There is no way, with everything else, that I can possibly keep up with what is happening in Palestine.
Any outrage and abuse is possible against Palestinian children in Israel and in the western media.
The moment something happens to an Israeli then all hell is let loose. Of course this was staged by the zionists as a provocation
Any outrage and abuse is possible against Palestinian children in Israel and in the western media.
The moment something happens to an Israeli then all hell is let loose. Of course this was staged by the zionists as a provocation
Israelis
demand blood after
youths’ bodies found
Ali Abunimah
30
June, 2014
Israel
launched air strikes against the occupied Gaza Strip in the early
hours of Tuesday morning and reports from Hebron in the West Bank say
that occupation forces damaged
or destroyed the
homes of the families of two
men Israel
claims were behind the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli youths.
Israel
says its bombing of Gaza is in “retaliation” for rocket fire from
the territory, but Israel has escalated the situation in recent days
with an upsurge of
extrajudicial executions. There were no immediate reports of
injuries.
Israeli
politicians have called for blood, one demanding that Ramadan be
turned into a “month of darkness.” Meanwhile the United States
has called for “restraint.”
Bodies
found
The
latest Israeli violence followed the discovery of the bodies of the
three youths near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron on Monday.
They
went missing on 12 June while hitchhiking between Israeli
settlements.
Israel
has claimed that Hamas was responsible for the killings, an
accusation the group has denied.
Twitter
user @Pal_1948 in
Hebron posted this image of an area resident attempting to put out
fires in one of the houses that Israeli forces blew up:
This
video shows the home of the Abu Eishe family after it had been
ransacked, but not demolished:
Israel
recently announced that it planned to resume punitive
home demolitions after
suspending the practice a decade ago.
Collective
punishment is a war crime under the Fourth
Geneva Convention whichstates that
no one living under occupation “may be punished for an offense he
or she has not personally committed.”
Palestinians
braced for worse to come as Israeli leaders began to call for blood
in response to the teenagers’ deaths.
Calls
for revenge
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led the pack, calling
the killers of
the youths “human animals” and stating “Hamas is responsible.
Hamas will pay.” Netanyahu specifically used the word “revenge”
hinting at what he may have in store. But many went even further.
Former
Israeli lawmaker Michael
Ben-Ari posted
a video
and a statement demanding
“to transfer the pain to the cruel enemy. Make Ramadan into a month
of darkness for them!”
We
are living in a “jungle,” Ben-Ari said, calling Palestinian
children “little terrorists.”
He
called for a rally in Jerusalem on Tuesday demanding: “Death to the
enemy, evacuation, and wiping off of [their] smile. And start with
Haneen Zoabi, let her go help in Syria,” he said, referring to the
Palestinian lawmaker in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
Housing
minister Uri Ariel called
for the
extrajudicial executions of leaders of Hamas and for Israel to “start
a wave of construction in the settlements in response to the murder
of the abductees.”
Tzachi
Hanegbi, a former cabinet minister from the ruling Likud
party, speculated,
“I don’t know how many Hamas leaders will remain alive after
tonight.”
Tzipi
Hotovely, another Likud lawmaker and deputy minister, wrote that
“Israel must declare a war of annihilation of Hamas, which is
responsible for the murder, and return to the assassination policy.”
Economy
minister Naftali
Bennett,
leader of the ultra-anti-Palestinian Jewish
Homeparty, declared “Murderers
of children and those who direct them cannot be forgiven. Now is a
time for actions, not words.”
Agriculture
minister Yair Shamir took the news as an opportunity to incite
against Palestinian citizens of Israel, whom he accused of defending
the kidnapping. “It will not be long before history settles the
account with you,” he wrote on
Facebook.
Calls
for any sort of restraint were virtually absent. Alarmed by the
atmosphere of incitement, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called
on the government to “refrain
from acts of vengeance”
and warned of “revenge” attacks by settlers.
Incitement
on social media
From
the moment news broke that the Israeli youths’ bodies were found,
Israeli social media, including Twitter and the Facebook pages of
major Israeli media outlets such as Walla! News, were quickly filled
with pervasive and lurid calls for bloodshed that have become all
too familiar.
Some
examples included Facebook users Kobi and Karen Haddad,
who demandedthat
Israel “incinerate Gaza and Hebron.”
“These
Arabs,” wrote Yuval
Efrat, “We should eliminate them all, just go in and spray them.
Enough!”
Calls
for “Death to the Arabs” were too numerous to count, but some
went further. Twitter user Daniel Ronen, for instance wrote “Death
to the Arabs! We must incinerate them and hang up their bodies in
front of their children.”
Facebook
user Lior Aminov took part in a discussion with several other people
apparently organizing to go and carry out vigilante attacks on Arabs.
He posted this picture of an Israeli army uniform and weapons he
intended to use against his victims.
There
were reports of several instances of reprisals
and protests by
Israelis.
In
Jerusalem, dozens of people “converged on a pizzeria in the
neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo to protest the employment of an Arab
worker,” according
to Ynet.
The
worker was reportedly “rescued” by police.
US
urges “restraint”
US
President Barack Obama issued a statement of
condolences to the families of the three youths and condemned their
killings as a “senseless act of terror against innocent youth.”
Obama
has never expressed sympathy or condolences for any of the more
than 1,400
Palestinian children murdered
by Israeli occupation forces and settlers.
But
with the dire situation across the region, the US appears eager to
avoid further escalation and Obama urged “all parties to refrain
from steps that could further destabilize the situation.”
EU
foreign policy chief Catherine
Ashton,
who also ignores Israel’s frequent killings of Palestinian
children, also condemned the
killings of the Israeli youths and hoped that
the “perpetrators of this barbaric act will swiftly be brought to
justice.”
Ashton
also surely knows that Palestinians cannot get anything resembling
“justice” inIsrael’s
military court system.
Following
Obama, Ashton also urged “restraint of all parties concerned in
order not to further aggravate the fragile situation on the ground.”
Invasion
of Gaza doubtful
In Ynet,
Ron Ben-Yishai, a writer close to intelligence and military
sources, speculated
that Israel would not carry out a large scale invasion of Gaza.
The
cabinet will be required to consider a severe military blow to Gaza.
This kind of operation is a necessity at the moment, not only because
Hamas is responsible for the abduction, but also because it does not
prevent intense rocket fire into Israel.
However,
if the option of an operation in Gaza is raised, it is likely that
most cabinet ministers will refuse. Why? Because Hamas in Gaza wasn’t
involved in the kidnap, and an IDF invasion of the Strip would be
perceived as collective punishment, which the international community
would not understand and even condemn. One of the things that the
State of Israel cannot lose is international legitimacy for its
actions, and cannot be perceived as a country that punishes an entire
population with no justifiable cause.
It
remains to be seen which voices Israel’s leaders will heed: those
demanding blood in Palestinian streets, or Israel’s international
sponsors who don’t wish to be embarrassed and inconvenienced by
another of its wild and vengeful killing sprees at a time when the
rest of the region is in particularly dire shape.
With
thanks to Dena Shunra for assistance with research and analysis.
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