Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Gideon Levy: Twilight Zone / Deer hunters - Haaretz, December 28, 2007

According to the IDF, “the incident was investigated at all levels of command, and the lessons will be learned and applied. The findings of the investigation will be conveyed to the Military Advocate General’s Office.”

Antigona Ashkar, from the human rights organization B’Tselem, who also investigated the event, wrote to the chief military prosecutor, Colonel Liron Liebman, saying: “The soldiers opened fire at Jamil, Baha and Firas suddenly, with no prior warning. The three were sitting on a boulder and looking at the view, and did not endanger anyone. They were surprised by the emergence of the soldiers from between the trees and remained where they were until the soldiers started shooting at them.” B’Tselem requested a Military Police investigation of the circumstances of the killing.

The B’Tselem field-worker in the Ramallah region, Iyad Hadad, said this week at the site of the killing: “It was a hunt. Those soldiers went on a hunting expedition. They killed Firas the way you hunt a deer or a stag. They couldn’t have had any other reason for shooting him.”

Jamil added: “What did the soldiers see in his hand? What did we do? Did they see a weapon in his hand? Was there a demonstration going on? Did we throw stones at anyone? They just shot us without batting an eyelash.”

In the village of Batir, Firas’ widow, Majida, in black mourning clothes, sits in her small, simple home. She is holding her infant daughter Sadil. At three months, Sadil’s father has been taken from her. The other two girls - Latifa, four, and Naama, two and a half - wander restlessly about their meager living room, blowing soap bubbles, until the whole room is filled with them.

Gideon Levy, Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Haaretz, December 24, 2007

Don’t let the quiet fool you: It is imaginary. While all eyes are on Gaza, the impression has been created, under the aegis of a media turning a blind eye, that the West Bank is quiet. That’s where the “good guys” are in charge, those with whom we went to Annapolis, those who will be getting the money from the donor nations, and life there is great, so it seems.

Well, that is not the case. The lives of the Palestinians in the West Bank are also intolerable, blood is being shed there too. For the Israel Defense Forces it is business as usual, with a frighteningly quick finger on the trigger. The spirit of Annapolis and the lofty words of the prime minister do not prevail there.

I have visited quite a few mourners’ homes in the West Bank in recent months. They were all mourning family members who had been killed for no reason. Every week, innocent people are killed in the West Bank, and nobody talks about them. Among the dozens of Palestinians killed recently, not all were Qassam launchers or gang leaders from Gaza. If a new uprising erupts in the West Bank one day, it will originate in these mourners’ homes.

The daily routine in the West Bank is also patently inhumane. The night I spent last summer in the Jenin refugee camp brought that home to me: The IDF enters the camp every night, and even when it does not kill, it strikes great terror in the hearts of thousands of families, who are the victims of anxiety. There are few Israelis who can imagine the daily routine of West Bank residents, during the day and even more so at night. And we have not said a word about the poverty, the roadblocks and the home demolitions.

The story of the recent killings in the West Bank is not on our agenda, because so far the Palestinians there have not responded with attacks in retaliation for these deaths. But it is not certain that this quiet will continue.

Adib Salim, paralyzed on his right side, sold lupini beans. When the IDF conducted one of its raids on Nablus he dared to stick his head out. The soldiers killed him. The IDF Spokesman claimed that he threatened to shoot at the soldiers, but the paralyzed bean seller was totally incapable of doing so.

Abdel Wazir, the 71-year-old cousin of the legendary Abu Jihad, was a retired accountant. He spent a terrifying night in his home: for hours the soldiers fired next to his window, while he sat with his wife on the sofa, both of them incapacitated by fear. When the order to go outside was heard, he left his house and was immediately shot dead….

All these people were killed by the IDF in recent weeks, for no reason. Add to them Mohammed Askar from Saida, who was shot at close range during riots at Ketziot Prison; Kamela Kabha of Bartaa, an elderly woman whose son tried to rush her to the hospital in Jenin and was delayed at the Reihan checkpoint for three hours, until she died in his arms, and other incidents of killing, and you will get the true picture of Israel’s “peace efforts.”

