The Jewish monopoly on tragedy di Zvi Bar'el
t’s a tragedy. This is a person with disabilities, autism, who was suspected − as we now know, wrongly − of being a terrorist in a very sensitive place. We all share in the grief of the family. This encompasses the entire Israeli public and the entire Israeli government too.”
The speaker is the prime minister and the tragedy in question is the killing of Eyad Hallaq, who ran from Border Police officers in fear and posed no danger to them.
What a jaw-dropping statement. Benjamin Netanyahu defining the killing of a Palestinian as a tragedy. Who knows, tomorrow he might even offer compensation. This is how the slide down the slippery slope begins. The prime minister could have just stuck to an aloof and formal position, like Public Security Minister Amir Ohana, who said, “The incident is being reviewed as required by law, and we will take action in accordance with the findings in order to prevent similar occurrences. Until the review is completed, we won’t pass judgment on the officers.” Or he could have pulled out of the freezer the chilly formulation chosen by Benny Gantz: “We deeply regret the incident. I am confident the matter will be investigated quickly and lessons will be drawn from it.” Just the sort of laconic statement one might expect from someone who falsely claimed he was responsible for the killing of 1,364 terrorists in the 2014 Gaza war – some tragedy.
According to the Israel Defense Forces’ breakdown of those killed in that war, in a report published in 2015, 761, or 36 percent, were civilians. According to a B’tselem report, from 2009-2020, 3,524 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli security forces, including 797 minors and 342 women. The killing of any civilian or child is worthy of the title “tragedy,” but of course none of their families received any condolence message, and certainly not any grand expression of condolences by the Israeli government. Why was Hallaq’s family the one to receive the maximum bit of compassion and sorrow that Netanyahu could squeeze from himself?
The answer lies in the three cumulative principles that Netanyahu has defined as criteria that justify an expression of condolences: It’s not enough for a Palestinian to be wrongly suspected of intending to commit a terror attack. He must also be autistic and disabled. These are very strict conditions that only a few Palestinians meet.
Mohammed Habali, who was shot in the back and killed in December 2018 in the Tul Karm refugee camp, did not meet the required conditions. He was wrongly suspected of participating in disturbances and was mentally impaired, but apparently did not also prove that he was autistic, and therefore did not qualify for an expression of regret or an apology. According to these criteria, the Abu al-Kiyan family, whose son Yakub was killed by a policeman in January 2017 during the evacuation of the Bedouin settlement of Umm al-Hiran, is also ineligible for condolences. An internal police investigation and review by the Shin Bet security agency did clear him of any suspicion of intent to carry out an attack, but unfortunately he was neither disabled nor autistic.
A particularly interesting case is that of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, the terrorist from Hebron who lay on the ground wounded when he was shot and killed by soldier Elor Azaria. For a moment it seemed like that tough criteria had cracked and the consensus was about to implode. In March 2016, Netanyahu explained that “what happened in Hebron does not represent the IDF’s values. The IDF expects its soldiers to conduct themselves in a coolheaded manner and in accordance with the rules of engagement.”
But this was a false alarm. In January 2017, he clarified that “the IDF is a moral army that does not execute anyone. This is a hard and painful day for all of us – first and foremost for Elor and his family… I support the granting of a pardon to Elor Azaria.” The “hard day” was the day the military court convicted Azaria.
Netanyahu exaggerated when he said the sorrow over Hallaq’s killing encompasses the entire government and the entire public. Some of the posts in online comments sections tell a different story, as do the reactions of the government ministers, most of whom were struck mute. Tragedies are a Jewish monopoly. Palestinians just die.
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