***

A heartbreaking parting shot of Ahmad Jazar, taken the day before he was killed. His mother’s hand is on his shoulder, as if she is about to hug him; they both smile slightly as they look straight into the camera. The photo was taken by Ahmad’s older sister, Mira, an interior design student of 19, in Nablus, when Ahmad was visiting his mother. Ahmad had asked his sister to take their picture. No one imagined that it would be his last.

The next day, January 19, Ahmad was shot by an Israel Defense Forces soldier from a distance of a few dozen meters, in his hometown of Sebastia, in the northern West Bank. At the time, he was standing near the entrance to a kindergarten run by the international Save the Children organization. Images of cheerful children, naïve and colorful, adorn the stone fence around the building. Next to it Ahmad, a 15-year-old boy from a poor family, collapsed to the ground, bleeding, and died.

  • GrymEdm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    They killed him because he was Palestinian, and Zionists hate Palestinians. It’s like asking why the KKK would harass minorities. The modern state of Israel was literally founded with hatred for Palestinians as a core value and that has not changed in the decades since. The closest anyone ever got to peace with Palestine was Yitzhak Rabin in the mid-90’s and he was assassinated by another Israeli for daring to take a step towards co-existence.

    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      +972 magazine - The myth of Rabin the peacemaker

      These nuances, however, do not compensate for the fundamental problem with the way Rabin is revered in Israel and abroad. His persona as a “warrior-turned-peacemaker” is almost exclusively centered on the final four years of his life, five decades of which were defined by hawkish and militaristic views (Shimon Peres, Rabin’s rival-turned-ally, eventually received the same idolizing treatment). This cult of personality, dotingly crafted by the Zionist left in Israel and liberal Zionists in the United States, has particularly relied on a counterfactual argument: that had he not been killed, Rabin might have helped to bring about a two-state solution.

      Ironically, the first person to dispute that narrative may have been Rabin himself. The words “Palestinian state” do not appear in the accords he signed, a fact that he and other Israeli officials were careful to ensure. A month before his assassination, Rabin told the Knesset that his vision was to give Palestinians “an entity which is less than a state” — a precedent to the “state-minus” advocated today by Netanyahu and outlined in Trump’s “Deal of the Century.” Rabin also insisted that the Jordan Valley would remain Israel’s “security border” — the very plan that drew international outcry this year, when Netanyahu pledged to formally annex the area.

      • GrymEdm@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Absolutely. Again, Israel has never broken step with systemic oppression of Palestinians. I’m not a Rabin fan, but those years are still the closest instance I know of anyone considering peace. Even the stance you quote with all it’s flaws and prejudices was enough to get him killed.

        • geneva_convenience@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          Rabin was not considering peace though. He was considering how to string Palestinians along with a bad deal and keep the Apartheid in place. Rabin was selling the liberal-Zionist illusion of a peace process.

          Netanyahu on the other hand tries to do the same thing but destroys Israels reputation in the process.

          With someone like Rabin, Palestinians would be living under the same conditions but Saudi etc would have normalized with Israel.

          Rabin knew that he could not do what Netanyahu is doing or he would destroy the Apartheids state.