What more brutality could Israel inflict on Palestinians that it hasn’t done already!
By Orly Noy (translated by Sol Salbe)
Like the last of the Kahanists, what Labor Party Leader Merav Michaeli saw fit to demand on Twitter after the attack in Neve Yaakov last night is a “tough response” against “this terror”. In the tweet that preceded it, by the way, about four hours earlier, she deeply admired the citizens “who are unwilling to compromise on our democracy”. Yes, a democracy clenched with an iron fist that must never let go.
I don’t know what “tough response” Michaeli is referring to, what else could she proposed be done to the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem that has not been done already, but she can rest assured: The two Palestinian shooters in Neve Yaakov and Silwan, a 21-year-old youth a 13-year-old boy, residents of A-Tur and Silwan respectively, have tasted nothing but a tough response from Israel in their entire lives.
Let’s start with Khairi Alkam, the shooter from Neve Yaakov, his grandfather was murdered by a Jew who never paid the price for their crime. In the [Hebrew] Wikipedia entry for Abu-Tor, the neighbourhood he lives in, it is called a “mixed neighbourhood.” What a bitter euphemism for a Palestinian neighbourhood that settlers invaded and turned the lives of its residents into hell on earth. Live gunfire at residents, permanent invasion of the security forces at the schools, massive spraying of skunk water into homes and shops, prevention of construction and development of the neighbourhood for the benefit of its Palestinian residents. What other “tough response” does Michaeli propose to hit them with, exactly?
It seems unnecessary to say too many words about what Israel has been perpetrating for years in Silwan, the neighbourhood of 13-year-old Mahmoud Aliyat who carried out the shooting in the City of David. There is not a single state instrumentality that has not mobilised for the criminal project of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the place. Young Mahmoud Aliyat was born and grew up in a neighbourhood where settlers, in the most literal sense, crept in the dead of night into a Palestinian home and pushed the family out of it. The detention of children in Silwan has long since become a thing. In this neighbourhood, the State of Israel works day and night against its Palestinian residents above and below the surface of the earth. What additional “tough response” does Michaeli propose to hit them with?
I have just been to the Jerusalem-Khan railway station precinct, which on Saturdays is always packed to the brim. Today its presence is palpably sparse. People are afraid to go out to crowded places, Jerusalemites are well used to this fear and are skilled in acting accordingly. It is undoubtedly terrible and people shouldn’t have to live in fear, but those who are unable to see the day-to-day fear, the depth of the oppression under which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents live, or worse — those who see this fear but it is trivial and par for the course in their eyes, and who see Jewish fear as the only fear that requires a response. They whose only response to bloodshed is the shedding of more blood, are infinitely closer to Ben Gvir than to me. As a Jerusalemite, my only request right now is that at least now, these people will just shut up.
