Ali Dawabsha
July 31, 2015
This morning Ali Dawabsha, a 18 month old baby was burned to death by an extremist Israeli Jewish group called “Tag Mehir”, price tag. Ali Dawabsha was murdered and his family was very severely injured during the attack on their house in the village Duma in the occupied Palestinian territories.
This is one of many attacks of extremist Israelis on Palestinian citizens that for years have been ignored by the Israeli authorities. According to a recent report by Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, soldiers often do nothing to prevent violence by Israeli citizens against Palestinians and their property, and investigations by the police are negligent at best. According to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, in the previous three years alone, there were 10 noted incidents of arson attack on Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories, none of which ended in charges against perpetrators. There is a clear pattern of turning a blind eye that in fact gives legitimation to these horrendous crimes.
The overall picture that is created does not allow us to take Ali’s murder as a single extreme incident. There cannot be any other conclusion but that Palestinian lives are expendable to Israeli terror organizations and authorities alike. The hand is light on the trigger. This is true not only for Israeli terrorists but also for the occupying forces: since the beginnings of this year alone 16 Palestinian were killed by the Israeli army, three just in the last week. These cases are not even reported as crimes, but as routine military work, and so the statistics are even worse than they seem.
In the occupied territories, there is no law and no order. Horrendous incidents such as today’s murder should be seen as part of a horrendous reality, not as an exception. As we commemorate one year to the murder by fire of the boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir in East Jerusalem, we call upon the international community to react: pressure to find the perpetrators is not nearly enough. The regime of occupation, which allows for this reality, needs to end.