Ziad Abu Helaiel – political activist and social reformer – was best known for his defiant phrase “Bihimish!” (“doesn’t matter” in Arabic). The phrase was delivered brazenly, dismissively even, to Israeli soldiers who were trying to scare him as he stood in their way, often using just his body to prevent them from shooting solidarity demonstrators in the West Bank during the 2014 war on Gaza.
To say Abu Helaiel, who was beaten to death at his home near Hebron by Israeli soldiers on October 7 this year, was well known would be an understatement. He was famous in the West Bank for the peaceful protests he led against the Israeli occupation, never armed and often standing as a human barrier between protesters and Israeli soldiers.
Thousands of people attended his funeral in the West Bank. Several thousand more tried to attend but were stopped at roadblocks manned by Israeli forces.
In the early hours of October 7, the one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel which ended with 1,139 people dead and 251 captured, and triggered the onset of the Israeli war on Gaza, occupation soldiers stormed the courtyard of Abu Helaiel’s house.
“It was about three in the morning when we heard the voice of the soldiers while they were besieging the house and ordering us to open the door,” says Basma.
At that moment, other soldiers stormed into the house to find Ziad and began to beat him mercilessly. He kept repeating that he had a heart condition, but one of the soldiers deliberately hit the heart area. As Abu Helaiel tried to follow them from the house, one of the soldiers slammed the heavy iron front door into his chest, causing him to collapse.
Abu Helaiel had previously undergone a number of heart procedures including a catheterisation of the artery. He lost consciousness for more than half an hour but the house was surrounded by soldiers. “They were preventing the ambulance from reaching us,” Basma says.