Israeli racism murders Palestinian child
By Adam Hanieh
WEST BANK — On November 11, a Palestinian child was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in Bethlehem. He was pronounced dead on November 15 by Israel's Hadassah hospital.
Ali Jawarish was shot while he was standing near a group of stone-throwing children near the Jewish site of worship, Rachel's Tomb. An Israeli soldier, from a distance of 15 metres, crouched, aimed and fired at the children.
Israeli army regulations state that soldiers must not use rubber-coated metal bullets from a distance of less than 40 metres, and not against women, children or the elderly. Since the intifada more than 40 Palestinians, including some 20 children, have been killed by rubber-coated metal bullets.
Witnesses say that the military did not come to Jawarish's aid, and he lay in the street for several minutes before a car took him first to the Bethlehem hospital, then to Makassed hospital in Jerusalem, which does not have the facilities to treat serious head injuries, and finally to Israel's Hadassah Ein Karem hospital.
At first, Hadassah refused to take the child. Jawarish's cousin, Mohannad Ilayan, said that the child was turned away from its emergency section and transferred to Ramallah hospital, which also did not have the facilities to treat him. Finally, on November 12, Hadassah hospital agreed to admit Jawarish, who was by then close to death.
The Israeli media and politicians' reaction to Jawarish's murder reveals much about the racist nature of the Israeli state. When the boy's family agreed to donate his organs to anyone, regardless of nationality or religion, the major newspapers hailed this as generous and humane. However, all avoided the central question of how a seven-year-old boy could have been deliberately shot without any charges laid against the soldier responsible.
Israeli politicians expressed regret at the boy's death, but none condemned the actions of the Israeli military. The right-wing daily Jerusalem Post even editorialised that the fault lay with the Palestinian police for not "keeping demonstrators under control".
This tragic incident underlines the tense and volatile situation in the West Bank. Heavily guarded Jewish enclaves in Palestinian populated areas, such as Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, are a constant source of confrontation between Israeli soldiers and the local Palestinian population.