Wednesday, July 2, 2014

No, it was not “Revenge”, we call it Murder.


This morning we all woke up to news’ headline “Palestinian teenabducted, killed in suspected revenge attack”, where the 16-year-old Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir was found dead, torched, in a forest in Jerusalem. All the analysis regarding this murder centers around the same concept, it was the settlers “revenge” for their three killed sons. Especially since after yesterday there were a lot of calls by Israelis to “kill the Arabs” and “Death to the Arabs”, and hence we got a hint about their future lynching operations.

So we can call what’s happened a kidnap and murder, or a hideous crime, an act of merciless killing, but never “revenge”. Revenge against what exactly? The three dead settlers? What about the fact that 1 Palestinian has been killed every three days since 2000 – not mentioning the thousands before this time period? Or the fact that only since the “abduction” of the settlers was announced 566 Palestinians were detained –abducted- by Israeli Occupation Forces, where over 2100 houses were searched, and by searched I mean flipped upside down and sabotaged. In addition to 10 Palestinians killed, and over a 100 Palestinians were sentenced to indefinite administrative detention. So again, what revenge and against whom exactly?

What do Israelis expect exactly of us? Sometimes it might feel that we got used to all the humiliation we’ve been living under for all of our lives, from the “hellpoints” to demolishing houses for no definite reason every now and then, to “abducting” our friends and neighbors – and for your information, there’s over 190 abducted Palestinian kids in Israeli prisons- and throwing them in Israeli prisons for months and months or years or even life-sentences. Or killing Palestinians every now and then for the sake of the Most Moral Army in the World’s practice and training. Yes, sometimes it might seem like we’re used to it. Yet other times, real times, we’re never used to it and never will be. And actions will be taken.

Again, what do they expect? For us to hug them while kidnapping our people? Or to give them a glass water for all the hard work they’re doing while demolishing one of our houses? Or maybe, a Palestinian mother should distribute roses to the soldiers who killed her son? Or maybe, since they stand for hours and hours on their “hellpoints” humiliating us, we should bring them ice cream and umbrellas to make this heat a little less of hell to them.
But that’s not going to happen, you treat people like shit, you kill them and smash their lives as if they were nothing, there’s going to be a reaction in return. And it’s not going to be a friendly one.

So the kidnapping of the settlers was nothing but a reaction to years and years of oppression, humiliation and murder. I’m not saying this is okay, I’m saying –truly- what the heck do Israelis expect? If anything when their sons were kidnapped, it should’ve been their wake-up call to realize that what they’re doing has consequences, ugly-horrendous-hideous consequences. But what do they do in return? Call for the “Death of Arabs”, who they’re already killing! And what does their government do? Blow up the houses of the “suspected” kidnapers, that till this moment it’s not determined if it were them or not.

We’re living in a world where the truth doesn’t exist, where humanity is only determined by those in power and denied for those living under oppression and tyranny by those in power. Where when someone is suspected of a kidnap and murder, the only action to be taken was bombing their houses, with hundreds of house arrests all around Palestine from Jenin to Nablus to Ramallah, to Jerusalem, and where Gaza is being bombed for someone they suspect he might’ve done the kidnapping in Hebron. And the only global response that we got was the condemnation of the kidnapping, yet no conviction of what has preceded the kidnapping or of what has followed.

A clearer example to show that humanity is only a concept related to those in power,is that the suspects’ of the kidnapping of the Israeli settlers had their houses bombed and their family members arrested. But I’m pretty sure, no one is going to blow up the house of the settlers who kidnapped and murdered Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir or arrest their family members.

In the end, it wasn’t revenge on the settlers’ part, and the kidnapping of the three settlers was merely a cry to wake these Israelis up that was simply hushed down and eliminated and turned around, where three “precious human” lives were lost, and the loss of Muhammad’s life was merely “revenge” that somehow needed to be taken.



I just wish we'd reach a point where I won't have to post one more picture of a dead kid, too early to forcefully leave this life. 


الله يرحمك يا محمد 


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