In an exclusive interview with Zeteo, Mehdi Hasan speaks with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who oversaw Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. Hasan confronts Olmert on war crimes and genocide allegations and asks him whether his Cast Lead operation may have laid the groundwork for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's actions today. PM Olmert also explains his criticism of Netanyahu and why he thinks the current prime minister tried to undermine the Palestinian Authority.
An Israeli child completely incinerated at Kibbutz Be’eri was killed by two tank shells shot by Israeli forces at the end of an hours-long gun battle, a survivor of the same carnage told the Israeli state broadcaster Kan earlier this month.
Yasmin Porat, taken captive with at least a dozen other Israeli civilians on 7 October, told Kan radio that a fellow captive, 12-year-old Liel Hatsroni, survived to the end of the battle and only died when Israeli forces fired two tank shells at the house where they were held hostage by Hamas fighters.
Hatsroni’s obliteration by Israeli tank fire emerged this month after her family decided to mourn her with a public funeral, even though the government had not officially pronounced her dead.
Although Hatsroni’s 69-year-old grandfather Aviyah and twin brother Yanai were buried two weeks after their deaths on 7 October, her 73-year-old aunt and guardian Ayala was only buried on 15 November, the day after Israel officially declared her dead.
On that day the Hatsroni family also held funeral rites for Liel, though the state still listed her as missing because “to this day they have not found any of her remains,” Yasmin Porat told Kan on 15 November.
You can listen to Porat speak in that interview in this video, with English subtitles:
As the frail body of 12-year-old Nassir Al-Mosabeh fell to the ground on Friday, September 28, history was repeating itself in a most tragic way.
Little Nassir was not just another number, a 'martyr' to be exalted by equally poor refugees in Gaza, or vilified by Israel and its tireless hasbara machine. He was much more than that.
The stream of blood that poured out from his head wound on that terrible afternoon drew a line in time that travel back 18 years.
Almost 18-years to the day separates Nassir's recent murder and the Israeli army killing of Mohammed Al-Durrah, also 12, on September 30, 2000. Between these dates, hundreds of Palestinian children have perished in similar ways.
Reports by the rights’ group, B’tselem, are rife with statistics: 954 Palestinian children were killed between the Second Intifada in 2000 and Israel's war on Gaza, the so-called Operation Cast Lead in 2008. In the latter war alone, 345 child were reportedly killed, in addition to another 367 child fatalities reported in Israel’s latest war, ‘Protective Edge’ of 2014.
But Mohammed and Nassir - and thousands like them - are not mere numbers; they have more in common than simply being the ill-fated victims of trigger-happy Israeli soldiers.
In that single line of blood that links Nassir al-Mosabeh and Mohammed al-Durrah, there is a narrative so compelling, yet often neglected. The two 12-year-old boys looked so much alike - small, handsome, dark skinned refugees, whose families were driven from villages that were destroyed in 1948 to make room for today’s Israel.
Young as they were, both were victims of that reality. Mohammed, died while crouching by the side of his father, Jamal, as he beseeched the Israelis to stop shooting. 18 years later, Nassir walked with thousands of his peers to the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel, stared at the face of the snipers and chanted for a free Palestine.
Between the two boys, the entire history of Palestine can be written, not only that of victimization and violence, but also of steadfastness and honor, passed from one generation to the next.
“Who will carry on with the dream,” were the words Nassir’s mother repeated, as she held a photograph of her son and wept. In the photo, Nassir is seen carrying his school bag, and a small bottle of rubbing alcohol near the fence separating Gaza and Israel.
“The dream” is a reference to the fact that Nassir wanted to be a doctor, thus his enthusiasm to help his two sisters, Dua’a and Islam, two medical volunteers at the fence.
His job was to carry the alcohol bottle and, sometimes, oxygen masks, as his sisters would rush to help the wounded, many of them Nassir’s age or even younger.
In a recent video message, the young boy - who had just celebrated the achievement of memorizing the entire Holy Quran - demonstrated in impeccable classical Arabic why a smile can be considered an act of charity.
Protesting the Israeli siege and the injustice of life in Gaza was a family affair, and Nassir played his role. His innovation of taping raw onions to his own face to counter the tears induced by the Israeli army tear gas garnered him much recognition among the protesters, who have been rallying against the siege since March 30.
So far, nearly 200 unarmed protesters have been killed while demanding an end to the 11-year long blockade and also to call for the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees.
