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| Image Source: Screen shot |
Thanks to Aussie Dave over at Israellycool, we just watched a brief video clip that, on its face, is about Israeli police confiscating Palestinian Arab property. It originates with Corey Gil-Shuster, who interviews subjects for his Ask an Israeli/Ask a Palestinian video project and who came across the Hebrew-only source on an Israeli channel for animal lovers.
In dry terms, it’s a clip filmed recently by an Israeli police officer and graphically shows the mistreatment of a neglected and very badly-lacerated donkey.
Dave quotes Corey noting the significance of what’s being shown, beyond the cruelty and the animal, and touching on truths that are central to the generations-long Arab/Israel conflict. Paraphrasing Corey,
- An Arab child of 11 from the West Bank, despatched into Israel on his own to work illegally, almost certainly by his hard-scrabble family. He could have been hurt or killed. And it’s certainly illegal to do this to a child of his age.
- Indications, based on what we see the child do once the police move, that he gets beaten at home and will likely be beaten some more for losing the donkey to the Zionists.
- And “this video will end up being edited to show that Israelis steal donkeys from Palestinian children“.
Dave adds that “it shows the compassion of the Israeli police officers towards this illegal entrant into Israel, even though he has abused a donkey and is not cooperating with them“. He’s of course right. He could have also mentioned their admirable patience and forbearance.
But there’s also this aspect:
Deeply cynical, and very often life-threatening, abuse of Palestinian Arab children is not only a well-documented reality. It’s also one of these perplexing sides of the conflict that causes human rights bodies (the sort we would otherwise expect to scream to the heavens in protest) to remain silent.
Palestinian Arab children, whether they are having their heads filled with life-changing hatred and bigotry by an education system run by UNRWA, or whether being incited by their despotic president to go out into the fields and onto the streets and (literally) kill Jews and die for the “purity” of their “homeland” – in other words, when they are being weaponized – are egregiously ignored by the likes UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development and others in the thriving multi-billion dollar children’s rights industry.
There’s something about advocacy for the Palestinian Arabs that makes smart people stupid and empathetic people cruel.
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