This video shows several women preventing an Israeli soldier from abducting a Palestinian child in the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank on Friday.

The footage, shot by Bilal Tamimi, shows a masked soldier assaulting a child whose arm is in a cast.

The child is clearly distressed. A man screams at the soldier “He’s a boy! He’s a boy!” but the soldier continues his attack.

A short time later, several women appear and pull the soldier off the boy, braving his blows, but preventing the abduction from taking place.

One of the women also pulls the mask off the would-be abductor, allowing the suspect to be identified.

Ma’an News Agency identifies the boy in the video – and photos of the incident that have circulated online – as 12-year-old Muhammad Basim Tamimi.

The women who intervene to rescue him from the occupation soldier are identified as his mother Nariman Tamimi, his sister Ahed Tamimi and aunt Manal Tamimi.

Villagers in Nabi Saleh hold weekly demonstrations against the violent theft of their land for nearby Israeli settlements.

They are frequently the targets of attacks and abductions by occupation soldiers.

The video has attracted widespread attention, including in Israel.

But as Phan Nguyen pointed out on Twitter, the Israeli mainstream news site Ynet seemed more worried that the occupation soldier was receiving “little sympathy”: (zie de twitterdiscussie via Electronic Intifada)

In recent years several villagers have been severely injured or killed including, notoriously, Mustafa Tamimi, who died after Israeli forces shot him in the head at close range with a tear gas canister.

As of June, 160 Palestinian children aged 12-17 were in Israeli military detention, according to Defense for Children International–Palestine. Palestinian children detained by Israeli occupation forces face routine abuse and brutality amounting to torture.

Ali Abunimah: Rights and Accountability, The Electronic Intifada, 29 August 2015

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