Nassir was the 34th child to be killed in cold-blood since the protests commenced, and will unlikely be the last to die.
Palestinian Children and Israeli Discourse When Mohammed al-Durrah was killed 18 years ago, the images of his father trying to shield his son’s body from Israeli bullets with his bare hands, left millions around the world speechless. The video, which was aired by France 2, left many with a sense of helplessness but, perhaps, the hope that the publicity that Mohammed’s televised murder had received could possibly shame Israel into ending its policy of targeting children.
Alas, that was never the case. After initially taking responsibility for killing Mohammed, a bogus Israeli army investigation concluded that the killing of Mohammed was a hoax, that Palestinians were to blame, that the France 2 journalist who shot the video was part of a conspiracy to ‘delegitimize Israel’.
Many were shocked by the degree of Israeli hubris, and the brazenness of their mouth- pieces around the western world who repeated such falsehood without any regard for morality or, even, common sense. But the Israeli discourse itself has been part of an ongoing war on Palestinian children.
Israeli and Zionist propagandists have long claimed that Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews.
The likes of Elliott Abrahms raged against Palestinian textbooks for "teaching children to value terrorism." “That is not the way to prepare children for peace,” he wrote last year.
In July the Israeli army claimed that Palestinian children deliberately “lure IDF troops”, by staging fake riots, thus forcing them into violent confrontations.
The US-Israeli propaganda has not just targeted Palestinian fighters or factions, but has done its utmost to dehumanize, thus justify, the murder of Palestinian children as well.
“Children as young as 8 turned into bombers, shooters, stabbers,” reported one Adam Kredo in the Washington Free Beacon, citing a “new report on child terrorists and their enablers.”
This is not simply bad journalism, but part of a calculated Israeli campaign aimed at preemptively justifying the killing of children such as Nassir and Mohammed, and thousands like them.
It is that same ominous discourse that resulted in the call for genocide made by none other than Israel's Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, where she also called on the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to "little snakes."
The killing of Nassir and Mohammed should not then be viewed in the context of military operations gone awry, but in the inhuman official and media discourses that do not differentiate between a resistance fighter carrying a gun or a child carrying an onion and an oxygen mask.
Nor should we forget that Nassir al-Mosabeh and Mohammed al-Durrah are chapters in the same book, with an overlapping narrative that makes their story, although 18 years apart, one and the same.
On Friday afternoon, as Israeli soldiers from the other side of the fence were firing tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition, Yaser Abu al-Naja and a few friends took cover behind a waste container away from the front lines of a protest in the Gaza Strip.
As Yaser briefly peeked out from behind the bin, an explosive bullet hit him in the head. His skull was shattered, resulting a bloody pulp in one side, eye-witnesses said.
Yaser was 11 years old.
His killing on Friday made him the 16th Palestinian child to be shot dead by Israeli forces since the launch on March 30 of the Great March of Return protests calling for the right of refugees and their descendants to return to the homes and lands from which they were violently expelled from in 1948.
A few hours later, at sundown, Yaser's mother Samah Abu al-Naja was browsing through Facebook on her mobile phone when she came upon a photo of an "unidentified boy" with his head blurred and bloodied clothes.
"His face was not showing, but I recognised him as my son from the clothes he was wearing," the 30-year-old told Al Jazeera from her home east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
"My neighbour and one of my daughters were sitting with me," she added. "I turned to them with the phone in my hand and said: 'This is my son.'"
The Israeli occupation forces have killed around 2,000 Palestinian children since the start of the Second (Al-Aqsa) Intifada in September 2000, Anadolu reported on Friday. The figure was provided by Defence of Children International.
On average, that means a Palestinian child has been killed by a uniformed Israeli every three days for the past 18 years. It is a shocking statistic.
Ayed Qteesh, the director of the NGO’s Palestine Branch, told Anadolu that the Israelis also arrest and imprison around 700 Palestinian children every year. He alleged that the occupation security forces put Palestinian children before mock courts and treat them badly in order to extract “confessions” from them.
Last week,Fadi Allouncelebrated his 19th birthday with friends inIssawiyeh, a village in occupiedEast Jerusalem. He was thrilled that he had recently obtained a driving license. As a birthday gift, his father promised to help him buy a car.
Fadi had no stable job but was eager to find enough paid work so that he could realize this dream.
