The Valley of Thieves

With 26 bullets and a jammed World War II rifle, Tha’er killed 11 IOF soldiers and wounded nine at an occupation checkpoint. Tha’er means “revolutionary.” Tha’er permanently closed the checkpoint. Tha’er was just 22. And Tha’er went undetected for two and a half years.

On this day in 2002, Tha’er Kayed Hammad carried out one of the most precise operations in Palestinian resistance history. Hiding between the trees of Al-Bireh, he carried out the legendary Valley of Thieves operation with an old gun that he bought and trained on in the same hills and valleys using his own money. Tha’er says, “I gathered about $1,800 and bought an M1 rifle with 350 bullets. I practiced with it until I could hit a fly with a bullet.”

Like flies the settlers dropped. After prayer, he went up to the Valley of Thieves with 70 bullets, knowing that he would either be martyred or imprisoned. Surrounded by olive trees, he watched the checkpoint below him; at exactly 6:00, he fired his first shot. A zionist soldier was hit between the eyes. Seconds later, his second shot hit another soldier in the heart, and a third was hit shortly after.

Soldiers came out to investigate. Bang. Bang. Within a minute, five bullets were fired, and five soldiers were dead. A screaming soldier peeked his head out of the window, only to get a bullet to his brain. Six dead. Two settlers arrived at the checkpoint after some time. Eight dead. Eight bullets.

Tha’er was a master of precision. He avoided shooting Palestinians. When a zionist woman and her children arrived, he said, “I am not like them; I do not kill children,” telling her in Hebrew, “I am not a murderer. Leave with your children.”

An hour and a half had passed. Tha’er fired 26 bullets, and zionist bodies were laid out all over the checkpoint. His gun exploded, and he was forced to leave it at the site. Although he wanted to “continue the fight with stones from the mountain,” he decided it best to withdraw. Tha’er calmly went home to Silwad, took a shower, and slept.

Our hero says, “I didn’t expect to survive, but what comforted me was that I got over the false and exaggerated ideas I had about the “israeli” army being so strong and trained and that I couldn’t hit it, let alone kill it and defeat it. I found out that it was a banal army that could be killed, defeated, and vanquished, and I saw with my own eyes, and heard how the soldiers were weeping, yelling, and begging behind the walls of the building and the mounds of earth while hiding from the fire of my old rifle. I came to the realization that it was an army of mercenaries whose soldiers did not face death bravely and did not stand firm in the battle, which helped keep me steadfast in the arms of the olive tree throughout the operation…Lucky for them [that the gun malfunctioned].”

Zionist intelligence assumed that the shooter was an expert sharpshooter, an older man trained in shooting. Little did they know that 22-year-old Tha’er was the one who soaked the checkpoint in blood. 30 months passed until the IOF matched up the fingerprints and arrested Tha’er. Not even his family knew that he was responsible for such heroism.

At the moment of his arrest, an impressed zionist officer even gave him a military salute. Tha’er was sentenced to 11 life sentences after 30 trials, where he continues to write books and research from within the zionist prisons.

On his arrest, Tha’er said: “The revolutionary fighter remains free even if he is arrested, for freedom is the freedom of the mind, thought, and spirit, even if the body is restricted. My body was arrested two and a half years after the date of the operation was carried out, but while I am in prison, I remain free.”

Glory to the resistant rifle!

Glory to the revolutionary Tha’er!

Freedom for our revolutionary prisoners!

source: Resistance News Network