Gideon Levy, Twilight Zone / “This village will be erased” - Haaretz, December 16, 2007

The shattered marble panels of the Hashalom factory, some of which were designated for the kitchens of settlers, testify like a thousand witnesses to the events of the night of revenge. The weeping of Naama Masalha, who had to hide with her young children in the bathroom while the settlers smashed the windows of their house, also tells the story of that night of horror. In the small village of Al Funduq on the Qalqilyah-Nablus road, where Israelis, mainly settlers living in the area, still repair their cars and go shopping, they are now licking their wounds and assessing the damage.

…Now just fear, fury and frustration remain in peaceful Al Funduq, which paid the price for the killing of settler Ido Zoldan, 29, a resident of Shavei Shomron, who was shot on the road that passes through the village five nights earlier.

On that Saturday night, hundreds of settlers stormed Al Funduq under the protection of Israel Defense Forces soldiers - who, according to testimony, even assisted in the destruction - and rioted in the village that was under curfew. Two days later it was reported that Israeli security forces had caught the gang suspected of killing Zoldan: three members of the Palestinian National Security organization, from Kadum. Last week the settlers went there, too.

The group of young settlers recently took over an abandoned Palestinian house overlooking the road leading to Al Funduq, and painted it pink. But the sight on that road, which passes below the rogue outpost of Shvut Ami, is not at all rosy: It is strewn with stones that the settlers now throw at Palestinian cars that use it….

The atmosphere in the local council building is heated. The secretary, Jaber, says that about 400 settlers stormed the village on that black Saturday night. Zakariyah Asade, coordinator of field activities for the Rabbis for Human Rights organization, who lives in the neighboring village of Jit, says that the soldiers illuminated the area with their flashlights for the settlers, so that they could sow their destruction more easily. “They showed them where to break things,” says Asade….

The owner of the tractors, Shari, adds a warning: “There are no shaheeds [martyrs] in Al Funduq, but [after] what they’re doing now to the children, in another 10-15 years, when they grow up - you’ll be hearing what happens here.”…

When her brother Mohammed arrived at the house, it was surrounded by a large number of settlers, among them soldiers and policemen. In order to record the event, he activated the recording device on his cell phone, after realizing that he would not be able to photograph anything because of the blackout.Now he plays the recordings for us: “Erase this village - erase this house,” one can hear a woman screaming in Hebrew, in a hoarse voice. And then one hears the sound of blows. Mohammed says the intruders banged on the windows with their weapons, throwing stones at them, and that they also had sticks and iron poles in their hands. The soldiers and policemen stood by and watched. The woman continues to scream on the recording: “People of Funduq, pay attention: You will suffer, this village is erased. In blood and in fire, this village will be erased. Come out, come out of your homes.”

Gideon Levy, London’s burning for Dichter - Haaretz, December 9, 2007

Avi Dichter will not be going to London. The Israeli dream of taking in year-end sales, the new production of Othello or the sights of Oxford Street vanished before the public security minister’s very eyes. The Foreign Ministry advised Dichter not to participate in a conference there, because he could be arrested for involvement in the assassination of Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh, when he was Shin Bet security service head. The one-ton bomb used to target Shehadeh in 2002 left 15 people dead.

The day after the horrible assassination, in late July 2002, I visited the homes that were destroyed in the Al-Darj neighborhood in the Gaza Strip. The Israel Defense Forces tried at the time to claim they were “huts,” to explain why it was unaware that people lived there. But they were apartment buildings housing dozens of families. The person who dropped a one-ton bomb on them in the dark of night knew it would kill many innocent people.

Among the ruins, I met Mohammed Matar, a Palestinian laborer who had worked in Israel for 30 years, lying in the rubble of his home, his arm and eye bandaged. In the “targeted killing” planned by Dichter’s Shin Bet, Matar lost his daughter, his daughter-in-law and four toddler grandchildren. The pictures of the horror from the Gazan neighborhood have haunted me ever since. Someone, I thought, must pay for this. Could it be that no one is to blame or responsible for such an act?

Shehadeh’s assassination became a seminal event for Israel’s critics the world over. It was not different from many other liquidation operations the Shin Bet had planned for the IDF. In July 2006, for example, Israel assassinated nearly all of the Abu Salmiyeh family - Dr. Nabil Abu Salmiyeh, a lecturer in mathematics, his wife and seven of their children - because wanted man Mohammed Def was visiting their home at the time. In the past seven years, 368 Palestinians were killed in liquidation operations of which Dichter was the founding father.

