We have tried to keep the focus here on the murder by Israeli soldiers of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on December 4 when all Ali Abu Aliah was doing was protesting the illegal seizure of his occupied village’s lands by Jewish settlers. It is a heinous crime that ought to be motivating American leaders to take action against Israeli soldiers– by refusing to continue to give Israel $4 billion a year in military aid.
Sadly the murder has gotten little attention in the United States. The New York Times has not covered the case, though the United Nations issued a statement on it three days ago calling it a “grave violation of human rights,” and saying Ali Abu Aliah was the sixth Palestinians child killing by Israel this year, and Israeli soldiers act with complete impunity.
From the High Commissioner on Human Rights:
UN human rights experts today called for an impartial and independent investigation into the killing of a 15-year-old boy by Israeli security forces at a West Bank protest this month, saying they were deeply troubled by the overall lack of accountability for the killings of Palestinian children in recent years.
“The killing of Ali Ayman Abu Aliya by the Israeli Defense Forces – in circumstances where there was no threat of death or serious injury to the Israeli Security Forces – is a grave violation of international law,” said the experts. “Intentional lethal force is justified only when the security personnel are facing an immediate threat of deadly force or serious harm.”
Some of the grotesque facts. An American gun was used.
Abu Aliya was hit in the abdomen with a bullet from a 0.22 Ruger Precision Rifle, fired by an Israeli soldier from an estimated 100-150 metres….The human rights experts are unaware of any claims that the Israeli security forces were in danger at any point of death or serious injury.
More than a thousand children have been injured by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank this year, the U.N. reports, and six killed. That’s on top of hundreds of children killed in Gaza in recent years.
Israel is investigating Ali Abu Aliah’s killing but the UN experts have no faith in that process. It’s “unworthy of a country that proclaims that it lives by the rule of law.”
Civil society organisations have documented the deaths of 155 Palestinian children by Israeli Security Forces using live ammunition or crowd-control weapons since 2013. Only three indictments on criminal charges have been issued for offences directly tied to those killings. In one case, the charges were subsequently dropped. In the second case, the responsible soldier reached a plea deal and was sentenced to nine months jail for death by negligence. In the third case, a soldier was convicted of not obeying orders and sentenced to one month in military prison.
“This low level of legal accountability for the killings of so many children by Israeli security forces is unworthy of a country which proclaims that it lives by the rule of law,” the experts said.
Again, I say the scandal here is that liberal Zionist organizations, which have the ear of the Democratic Party, have had almost nothing to say about the murder of Abu Aliah or the five other children Israel killed this year.
None of the liberal Zionist organizations has tweeted out this U.N. report. And it’s no wonder. They are focused on the Israeli government policy of endless settlement expansion and the threat to the so-called two-state solution that is dead as a doornail. The atrocities committed by the Israeli army are neverending, but just too troubling– and built-in to U.S. aid– to make an issue of.
J Street has repeatedly said that U.S. aid to Israel should not be conditioned, even though the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is fully in favor of such accountability. “Israel faces real security threats,” J Street says, “and US commitment to its security is rooted in America’s own national interests.”
So 15 year old boys will be killed with impunity, so Israel can maintain “qualitative military edge” over its enemies.
As Youssef Munayyer told the Intercept:
“In recent years, J Street has increasingly played a role of working to prevent a critical mass for accountability from forming among liberals and progressives, which only ends up carrying water for AIPAC, whether they want to acknowledge it or not.”
J Street’s Dylan Williams has approvingly cited a new report by the International Crisis Group and US Middle East Project on next steps for Joe Biden in the conflict that is happily lacking in two-state hokum; and that report includes the idea of accountability:
Ensure greater transparency, end-use monitoring and accountability regarding security assistance to Israel, so that Israel can be held to standard U.S. human rights and other benchmarks for aid recipients.
Exactly. Leaders should be doing as Rep. Betty McCollum is doing, and hammering on the murder of Ali Abu Aliah to demand that U.S. money is not going to the state-sponsored murder of Palestinian children. Only progressive pressure, and the BDS campaign, is going to put an end to these atrocities. Liberal Zionists are, not surprisingly, thrusting their heads in the sand, and insuring that Israeli soldiers will continue to have impunity as they fire their American rifles at boy protesters.
