Who is it who is dying in Israel / Palestine?
Palestinian boys run from the IDF during a protest in Ramallah at the incineration of the Dawabsha family in Duma. [The Washington Post caption to this photo takes care to say the boys run ‘with stones’ just in case a naive reader fails to understand what a lethal force the IDF is up against]. Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images
How Israel protects its settlers who burn Palestinian children alive
By Ali Abuminah, Electronic Intifada
July 31, 2015
Before dawn on Friday morning, Ali Dawabsha, an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler, was burned to death in an arson attack on two homes in the village of Duma in the northern occupied West Bank.
The murder of Ali Dawabsha is not the first time Israeli settlers have burned Palestinians alive.
Given the impunity Israel grants its settlers, what chance is there really that Ali’s killers will be brought to justice?
“We saw four settlers running away keeping distance between each other,” 23-year old Musallam Dawabsha, one of the villagers who tried to assist, told Ma’an News Agency. “We tried to chase them but they fled to the nearby Maaleh Efraim settlement.”
The attackers also left behind graffiti making clear their racist motives: they painted a Star of David and the words “revenge” and “Long live the Messiah King” on the walls.
Ali’s mother is now in critical condition with serious burns over 90 percent of her body. His father has burns on 80 percent and Ali’s 4-year-old brother has 60 percent burns.
Crocodile tears
Following this horror, Israeli officials from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down have put on an ostentatious show of condemnation and sorrow and vows to bring the killers to justice.
At the same time, the occupation has begun its collective punishment of Palestinians, moving reinforcementsinto the West Bank to repress potential protests and barring Palestinians from al-Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem.
It is hard to imagine a more hypocritical display than the crocodile tears of the same leaders who perpetrated the massacre of 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza last year, more than 500 of them children, now feigning outrage at the murder of one more.
Of course the Israeli declarations have a specific goal: to try to paint the killing of Ali Dawabsha as an exceptional act and to obscure the reality that the violence of individual settlers is integral to the structure of Israeli colonial occupation and apartheid.
For Israel this is a mere public relations crisis and the expressions of outrage and “sorrow” are no more than thehasbara – propaganda – prescribed by spin doctors for the current news cycle.
Equally hypocritical would be any condemnations from the US administration of President Barack Obamawhich regularly boasts about how much it has done to arm and finance Israel and protect it from any accountability.
“A matter of time”
“A burned infant was only a matter of time,” Israeli human rights group B’Tselem declared after this morning’s attack.
“This is due to the authorities’ policy to avoid enforcing the law on Israelis who harm Palestinians and their property,” the group added. “This policy creates impunity for hate crimes, and encourages assailants to continue, leading to this morning’s horrific result.”
“In recent years, Israeli civilians set fire to dozens of Palestinian homes, mosques, businesses, agricultural land and vehicles in the West Bank,” B’Tselem said. “The vast majority of these cases were never solved, and in many of them the Israeli police did not even bother to take elementary investigative actions.”
Impunity and laxness is the norm even in the most brutal and egregious cases.
Just over a year ago a group of Israeli youths abducted and burned to death the eastern occupied Jerusalem teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair.
In that case, Israeli police took their sweet time to find the suspects, despite the fact that they had video footage of their faces and getaway car (first published exclusively by The Electronic Intifada).
It was perhaps only due to the massive international outrage that they bothered to find them at all.
Their case is grinding its way through Israeli courts but there’s little reason to trust a system that treats Israelis who attack or kill Palestinians with exceptional leniency.
This month, two Israelis who burned a Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem got a light sentence despite the fact that they were totally unrepentant. On leaving court, they declared that the crime was “worth it” in order to deter Jewish and Arab “assimilation.”
Burned in a taxi
Then there was the case of the family whom settlers burned alive on 16 August 2012.
Jamila Hassan, her husband Ayman and their children Iman, 4, and Muhammad, 6, were riding in a taxi south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, along with another passenger and the driver.
The car was hit by a Molotov cocktail. Ayman and the two children were badly injured. Muhammad suffered severe burns all over his body.
“We are lost, our life has turned upside down. The father, son and daughter are each in different worlds, our life is difficult and miserable,” Jamila told Ma’an News Agency two weeks after the attack.
Muhammad had just emerged in agony from yet another surgery. “He screams from the pain a lot,” his mother said.
At that time too there were Israeli promises of “justice.” But what happened?
Police arrested three minors from a nearby Jewish settlement and told the judge that they had found fingerprints at the scene linking the suspects to the crime.
According to Haaretz, Judge Yaron Mintkevich ruled to keep the boys in custody “with a heavy heart, due to their age” – they were reported to be between 12 and 13.
But in January 2013, Israeli prosecutors dropped the case, citing a “lack of evidence.”
Had they been Palestinian children accused of throwing stones at occupation soldiers, they would have been kept in custody for months, subjected to horrific abuse amounting to torture and forced to confess.
Obviously, that’s not how Israel treats its own settlers who are subject to Israeli civil law, while Palestinians, including children, are subject to Israel’s military kangaroo courts.
