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.
الله يرحمك يا محمد
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