Israel’s ugly reality

On June 12, three Israeli teenagers went missing. Although the area of the occupied West Bank in which they disappeared is under its full security control, Israel instantly blamed Palestinians for kidnapping them, specifically the “terrorist” faction Hamas.

Without producing any shred of evidence to support its claim, Israel sent its occupation forces to wage a fierce campaign of raids, arbitrary arrests, detentions, and searches, often violent, in pursuit of the imagined suspects, in addition to punitive air strikes on targets in Gaza.

Many Hamas leaders were arrested and at least six Palestinians were killed.

The retaliatory Israeli measures were neither discouraged by categorical denials from Hamas that it had no hand in the matter, nor were the Israelis willing to show any restraint after Palestinian Authority (PA) condemnation of the assumed abduction along with a direct call from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for the release of the missing Israelis.

As a matter of fact Abbas and his PA were also blamed by Israel’s leaders for bringing Hamas, “a terrorist organisation” into the “national unity government,” demanding that it should be dissolved, and insisting that the kidnapping was one of the immediate results of the recent Hamas-Fateh reconciliation.

Indeed, there were some calls on Israel, though clearly subdued, not to escalate its measures against Palestinians at least until some convincing evidence could be produced, yet most of the so-called international community tended to understand Israel’s nervousness and aggressive panic.

Most fingers were pointing at a Palestinian culprit, and it was a matter of time until that particular perpetrator was located.

After two weeks of intensive search and investigation, the Israeli public (though perhaps not the government who may have known more than they admitted), were stunned when the three missing Israelis were found dead.

In any other country this would be treated as a crime, a shocking crime, a painful crime, but a crime. And as such the killers should be pursued and once found they would be justly tried in accordance with existing laws.

In Israel, “the only thriving democracy in the region” according to most Western media, however, this is hardly the case, particularly when the presumed villain is a Palestinian.

The Israeli reaction after the discovery of the murder was loud calls for vengeance and indiscriminate punishment, not only of Hamas and all Palestinians, but also of all Arabs. These calls started with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who tweeted out a call for “revenge.”

Israeli mobs took to the streets chanting “Death to the Arabs,” attacking and destroying everything that belonged to Arabs on their way.

Soldiers went straight to the Hebron homes of two Palestinian suspects believed, but without a single shred of proof, to be responsible for the kidnapping. In front of the families who lived there, the soldiers destroyed the furniture and all other contents of the two homes before demolishing them and sending their inhabitants into the street.

That has been common Israeli practice for decades, punishing family and relatives for crimes they never committed. But the whole world remains silent about it.

Israel also bombed Gaza.

In earlier decades, the same air force went to attack Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon every time there was an incident in Israel. That was the easiest way for Israeli leaders to satiate the vengeful appetite of their people whenever those under the longest occupation of history rose up for their dignity and freedom.

But all these retaliatory measures for the death of the three Israelis seem benevolent in comparison with what happened next.

Driven by raging hatred in their hearts, fuelled by incitement from their leaders, some Israelis went roaming in the town of Shuafat in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, hunting for an Arab prey.

They found Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was on his way from home to a nearby mosque for the dawn Ramadan prayer on July 2. According to Israeli force and the boy’s family, they forced him into their car and whisked him away as security cameras captured the abduction.

A short time later, his charred body was found. His captors had burned him alive.

Can anyone imagine in this time and age a crime of such depravity? Can anyone imagine the stored hatred in the hearts of such people who burn alive a human being, a totally innocent human being, just to satisfy their lust for vengeance? But worse than this unprecedented outrage, is the cowardly and cool world reaction to it, as usual.

As if this murder was not enough, the Israeli force themselves followed it with another outrage. Tariq Abu Khdeir, a 15-year-old cousin of Mohammed, was picked up by the force last Thursday and savagely beaten, kicked, and dragged around until he lost consciousness.

He was detained without charge and deprived of medical help for five hours. He barely survived the attack by two masked Israeli force officers. Tariq — an American citizen from Tampa, Florida — was in Shuafat for a short family holiday from the US.

The Israeli force did not even charge him with any “crime,” even though they fined him and sentenced him to house arrest.

He only visited Palestine once before when he was four, he barely speaks Arabic and was totally unaware of the prevailing political tensions. Videos of his deformed face are all over the web. It is hard for anyone with a heart to even look at him after the ordeal.

It took the US government too long to express concern and to ask for an investigation of a crime caught on video and now seen by millions around the world. There will be an investigation, not to locate the perpetrators and hold them accountable but to provide legal cover for closing the case and exonerating Israel, like thousands of similar cases before.

Ugly as it may seem, this is the reality of the Israeli occupation. No amount of “peace process” has been able to reduce the hatred of the Israelis for the Arabs as demonstrated not only this time but routinely before, in the usual call of “death to the Arabs.”

That means all Arabs, anywhere they live or exist. This is the reality. Israel commits mediaeval crimes and breaks the law. The Palestinians suffer and pay heavily. They have been suffering for almost an entire century. Their options are limited: accept the occupation and deny your own rights or face Israel’s unrestrained and widely endorsed wrath.

Palestinians are told they must respect and submit to Israel, because Israel, unlike them, is a “civilised democracy.”

Go and tell that to the mothers of Mohammed and Tariq, and to the parents of thousands of other children whose lives were taken or destroyed by Israel’s occupation and racism.

This is the reality.