Israeli settlers force Palestinian family to exhume and rebury their father

The Sa-Nur settlement is pictured in the south of Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on May 7. Nearby, Israeli settlers dug up the grave of an elderly Palestinian man and forced his family to remove his body. Ilia Yefimovich/AFP via hide caption toggle caption Ilia Yefimovich/AFP via RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank dug up the grave of an elderly Palestinian man on Friday and forced his family to remove his body from the cemetery where he had been laid to rest. The United Nations Human Rights Office for the occupied Palestinian territory called the incident a "despicable" example of the "new level of dehumanization of Palestinians that is happening in the occupied West Bank." A video filmed at the scene shows the relatives of deceased Hussein Asasa quickly carrying his body — wrapped in a white shroud — away from the cemetery, where settlers, armed with weapons and spades, had opened his grave. "The settlers told us: 'Either you take the dead body away right now or we'll use a bulldozer to remove him from the grave and dump him for you,'" Mohammed Asasa said of the attack on his father's burial site. He spoke with NPR by phone from a tent outside his home, where he was receiving mourners who had come to pay their respects. Asasa said his family has buried their dead in the cemetery of Asasa village, located south of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, for generations. …