Palestinian child is in intensive care after a molotov cocktail attack by Israeli settlers on a taxi in the Occupied West Bank. (Photo: Activestills.org)
Let me take two minutes of your time to tell you the story of a four year old kid.
They were going to visit their grandmother. He talked all day about the new little racing car she bought him. How he was going to meet her was occupying his thoughts. A hug. A kiss to her right cheek. A kiss to the left. He’ll sit next to her until he receives his gift. He’ll hide it with his Mom after playing, alone, with it for a few minutes, and he’ll play with the kids in that neighborhood. He’ll keep it nice and clean for the first day of Eid with his friends.
They jumped in the Taxi. His mom embracing his little sister, him sitting in the back seat behind his dad, dad asking the driver, who was a relative, how he was and how everything is going on with his side of the family. The kid with a smile on his face looks through the window to see a group of long bearded men with small hats attached to their heads. He knows who they are. This must be trouble, he thought. They throw something on the car. His dad shouts to the driver to drive faster. Before he knew it, that thing sent its flames to his skin. The flames embraced his sister and clutched to both his arms and leg. He felt his face being scratched. The screams of his mom and sister crawled to his mind vaguely. He couldn’t hear his dad or the driver.
He, along with his sister, mom and dad, is spending his Eid in intensive care with limbs wrapped in white, eyes swollen, and face scratched. His grandmother is sitting right next to him with her white scarf and majestic tobe (traditional dress).
Horrible.
Soon Gilad or Oleg or Pamela G. will explain this.
“Horrible, but…
This can not be true. It must have been a leak in the fuel pump that set the car on fire or something. Those savages can not blame this on the civilized man.
Cars owned by savages driving by a “group of long bearded men with small hats attached to their heads” has a tendency to spontaneously combust”
Or something like that…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion
thank you rawan, for bringing this child’s voice here. it must be hard for you in gaza, intentionally severed from palestinians on the west bank and inside israel, especially over the holidays, to hear of terrorism against your people..so close and yet so far away.
Thank you for this story, and thank you for the unforgettable photograph. There will never be another holiday for me in which I do not look at my grandchildren and children and remember the heartbreak of this grandmother. Every grandmother in the U.S. and Canada needs to see this picture, and read this story.
I hope that mondoweiss will make it a priority from now on to publish pictures of the Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks, to make it easy for all of us to share these images as widely as we can. Our friends who look away from reports about Israel’s savagery find it much harder to look away from photographs.
The punchline will be when there are no arrests. The police are just going to be stumped…
Hello Rawan,
Please don’t be discouraged by so few comments under your article. It does not mean that people do not see or react to your picture.
It is just that words are so inadequate a response to what has happened and is happening.
I pray for that child. My heart goes to the grandmother.