Dismantle Israeli apartheid
That built-in colonial inequality is a reminder that the settlers are not the cause, but merely an ugly manifestation of Israeli colonial violence, rooted in Zionism, that is fed from the top.
Who can believe that a “justice” ministry led by Ayelet Shaked – who in her notorious genocidal appeal last year called for the killing of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes” – can do justice for Palestinians?
Perhaps the settlers who burned little Ali to death had taken the words of Shaked or any of the other Israeli politicians who routinely incite against Palestinians in the most extreme and violent terms to heart.
The bottom line is this: the murder of hundreds of children in Gaza last summer, the burning of Muhammad Abu Khudair, the attack that killed Ali Dawabsha are all part of the price Palestinians must pay for Israel to continue to exist and expand on their land as a racist self-declared “Jewish state.”
The only way Ali Dawabsha or any other Palestinian can ever get justice from the Israeli apartheid system is if it is completely dismantled.
Palestinian children carry a funeral stretcher with a picture of 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha, the toddler who was burned to death by suspected Jewish extremists, during a protest in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on August 1, 2015. Photo by Said Khatib, AFP
Palestinian shot by Israeli troops during protest dies
By Associated Press/ Washington Post
August 01, 2015
RAMALLAH, West Bank — An 18-year-old protester shot by Israeli troops during a demonstration over the killing of a Palestinian toddler died of his wounds on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said.
Ahmad Betawi, the director of the Ramallah hospital, said Laith al-Khaldi died after being shot in the chest on Friday during a demonstration over the burning to death of a Palestinian toddler in a fire set by suspected Jewish extremists. The Israeli military says it shot al-Khaldi near Ramallah after he hurled a fire bomb at them.
Al-Khaldi was buried Saturday and small skirmishes ensued.
The funeral of 14 year old Laith Kaldi in Jalazin refugee camp, shot dead by the IDF during protest at death of Ali Dawabsha. Photo by Abbas Momani.
Tensions remain high after suspected Jewish assailants set fire to a West Bank home and burned the sleeping Palestinian toddler to death. The child’s 4-year-old brother and both his parents were also seriously wounded. The attack drew Palestinian anger and widespread Israeli condemnation.
About 2,000 Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank city of Hebron. Saturday saw only minor clashes as Israel deployed greater crowd control forces to try and prevent further escalation.
The Palestinians accuse Israel of not doing enough to protect them from extremist Jewish settlers. Israel fears the incident could spark wider unrest and has called for calm.
The extremists have for years staged attacks against Palestinian property, as well as mosques, churches, dovish Israeli groups and even Israeli military bases. The attacks, known as “price tags” because they exact a price for Israeli steps seen as favourable to the Palestinians, have stirred fear in Palestinians but rarely any deaths — which made Friday’s incident, in which 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was killed all the more startling.
Protest in Gaza, August 1st, 2015.Photo by Ibrahim Khatib, Demotix.
Two Palestinians killed by IDF fire, day after fatal West Bank arson attack
Laith Fadel al-Khaladi, 17, was killed after throwing a firebomb at an Israeli army pillbox near Ramallah, while another teen, Mohammed Hamed al-Masri, was killed in northern Gaza, after approaching the border fence.
By Gili Cohen and Jack Khoury, Haaretz
August 01, 2015
Two Palestinian teens were killed by Israel Defence Forces during clashes on Friday, following a deadly arson attack in the West Bank in which an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler was burned to death and his family gravely wounded.
Laith Fadel al-Khaladi, 17, of Jifna, north of Ramallah, died after being shot by an IDF sniper, Palestinian medical officials said. According to the IDF, al-Khaladi was shot after he threw a firebomb at an army pillbox next to the town of Bir Zeit. He was evacuated by Red Crescent ambulance services to a hospital in Ramallah, where he died overnight.
On Friday evening, Mohammed Hamed al-Masri, also 17, was killed by IDF fire in northern Gaza, after he approached the border fence with Israel along with other youths in protest at Friday’s arson attack. According to Palestinian sources, al-Masri was shot in the upper body, and later died in a Gaza hospital.
According to the IDF, there were two incidents of soldiers firing at Palestinians near the border fence in northern Gaza. In the first incident, two Palestinians approached the fence, the army said. When they were approximately 30 meters away, Israeli soldiers tried to stop their approach, including by shooting in the air. According to the IDF, the soldiers then fired at the two men, who did not move away from the fence, apparently aiming their fire below the Palestinians’ waists. The men then distanced themselves from the fence, according to the IDF.
In the second incident, five Palestinians reportedly threw stones at border fence, after which IDF soldiers reportedly fired at their legs and warned them to keep their distance. The army then received reports that one Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire, though it remains unclear in which of the two shooting incidents Mohammed Hamed al-Masri was killed..
Another six Palestinians were wounded in Friday’s clashes. A Palestinian sustained a gunshot wound to the leg during violent protests in Hebron, and four Palestinians were injured when IDF soldiers fired tear gas and Ruger bullets at around 30 Palestinian stone-throwers in the southern West Bank city of Halhul. Another Palestinian was wounded by Ruger bullets in Kfar Kadum in the West Bank.