play something sad.

A member of the Israeli human-rights group Machsom Watch who filmed the incident told Reuters last week she did not believe Tayim was coerced into playing.

Commenting on the results of an investigation led by a general, a military spokeswoman said soldiers asked Tayim only to open the violin case for a security check but he was never told to play the instrument.

"The Palestinian took the violin out of the case and began to play it. After a few seconds, he was asked by an officer ... to stop playing," the army said in a communiqué.

Nonetheless, the military statement said the army recognized "that insensitivity was shown during the incident, although there was no intention to show disrespect towards the Palestinian or mock him."

In related developments:

Gunmen yesterday shot and killed Nasser Badawi, a senior official from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah party, in the Balata refugee camp, party officials said.
 
There was no indication of who was responsible. The Balata camp is ruled by competing armed factions of Palestinians, and infighting is not uncommon.

An Israeli military court yesterday sentenced Abdullah Barghouthi, a Palestinian member of the Hamas group, to 67 terms of life imprisonment for preparing bombs that killed dozens of people. The court said he placed a bomb in a guitar case that a suicide bomber carried into a pizzeria in central Jerusalem in August, 2001. Fifteen people were killed.