H/t Scott Roth, James North and Adam Horowitz.
There will only be justice only when the US, the EU, nations around the world, and the various Arab nations that now eat Israeli oranges, will stand up to this despicable occupier. They have all decided that having trade deals, and sharing military logistical secrets with the zionists, far overrides the freedom, lives, and suffering by the Palestinians that the zionists have been directly responsible for.
When it comes to Israel, they can, and will, get away with murders, massacres, and assassinations.
The murder of Ali Abu Aliya and other young Palestinians by Zionist indoctrinated Israeli soldiers should come as no surprise. They are taught from childhood to view Palestinians as less than human.
Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir:” [The Palestinians] would be crushed like grasshoppers…heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” (N.Y. Times, April 1,1988).
Rafael Eitan, Israeli Chief of Staff: “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” (N.Y. Times, 14 April, 1988).
Prime Minister Ehud Barak:”The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more…” (Jerusalem Post. Aug. 30,2002).
Rabbi Perin, in his eulogy for for mass murderer Baruch Goldstein: ” One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” (NYT, Feb. 28, 1994)
Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party and former Israeli Chief Rabbi, described the Arabs as serpents and in his Passover sermon: “The Lord shall waste their [the Arabs] seed, devastate them and vanish them from this world. It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.”
Phil and Kay are correct in that only BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Apartheid Israel) will save the lives of the Palestinian people, and of course that includes cutting off all aid to Israel. But you have to say it loudly in public forums, like your City Councils and student governments, right in front of the news media. Otherwise, you won’t be heard.
You can even run for a seat on your City Council or student government while demanding BDS resolutions as a basic human rights action, just like Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani did in the Ann Arbor City Council race. See her campaign video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kYdnvS6aQI
A less visible issue than the outright murders like those of Ali Abu Aliya is that an entire generation of Palestinian children is growing up in Gaza – an open air prison, basically – without adequate nutrition, education and travel opportunities. Their lives will be shorter as a consequence.
Israel is liberating women from their children. Muslim boys just grow up to oppress women.
Except for that dashing young Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who magnanimously gifted women the right to drive, bringing Saudi Arabia into the 19th century with the bold ambition of women holding up half the sky’s greenhouse gases. Of course, he had to arrest the SJW agitators who terrorized his country by driving before their turn. The dreamy Prince decrees women’s rights, women do not get to have an opinion on how their rights should advance or when, now that’s my kind of feminism.
Unlike that fiendish Emir of Dubai, who kidnapped his own daughters.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/dubai-ruler-sheikh-mohammed-organised-kidnapping-of-his-children-uk-court-finds
Hasn’t every political hack and quack in the lamestream media said Dubai is a virtuous fiefdom with a moderate tyrant, fake news.
I’ve seen at a lot of Dubai vacation ads on YouTube recently. Is this because they’re running out of oil and are desperate for tourist dollars? Or is it because they’re trying to lure innocent women there and imprison them in their Horrible Harem Hells? Just asking questions.
I am sure Israel has zero desire to normalize with a Silver Age Comic Book Villain country like Dubai, Israel only wants real progressive friends like The UAE.
But If Israel was forced to ally with Dubai (cuz of Iranian Hitlers) our women need to be warned before visiting Dubai. The Israeli government needs to issue a travel warning for Dubai. Not a travel ban, just a statement that the supreme potentate of Dubai is a misogynistic vulture who considers women to be property and doesn’t deserve to breath the 21st century air he keeps polluting. We need every Israeli feminist to join the campaign. I know they are all very concerned about the evil Muslim patriarchy and I don’t think there is anything more Muslamic than kidnapping your own daughter because she’s trying to escape to the west.
Get Lehava involved as well, they fight the good fight against miscegenation, and while abduction is obviously not as tragic as a woman choosing to betray her tribe on her own terms, we should not tolerate Arab hands on a Daughter of Zion at all.