Gideon Levy, Longing for Deri, Haaretz, December 2, 2007

In a tailored suit, his beard well groomed, and no longer bespectacled, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai shuttled from interview to interview: “Nothing will emerge from Annapolis.” This minister of nothing now constitutes the government’s right-wing benchmark, competing with Avigdor Lieberman over who is more extreme and who will be first to quit the government.

These two ministers represent ethnicity, and both paint their ethnic focus in strong nationalist colors. But while Lieberman represents a party that was founded on racism, Yishai received a relatively moderate party and took it to the extreme right. Seeing him makes one long for the party’s founder, Aryeh Deri. Deri’s Shas was not a left-wing party, but it expressed relatively moderate political positions and even refrained from undermining the first Oslo agreement (although it opposed Oslo II).

The new Shas, on the other hand, acts and talks as if it is seeking war, and is doing its utmost to undermine the prime minister’s efforts - which seem sincere - to end the conflict. This is not just a matter of ideological oscillation. The problem is that Yishai is leading a broad public - some of whom are moderate - to racism, extreme nationalism and hatred of Arabs. He has restored the old status quo to its glory: Mizrahim, versus the Arabs and peace. His views, therefore, are disastrous.

Completely lacking the charisma and personal charm of his predecessor, Yishai has benighted views: He recently spoke about “medication” for homosexuality. He has said he finds the sale of pork, civil marriages and workshops for Jewish and Arab teenagers equally disgusting, which brings him in line with his uncivil spiritual mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Gush Shalom - Israeli Peace Bloc, November 27, 2007

Following is the transcript of the discussion at the Gush Shalom Forum, on the subject “Is Annapolis Relevant?” held on Nov. 21 Evening at The Kibbutz Movement House, Tel Aviv, with the participation of Gideon Levy, Moria Shlomot, Uri Avnery, Gadi Elgazi and Netta Golan and with the moderation of Teddy Katz

Teddy Katz (Moderator, Gush Shalom): Thanks to all the people who came on such a rainy night. Before I let the speakers take the floor, I would like to put some brief questions which the speakers might refer to.

Is Annapolis purely a George Bush event, which everybody else comes merely to provide a background, in face of Bush’s present and future fiascos in Iraq and Iran?

There is no talking about the core issues, nor a timetable for the next stages after the conference, and it is not sure who would come and for what purpose, other than to be photographed. Is the aim of getting photographed worthy of making of so much fuss?

There is so much disastrous between the Israeli and Palestinian bridegrooms and brides, that even small differences would loom large. And if the worst happens and there will be no agreement achieved, what then? We already have bitter experiences of earlier occasions.

Levy, Demands of a thief, Haaretz, November 25, 2007

Israel is not being asked “to give” anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue, the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore.

No one is talking about morality anymore. Justice is also an archaic concept, a taboo that has deliberately been erased from all negotiations. Two and a half million people - farmers, merchants, lawyers, drivers, daydreaming teenage girls, love-smitten men, old people, women, children and combatants using violent means for a just cause - have all been living under a brutal boot for 40 years. Meanwhile, in our cafes and living rooms the conversation is over giving or not giving.

Israeli students stand at checkpoints as part of their army reserve duty, brutally deciding the fate of people, and then some rush off to lectures on ethics at university, forgetting what they did the previous day and what is being done in their names every single day.

The incarceration must be ended and the myriad of political prisoners should be released unconditionally. Just as a thief cannot present demands - neither preconditions nor any other terms - to the owner of the property he has robbed, Israel cannot present demands to the other side as long as the situation remains as it is.

…we have no right to do what we are doing: Just as no one would conceive of killing the residents of an entire neighborhood, to harass and incarcerate it because of a few criminals living there, there is no justification for abusing an entire people in the name of our security.

After 40 years, one might have expected that the real core issue would finally be raised for honest and bold discussion: Does Israel have the moral right to continue the occupation?