Five days later, Fadi was slain by militarized Israeli police in the Musrara neighborhood, beside Jerusalem’s Old City.
The Israeli police claim Fadi had tried to stab an Israeli teenager. Butvideo evidencefrom the scene of Fadi’s killing on Sunday does not corroborate this claim.
Rather, the videos show the Israeli police executing Fadi in cold blood. A group of Israeli Jews was filmed rejoicing at his death.
Fadi’s family insisted that the stabbing accusation was just an excuse used by Israel to try and provide some “justification” for his slaying.
“If he’d tried to stab a settler, we wouldn’t hide it,” said Haya Alloun, one of Fadi’s eight aunts. “Palestinian youth have every right to resist those who occupy our land. But I’m sure that he didn’t and you can be sure of this by watching the videos.”
Fadi’s experience with Israel’sapartheidsystem began when he was less than two years old.
His mother, who carried a Jordanian passport, travelled toAmmanat that time to visit her sick father, taking Fadi’s younger brother with her.
The Israeli authorities banned her from returning to Jerusalem, tearing the family apart. For nearly 18 years, Fadi was unable to see his mother and brother. He could only talk to them on the phone or via the Internet.
Even after his death, the Israeli authorities have not yet granted his mother and brother a permit to pay Fadi a final farewell.
Because of the ban imposed on his mother, Fadi was raised by his father as an only child. His father, in his turn, refused to marry again, entirely devoting himself to his son, whom he described as “my heart and soul and everything in my life.”
“He was everything to me, the most precious thing in my life,” Samir Alloun, Fadi’s father, told The Electronic Intifada. “I was his father, his mother and his best friend. Our relationship was very special.”
Terror is always Palestinian, even when hundreds of Palestinian civilians are killed. The name and face ofDaniel Tragerman, the Israeli boy killed by mortar fire during Operation Protective Edge, were known throughout the world; even U.S. President Barack Obama knew his name. Can anyone name one child from Gaza among the hundreds killed?
A few hours after the attack in Jerusalem, journalist Emily Amrousi said at a conference in Eilat that the life of a single Jewish child was more important to her than the lives of thousands of Palestinian children. The audience’s response was clearly favorable; I think there was even some applause.
Afterward Amrousi tried to explain that she was referring to the way the Israeli media should cover events, which is only slightly less serious. This was during a discussion on the ridiculous question: “Is the Israeli media leftist?” Almost no one protested Amrousi’s remarks and the session continued as if nothing had happened. Amrousi’s words reflect Israel’s mood in 2014: Only Jewish blood elicits shock.
The photo on Facebook is dated May 27, 2014, exactly three months ago. Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, the president of FIFA, the international soccer federation, is warmly shaking the hand of a powerfully built young man in a Nike jersey. “Mr. World Soccer” told the young Palestinian player that he predicted he would have a professional future in the sport. A few weeks later, an Israel Defense Forces soldier fired one round of live ammunition at the promising athlete and killed him.
Friends of the dead man wrote a sarcastic letter to Blatter: “We thank you for the brilliant future you promised Mohammad … Here, this is the future you promised him.” The president of the Palestinian Football Federation, Jibril Rajoub, also fired off an official letter of protest to Blatter over the soccer player’s death.
But in Israel no one had ever heard his name; no one was aware he’d been killed, in the midst of the Gaza hostilities. Of course, a possible protest or show of solidarity by Israeli soccer officials in the wake of the killing of the Palestinian player was out of the question.
Thus ended the short life of the 19-year-old athlete Mohammad al-Qatari from the Al-Amari refugee camp, outside Ramallah. His life was truncated, his dream aborted. Qatari will not be a professional soccer player, like Cristiano Ronaldo or Gareth Bale, from Real Madrid, whom he revered and whose pictures he pasted on the wall next to his bed.
One M16 rifle bullet straight to the center of the chest, fired from about 70 meters during a protest demonstration against the war in Gaza, felled him.
His parents proudly show his training outfit. His official uniform, bearing the number 16, is being kept in the Al-Amari soccer club’s headquarters. The memorial poster shows him in the uniform, Kalashnikov in hand, Al-Aqsa Mosque in the background. His parents say it’s a computer collage done by his friends after his death, as is customary in the West Bank; they say he never held a weapon. At the moment of his death he might have been holding a stone, which he possibly intended to throw at the soldiers who were deployed at a distance, next to the gate of the settlement of Psagot.
