By Jafar M Ramini
Three days into the New Year. Three murders in Palestine.
Don’t let us allow these martyrs to become just the opening numbers in the Israeli score of dead Palestinians, 2023.
Three young men, filled with hope and with anger had families, loved ones. They had dreams and ambitions, so let us name them, respect them and mourn their short lives.
Muhammad Samer Hoshieh, 21 years old from Alyamoun, near Jenin.
Fuad Mahmoud Ahmed Abed, 17 years old from Kafr Dan, also near Jenin.
15 year old Adam Ayyad, from the camp near Bethlehem, who was killed yesterday
Omar seemed to know what was coming. He left a note, saying he was proud to be a Palestinian and would be proud to die for the cause. Is this all the young can expect in Palestine? Dreams others may have are denied to young Palestinians. Cut short by a member of the Israeli occupation forces who was despatched by his superiors to do just that. Kill and Kill and Kill again.
This has been the norm in Palestine for the last 56 years, since Israel occupied the entire land mass of Palestine from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. The heavily armed Israeli forces march in, kill, destroy and then march out. And the world is witnessing and the world is silent.
Has the world become so numbed and cowed that our lives have become worthless? It would seem so. Every morning, every news bulletin, every hour of the day, Russia is condemned for the killing and destruction of Ukraine. Yet, you hear almost nothing about Palestinian losses.
Here I will allow Gideon Levy, the renowned Israeli columnist for the Israel daily newspaper Haaretz , to say it for me.
“Maybe the West will have to accept that there is no legal or moral difference between the occupation in Ukraine and the occupation in Palestine – Gideon Levy, Middle East Eye.” 16 December 2022.
Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst.
4 January 2023
Source: countercurrents.org