By Gideon Levy
February 15, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - Israeli
soldiers shoot children. Sometimes they wound them
and sometimes they kill them. Sometimes the children
wind up brain dead, sometimes disabled. Sometimes
the children have thrown rocks at the soldiers,
sometimes Molotov cocktails. Sometimes by chance
they wind up in the middle of a confrontation. They
almost never put the soldiers’ lives in danger.
Sometimes the soldiers intentionally shoot at the
children, sometimes by mistake. Sometimes they aim
at the children’s heads or the upper body, and
sometimes they shoot in the air and miss, hitting
the children in the head. That’s how it goes when a
body is small.
Sometimes the soldiers shoot with the intent to
kill, sometimes to punish. Sometimes they use
regular bullets and sometimes rubber-coated bullets,
sometimes from a distance, sometimes in an ambush,
sometimes at close range. Sometimes they shoot out
of fear, anger, frustration and a sense of having no
other option, or a loss of control, sometimes in
cold blood. The soldiers never see their victims
afterward. If they saw what they caused, they might
stop shooting.
Israeli soldiers are allowed to shoot children.
Nobody punishes them for shooting children. When a
Palestinian child is shot it’s not a story. There’s
no difference between the blood of a small
Palestinian child and the blood of a Palestinian
adult. They’re both cheap.
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Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
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When a Jewish child is hurt, all of Israel
shakes, when a Palestinian child is hurt, Israel
yawns. It will always, always find a justification
for soldiers shooting Palestinian children. It will
never, never find a justification for children
throwing stones at soldiers who raid their village.
For six months a boy named Abd el-Rahman Shatawi
has been convalescing at the rehabilitation hospital
in Beit Jala. For 10 days a relative of his,
Mohammed Shatawi, has been at Hadassah University
Hospital, Ein Karem, in Jerusalem. Both are from the
village of Qaddum in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers
shot them both in the head. They shot regular
bullets from a great distance at Abd el-Rahman as he
stood at the entrance to a friend’s home, they shot
a rubber-coated bullet at Mohammed from a nearby
hilltop as he tried to hide from them down the same
hill. The army said he had set a tire on fire.
Abd el-Rahman is 10 and looks small for his age.
Mohammed is 14 and looks older than he is. These are
the children of the Palestinian reality, both
hanging between life and death. Theirs and their
parents’ lives have been destroyed. Abd el-Rahman’s
father drives him home from Beit Jala to Qaddum once
a week for a weekend in the village, Mohammed’s
father doesn’t stray from the doorway of the neuro-intensive
care unit at Hadassah Ein Karem, where he’s alone
facing his son and his fate. Neither of these
children should have been shot. Neither should have
been shot in the head.
After Abd el-Rahman was shot the army spokesman’s
office said that “during the incident a Palestinian
minor was wounded.” After Mohammed was shot the
spokesman said: “A claim about a Palestinian who was
wounded by a rubber bullet is known.” The office is
familiar with the complaint. The army spokesman is
the voice of the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF is a
people’s army, therefore the IDF spokesman also
speaks for Israel.
The spokespeople publish their bloodcurdling
statements from a new office tower in Ramat Aviv
near Tel Aviv, where the office recently moved. They
refer to a 10-year-old boy as a “Palestinian minor”
and remark that “the Palestinian claim is known”
about a boy fighting for his life because soldiers
shot him in the head. The dehumanization of
Palestinians has reached the IDF spokespeople. Even
children no longer rouse human sentiment such as
sorrow or mercy, certainly not in the IDF.
The IDF spokesman’s office does its job well. Its
statements reflect the spirit of the time and place.
There’s no room to express any regret for shooting
children in the head, there’s no room for mercy, an
apology, an investigation or punishment, and
certainly not for any compensation. Shooting a
Palestinian child is considered less severe than
shooting a stray dog, for which there’s still a
chance someone will do some investigating.
The IDF spokesman announces: Continue to shoot
Palestinian children.
Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and
author. Levy writes opinion pieces and a weekly
column for the newspaper Haaretz that often focus on
the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian
territories. Levy has won prizes for his articles on
human rights in the Israeli-occupied territories
This article was published by "Haaretz"-
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