Israeli warplanes and artillery yesterday continued to pound right-wing Jewish settlements on the West Bank in apparent retaliation for the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir.
Unconfirmed reports say that the Israeli authorities are looking for suspects who are members of a right-wing Jewish group who have established a number of illegal settlements in the West Bank, many of which have since been ‘legalized’, depriving Palestinians of their homes and land.
Although no suspects have yet been arrested, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the West Bank settlers’ organizations must accept responsibility. Settler organizations, some of which have applauded the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, deny any involvement in the killing and denounce the attacks on them as illegal and immoral collective punishment.
The widespread and aggressive search for the perpetrators of the crime, in which Mohammed Abu Khdeir was allegedly burned alive, has resulted in the deaths of at least 5 settlers, including minors, and the imprisonment of many hundreds.
Israeli forces also used explosives to demolish a number of Jewish homes in the area, believed to belong to the suspected murderers. Families were given a matter of minutes to leave the premises and remove their possessions before their properties were blown up. Now homeless, the families were left to fend for themselves.
An official Israeli government spokesperson said that the attack on Mohammed Abu Khdeir was a blatant and inexcusable act of terrorism aimed at undermining the very existence of the state of Israel as a member of the civilized world. It would therefore be met with the full force of the Israeli state.
Many foreign countries sent messages of condolence to the family of Mohammed Abu Khdeir but were warned to refrain from commenting on the severity of the Israeli government response on the grounds that this concerned the internal affairs of Israel. Human rights groups, however, condemned the hasty use of force against civilian populations rather than allowing the investigative and judicial processes to identify and punish the actual perpetrators.
Israeli media gave extensive coverage to the funeral of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, roughly equal to the interest shown in the funerals of the Jewish teenagers Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, who earlier were brutally killed in the West Bank, allegedly by Hamas operatives, according to Israeli government sources.
In both cases, the international media showed a nation united in grief and included sympathetic, even heart-rending interviews with mourning relatives.
The iron-fisted Israeli reaction to the death of Mohammed Abu Khdeir was reminiscent of the government response to the killings in May of Palestinian teenagers Nadim Nuwara and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir, who were shot dead by Israeli security forces.
In an incident recorded on CCTV cameras and widely reported in the international media, the two victims were shot in the vicinity of a stone-throwing protest. It is clear from the footage that at the time, neither posed any threat to Israeli security personnel; indeed, one was walking away when he was shot.
At the time, the Israeli military claimed that the CCTV video had been doctored, that the two teenagers had earlier been involved in violence, and that Israeli troops in the area had not been issued with live ammunition. The military also removed from a private Palestinian business the CCTV cameras that had captured the shootings.
Later, the Israeli authorities mounted a raid on an Israeli military barracks where the suspected gunmen were based, an action which resulted in numerous casualties and the eventual demolition of the base. The military spokesperson who gave the initial press briefings was summarily fired for deliberately misleading the media. And military technicians were ordered to replace the CCTV cameras which had been removed and to install further cameras in the vicinity as a ‘crime suppression measure’.
A government spokesperson said that wanton violence would not go unpunished, no matter who the victim was or who the perpetrator was. ‘Any other course of action would expose Israel to the charge of hypocrisy,’ he said.
About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).