Gideon Levy, The tahini trail, Haaretz, November 23, 2007

It started at my supermarket in Ramat Aviv. Suddenly huge wooden pallets piled with raw tahini (known in Hebrew as tahina) appeared in the store. The packaging was old-fashioned, the labels tattered, the graphic design uninspired, the Hebrew riddled with errors. But the taste was marvelous. The telephone number listed on the underside of the plastic jar piqued my curiosity. The dove of peace is not dead, nor even bleeding. More and more jars with doves on them have appeared on the shelves of the supermarket. There is Dove Symbol tahini from Nablus, Peace Dove tahini from Mishor Adumim (a Jewish industrial area in the West Bank), and the tahini I discovered, which the supermarket poster calls Dove Tahini, also from Nablus.

But this week we discovered that the dove-like bird on the blue label is not a dove at all, but a karawan, or sand partridge. Karawan Tahini is my house recommendation; I always take some to my good friend Imad Saba, who is in exile in Holland. This item, probably just about the last Palestinian product sold in Israel - and made in the West Bank’s most confined city - has become a hit. It’s the New Middle East, and we are hot on its trail….

There is no sign at the entrance to the plant: We followed the pungent smells. There are two floors - a basement and a ground floor - each 600 square meters in area, with seven employees, 13 at the height of the season, with steam boilers and millstones. Welcome to Karawan Tahini. This is a fourth-generation sesame enterprise, in a Dickensian setting: a few workers in ragged dress are stirring, mixing, pouring and packaging amid swirling steam saturated with the aroma of tahini. Workers in the plant make an average of NIS 50 a day. Politicians and purveyors of the occupation need not apply….Thanks or not, the tahini has to pass through at least two checkpoints on its way to Israel: one that dominates Nablus, the other being the Taibeh checkpoint next to Tul Karm, at the entrance to Israel. You will not hear a word of criticism or complaint from the Tamams. Their tahini passes through the checkpoints quickly and has never been held up for more than a few hours.

What do you mean when you say ‘no’? - Haaretz, November 18, 2007

Of all Israel’s iniquities in the occupied territories - the brutality, the assassinations, the siege, the hunger, the blackouts, the checkpoints and the mass arrests - nothing serves as witness to its real intentions than the settlements. Certainly for the future. Every home built in the territories, every light pole and every road are like a thousand witnesses: Israel does not want peace; Israel wants occupation. Whoever is serious about peace and a Palestinian state does not put up even a shed.

From Oslo through Camp David and on to the road map, Israel has not put an end to the most criminal enterprise in its history. A short memory refresher: In article 7 of the Oslo Accords, Israel promised that “no party would undertake unilateral steps to alter the situation on the ground, prior to the completion of negotiations for the final status.” That really made an impression on Israel. During the 10 years that followed, the number of settlers doubled. What about the heroic peace efforts of Ehud Barak as prime minister? During the 18 months of his government, Israel began the construction of 6,045 residential units in the territories.

And why did Israel sign up to the road map two years later? “The government of Israel will freeze all its settlement activities, in accordance with the Mitchell report, except for natural growth in the settlements.” And what happened in practice? Accusations that the Palestinians are not implementing the agreements, and a boatload of new settlers. This was also the case in 2005, another major “year of peace”: the disengagement. And what did Israel do in its own backyard? Another 12,000 new settlers.

This terrible enterprise, whose purpose is to foil any chance for peace, is also a criminal enterprise. According to Peace Now, based on Civil Administration data that have been kept hidden for years, about 40 percent of the settlements were built on privately owned land of Palestinians helpless to safeguard what is in most cases their sole property that was robbed in broad daylight by an occupying state. This took place years after the Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that it is illegal to build on private Palestinian land. Indeed, while Israel is debating whether it is a state of laws, whether the prime minister was given a discount for the house on Cremieux Street, and whether we want a powerful Supreme Court, we should remember that what is happening in the territories is the real corruption that engulfs us.

Now we are on the eve of another peace event, yet during the past year another 3,525 new residential units were built in the territories, under the auspices of a government that talks incessantly about the end of occupation and two states. All the grandiloquent statements are void of substance when we read the data: Construction is at a peak in 88 settlements.

Twilight Zone / ‘We saw death a thousand times’ - Haaretz, November 15, 2007

Think of your elderly parents. Imagine them sitting on the sofa, cringing with fear, for a whole night, in their tiny apartment, unprotected. Outside a fierce firefight is raging. The night is a cacophony of gunfire and explosions. Dozens of soldiers are moving through the adjacent alley. Then an order is given to come out. Think of your father opening the door, frightened and helpless, in his pajamas, then calling to his wife to go back inside and bring their ID cards. One glance into the courtyard - and he is hit instantly. Five bullets in the stomach and legs, fired by three soldiers sitting on the steps of the house across the way. He falls, writhing in his blood, as his wife looks on, horrified.

