Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote an article on August 29th titled “If there’s such a thing as a murderous culture, then it exists in Israel” in response to Haaretz culture & literature editor Benny Ziffer who wrote a vile FB post after returning from a visit to an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank. As an Israeli Jew, Ziffer probably cruised through the ubiquitous military check points & turned a blind eye to the thousands of home & village demolitions by Israeli bulldozers & soldiers to make room for Israeli settlers from all over the world. Ziffer wrote:
“En route I looked at the Palestinian villages alongside the Jewish communities, & I thought of how for the Palestinians murder is a type of sport or enjoyment, perhaps a substitute for erotica. From that perspective we will never have anything culturally in common with them.”
Statistics, however, speak louder than Ziffer’s unspeakably racist, supremacist, & putrid hate. Between March 2018 & March 2019, 30,398 Palestinians were injured by Israeli snipers, including 3,175 children & 1,008 women. Eighty-seven percent of those injuries were to the limbs, intended to permanently disable protesters. 267 Palestinians were killed, including fifty children, six women, one elderly person, journalists & paramedics. That does not include those Palestinians shot & injured or killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. This is properly called genocide & to suggest that Palestinians engaged in resistance to it are doing it for sport or sexual arousal is about as grotesque as racism gets.
Photo is an injured Palestinian being rescued by other protesters at the Great Return March on September 13th, 2019. Fifty-five unarmed Palestinian protesters were injured by Israeli snipers at the march on that day.
(Photo via Younes Arar)