Israeli Defence Force shoots and kills a 3-year-old

Jun 9, 2023
Flags of Palestine and Israel.

Most people can focus to see if they’re looking at a bird, a car or a person. Throw in a military scope and the sharp eyes of youth and ask yourself if you would spot the difference before you pulled the trigger.

So why does the IDF constantly claim they mistakenly shoot civilians? They’re either well trained, or they’re not. Take that as you will. This time they killed a 3-year-old boy in Palestine. In a car. With his father. Also shot. The father and son were minding their own business on their way to meet relatives. The boy was shot in the head, the father in the shoulder. How blinded by hatred do you have to be not to see that it’s a child? The IDF said it, “regrets harm to non-combatants and is committed to doing everything in its power to prevent such incidents”. 34 children were killed last year and 21 children so far this year.

These deaths, largely, occur at the hands of the IDF and illegal Jewish civilian settlers in Palestinian Territory. Where else in the world are children shot dead on suburban streets with little protestation or outrage from the international community? Where else are soldiers allowed to get away with shooting and killing a 3-year-old, are unaccountable and have their government behind them? I think the previous quote from the IDF should be re-worded to tell the truth. The IDF and Israeli government ‘is committed to doing everything in its power to rid the Palestinians from the Occupied Territories so they can take it all for themselves and be done with it’.

Israel never tires of referring to their army as ‘the most moral army in the world’. I don’t think the Palestinian mother, who had her three young children killed by Israeli rocket fire that landed on her house some years back in Gaza, would say the same. Her three children were decapitated. The parents saw it all. If this had happened in Sydney, London or Paris it would have made headlines and outrage with a glut of articles, accountability talks and criminal rumblings.

Two young women, 15 and 20 along with their mother, were killed in an attack in the West Bank in April this year. They were from a British-Israeli family who had moved into the Occupied Territories some years before. Their deaths made world headlines with lamenting, tears and agony for the family who had lost their loved ones. Recriminations were swiftly voiced by Netanyahu and punishments loomed for the Palestinian perpetrators.

Who’s going to do that for the mother who lost her 3-year-old who was shot dead by an Israeli? There seems to be a spectrum upon which grief and injustice is gauged. The deserving and the damned. Jewish people in the Palestinian Territories are on the deserving side of the spectrum whilst Palestinians in their own land have been shunted down to the damned. The wider international community doesn’t much register their loss and pain. I was once asked “What’s Palestine”. Not, where or who, but “What?’.

There are many videos and reports from ex-IDF soldiers who recount stories of acceptable violence towards Palestinians. They left the IDF because they couldn’t stand the gross violations of law and order and they couldn’t bring themselves to shoot, imprison or injure any more Palestinians – particularly children. Of course, they are labelled as self-hating Jews. Very convenient when one wants to gloss over institutionalised hatred and violent procedures.

Some days I think I may have been too vociferous or perhaps feel that I’ve covered enough aspects of what the Israeli’s are doing to the Palestinians. Then comes another report such as this heinous act that pulls me back to the keyboard to tap out the outrage that we should all be hearing from the international community; particularly the UK and US who facilitated, aided and abetted in the destruction of Palestine and the formation of a new state upon an old state as they allow settler-colonialism to continue in 2023. Yet those two countries are so quiet. Watch Al Jazeera’s Israel’s Automated Occupation on YouTube and ask yourself if the world should sit on their hands as more children are killed by “accident”, or if South Africa rings a bell.

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