Think of your aged mother, trying with all her strength to pull her husband inside and the soldiers prohibiting his evacuation for long, fateful minutes, until the ambulance arrives. Imagine her pangs of terror, impotence, rage and frustration. “Now I am sorry that I did not pick up a big stone and throw it at the soldiers,” says the widow, Subhiya al-Wazir, whose husband, Abed al-Wazir was killed at the threshold of their home in the Ras al-Ayyin neighborhood in the western part of Nablus.

Al-Wazir was a retired accountant who had worked for the Nablus Municipality. He was also the cousin of Khalil al-Wazir, a.k.a. Abu Jihad, the legendary deputy of Yasser Arafat, who was assassinated by Israel on April 16, 1988, in his seaside home in Tunis. A few days ago, his widow, Umm Jihad, a former Palestinian welfare minister, paid a condolence visit in the small home in Nablus. The manner of Abed’s death made him one of the oldest of the shaheeds (martyrs for the cause), but his widow’s nights of horror have not ended. The Israel Defense Forces continues to enter the neighborhood almost every night, plunging fear into the hearts of Subhiya and her neighbors.

Levy, Good news from Gaza, Haaretz, November 11, 2007

We have always acted this way. Without violent Palestinian resistance, life in occupying Israel is great and no one pays any attention to the need to end the occupation. No resistance - no Palestinians. No terrorism - no progress. If not for the Qassams, no one would give any thought to life in Gaza after the disengagement. Ours is a country that has been ready to make concessions only after blood is spilled. Since the interim accords following the Yom Kippur War and through the withdrawal from Lebanon and the disengagement, Israel has needed a relatively strong enemy to get its act together. If not for Hezbollah, we would still be in Lebanon; if not for Hamas, we would still be in Gaza.

Now the time has come for the next chapter: Did we think leaving Gaza and imprisoning it was enough for life in Israel to be hunky-dory? Hamas comes along and reminds us that this does not suffice. The West Bank is quiet in the meantime? Until an organized and strong resistance movement is revived there, we will not consider evacuating even one little outpost. We will conduct talks every two weeks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, we will go to Annapolis, but we will not discuss, heaven forbid, the “core” issues there. And our terrific lives will continue, while in the West Bank the masses will crowd together at the checkpoints for hours, be subject to humiliation and risk their lives every time they go outside.

Gideon Levy, ANALYSIS: Rabin memorial offers pop stars and empty cliches - Haaretz, November 4, 2007

Banot Nechama, this year’s pop music discovery, was not there last year, but this year the group joined Aharon Barnea, Shimon Peres, Aviv Gefen, Achinoam Nini (”Noa”) and Sarit Haddad, these memorial rallies’ house bands. Last year the writer David Grossman, then a newly bereaved father, was at the podium, crying out against our hollow leaderships, and hearts were briefly stirred. Last year not a single speaker - neither the authors nor the the intellectuals - had anything meaningful to say at the hollow memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin, which resembled a late-summer Caesarea reunion of the legendary Israeli group Kaveret more than anything else.

The audience was, as always, the same: self-described Ashkenazi, secular, leftist and peace-loving. How good and pleasant it is to stand in the square once a year and feel a part of this warm family, with these excellent Hebrew songs in the background, with the last-minute decision to have the newly bereaved Hagashash Hahiver member Shaike Levy singing “Shir Hare’ut.”

For a moment last night, everyone awoke from a year-long coma: Peace Now, the Labor Party, Meretz, Hashomer Hatzair and the Noar Ha’oved youth movement with their blue shirts. Journalist Aharon Barnea once again put on the angry-prophet suit he wears once a year in early November: “We shall not forget and we shall not forgive,” he thundered, uttering the slogan that was once the province of Holocaust memorial assemblies.

The cliches washed over the square, the “hope,” the “legacy,” the “victory,” the “peace” - no one knows what they really mean.

