Whoever was silent about shooting a 2.5-year-old boy in the head will cop being beaten in Caesarea
Today, two-and-a-half-year-old Muhammad Tamimi died of his wounds after being shot in the head by IDF soldiers. It is not clear which is more shocking — the killing itself, or the fact that it doesn’t bother anyone in the State of Israel
By Moran Sharir • (Translated by Sol Salbe)
56 years ago today, the Six Day War broke out. Wars continue even after they are decided on the battlefield. What began as a lightning crushing victory that stirred the world and solidified our existence in the Middle East has turned into a long, bogged-down defeat that threatens our future and ruins our standing in the world.
Odeh Bisharat describes the Six-Day victory as the root of evil: “In ’67, the seed of destruction was planted in the form of aggressive messianism, which does not take political logic or morality into account.” The Palestinians are forced to be swallow the poisoned fruits of this seed every day, and it isn’t only them. The fruits of the poison bloom on both banks of the Jordan. Today, two-and-a-half-year-old Muhammad Tamimi died of his wounds after being shot in the head by IDF soldiers. It is not clear which is more shocking — the killing itself, or the fact that it doesn’t bother anyone in the State of Israel. After 56 years of occupation, the heart is hardened.
Gideon Levy wrote this week about Israel’s indifference to the attack on Tamimi’s: “The photogenic hospitalisation of protest activist Moshe Redman, after he was lightly wounded at a demonstration in Caesarea, evoked more shock in Israel over the weekend.” Levy is right. The liberal left, appalled by the violent arrests in Caesarea, paid very little attention to the shooting of a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler in the head. But in fact, a straight line connects the indiscriminate shooting in Nabi Saleh to the violence that raged in Caesarea.
This week in Caesarea, the police used disproportionate violence against a civil protest. We saw a citizen being led to a police station handcuffed with cable ties and blindfolded with a piece of cloth. We’ve seen police officers prevent lawyers from meeting their clients and provide no information about their whereabouts. We saw vindictive police dispersing detainees between police stations for fear of peaceful and legitimate protest. These practices are familiar to us from the other side of the Green Line. We have seen how people are having their status of being “citizens” and being “people” peeled off, and all that remains of them is an obstacle to the regime. An obstacle that must be removed even if it is by force.
56 years of Occupation transform Muhammad Tamimi from a “person” into an “obstacle.” 56 years of Occupation turn Moshe Redman from a “citizen” into an “obstacle.” What distinguishes them is that Tamimi is Palestinian and Redman is Jewish. The Jewish supremacist project still gives Redman an edge, but not for much longer.
[Yeshayahu] Leibowitz was right, [Martin] Neimoller was right, Israel Frey was right. The occupation has turned Israel into a Shin Bet [AKA Shabak] state, and the practices that have been applied to Palestinians in the West Bank for years are already being applied to Jews within the Green Line. Whoever was silent about shooting a two-and-a-half-year-old boy in the head will cop being beaten up in Caesarea and disappear at a police station in Um al-Fahm.
The roots of the occupation can no longer be uprooted. The Hill Top Youths sit in the government, the terrorists of ’95 are members of the security cabinet, those who torch Hawara lead the country. The Occupation did not end on the sixth day of the ’67 war. It continues to occupy and annex, oppress and enslave. For 56 years in a row.
