Gideon Levy : Is an Israeli's Blood Redder Than a Palestinian's?

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Is an Israeli's blood redder than a Palestinian's? - Opinion
Naama and Eitam Henkin were murdered a few hundred meters from where soldiers killed Ahmed Khatatbeh. Their blood does not cry out louder than his.
haaretz.com


On the road to Elon Moreh, near the Beit Furik junction, Naama and Eitam Henkin were murdered in their car on Thursday night, in front of their children. It was a shocking crime.

On the road to Elon Moreh, near the Beit Furik junction, Ahmed Khatatbeh was shot to death in his car a few days earlier. That too was a shocking crime. Everyone bleeds red. Revenge murder is never justified, but the context cannot be ignored. Both sides kill innocents, and not in equal proportions. The blood of the Henkins does not cry out louder than that of Khatatbeh. A young deaf man with a hardscrabble life, he was eliminated by soldiers with three shots from behind and a few more into his car, at the Beit Furik checkpoint late at night, in circumstances that are still unclear.

The deserted road to Elon Moreh invites outrage from it's starting point, near the Hawara checkpoint: The signs point only to settlements, Itamar and Elon Moreh. The Palestinian towns of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan — much older and larger than the settlements — go unmentioned, as if they don’t exist. It’s the same with most road signs in the West Bank, in the covert and institutionalized apartheid, which discriminates between one person and another, between one community and another.

The Henkins were murdered a few hundred meters from where the soldiers killed Khatatbeh. He was returning from Nablus, after buying clothes for the Id al-Adha holiday. Born deaf, he died in silence. They shot at his car, perhaps because he didn’t hear their calls to stop. They also prevented an ambulance from removing him for about an hour, and the doctors at Rafidia Hospital said it might have been possible to save his life, had he been admitted earlier. His father doesn’t even know that his son was killed. Deaf as well, he lost touch with reality a few years ago due to a stroke. I saw him last week, lying motionless in bed, staring at posters of his son.

In a statement, the Spokesman’s Unit of the Israel Defense Forces said his son was killed because he posed “a clear and present danger” to civilian passersby. As far as is known, there were no civilians at the Beit Furik checkpoint at the time. So the army’s concern for their welfare is puzzling, as is the killing of the young man, who had never been arrested and who was shot even after he was already wounded, without a reasonable explanation.

Khatatbeh died quietly. No one in Israel showed any interest in his death, which was hardly mentioned. The headlines didn’t scream, battalions weren’t rushed to the scene, villages were not surrounded and cut off.

This is also what happened when the Dawabsheh family was set on fire in its sleep. Thousands of soldiers did not raid nearby settlement outposts, it did not occur to anyone to block access to settlements, to build a new Palestinian outpost in their memory, to block roads and to raid house after house, as they did in Beit Furik over the weekend.

The message is clear: Palestinian blood is cheap. Killing the Dawabshehs may have caused shock waves in Israel, but the security forces acted as they usually do in such cases, and the results speaks for themselves.

Hadeel al-Hashlamoun was also killed for no reason. The chain of events leading to the scandalous killing of the doctor’s daughter from Hebron, who was shot 10 times, was reported in Haaretz on Friday by Amira Hass. In the eyes of the IDF she was a terrorist and in the eyes of most Israelis she deserved to die. The soldier who killed her was heard saying “Thank God!” Her killing must also be remembered now.

This is the time, when so many Israelis are mourning the Henkins, to mention the Palestinian victims, whose killings were also heinous and also left behind orphans and mourning. More than 20 Palestinian civilians have been killed by IDF soldiers since the beginning of this relatively quiet year, almost all of them for no reason. Their blood must also cry out — their killing is part of the motive for spilling the blood of Na’ama and Eitam Henkin, whom we should hope only God will avenge. Actually, it’s better if he doesn’t.
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Gideon Levy

Haaretz Corresponden
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.678737

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