Levy, The importance of a failed summit - Haaretz, October 29, 2007

Israel is going to Annapolis as if by force. The prime minister’s hands are tied. If he were to dare to raise the core issues, which are the only thing to be discussed there, then his political fate would be sealed. Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu have already announced that in such an event, they will bring down his government. One can assume that Ehud Olmert, the survivor, is aware of this danger. Despite the lofty agreements that he will achieve - or not, it will seem as if his biweekly talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas never took place. Eli Yishai won’t permit it, Avigdor Lieberman is making threats and even Ehud Barak is making sour faces. An Israel that refuses to discuss the core issues is an Israel that does not want peace. There’s no other way to put it.

All this is made even more serious by the context in which the summit is being held: Israel never had as few excuses for evading progress toward peace, the ambient climate was never more conducive to progress. The terror card cannot be played again, because the terror has abated. Qassams landing on Sderot and a childish assassination attempt are not a reason to evade the peace process. This low level of terror will, unfortunately, continue to accompany Israeli-Palestinian relations for years to come. We must learn to live with it, and above all recognize that it will not stop in the absence of an agreement that will put an end to the occupation.

There is more. The security issue is much greater today on the Palestinian side. Israel can no longer continue to mouth slogans about security, after seven years in which it killed 4,267 Palestinians, 861 of them children and teens, in comparison to 467 Israelis who were killed, according to data from B’Tselem.

Another excuse that no longer washes is the “no partner” one. Israel has never had an easier peace partner than Mahmoud Abbas. True, he represents barely half the Palestinian people - Olmert represents an even smaller proportion - and true, it would be preferable if the Palestinian team going to Annapolis were to include Hamas, but that is no reason not to try. We destroyed Yasser Arafat as a partner - and the time has come to regret it - but we can no longer use the weakness of his successor as an excuse: Israel did all it could to create that situation. The Arab world, too, is more open to Israel and to peace than ever. Israel is methodically destroying the Arab League’s resolution and the Saudi peace plan, but they are still on the table and sending out an unprecedented message of hope to Israel.

Levy, ‘Everything fell apart’ - Haaretz, October 25, 2007

Shifa, the only medical institution in the Gaza Strip that can somehow be called a hospital, was quiet last week. A deathly silence also pervaded the construction site of what is supposed to be the new surgical wing: There are no construction materials to be had anywhere in Gaza, because of the embargo imposed on it by Israel, and work at the hospital has been frozen for several months, too. The wooden scaffolding stands abandoned. There is no shortage of medicines at the hospital, and fuel for the generators that ensure the electricity supply is provided by a donation from the European Union. The holes in the building’s walls were made by gun battles between Hamas and Fatah, which took place here as well. The elevators are not working, which is not unusual.

In the surgical ward, high up on the fourth floor, lies Assad Mahmoud. Upon entering his room, a visitor is perplexed at first: What is this lying here in the bed? It takes a few seconds for the eye to adjust to the unbearable sight. A boy. Half a boy. What’s left of his upper body is exposed, a bandage covers his stomach, to which a drainage bag is attached; bandages cover his three stumps, a blue sheet covers what’s left of his body. His expression is blank, staring, dead. His father Jabar tenderly clutches the remaining wounded hand, his eyes bleary with grief and lack of sleep. For the last three weeks, 40-year-old Jabar has not left his son’s bedside except for occasional trips home to change clothes. He sleeps on the hospital floor at night. The boy’s right leg is amputated above the knee, the left leg below the knee and his entire left arm, up to the shoulder, is gone. A tank shell left its mark on Assad.

Mohammed al-Dura lives on - Haaretz, October 7, 2007

The concern Israel demonstrates for the fate of one Palestinian boy touches the heart: Again, note what a fuss is being made about the case of the killing of Mohammed al-Dura. Our heart is impervious to the fate of other children who have been killed. Just little Mohammed continues to haunt us. But the question of who killed al-Dura is not important. And maybe he is even alive, as some eccentrics claim. Perhaps he committed suicide, as the strange investigations are liable to suggest.

All of these are tasteless questions designed to divert attention from the truly important issues: According to data collected by human rights group B’Tselem, Israel is responsible for killing more than 850 Palestinian children and teenagers since al-Dura was killed, including 92 in the past year alone. Last October, we killed 31 children in Gaza.