Kill a Palestinian “every hour,” says new Israeli Facebook page
Submitted by Patrick
Strickland on Mon, 06/16/2014 - 12:39
coverpage_of_fb_
The Facebook page’s main profile picture and background
image show Palestinians as targets through the
crosshairs of a gun.
The page was launched as the Israeli army continued violent raids, curfews and closures across the occupied West Bank and shot dead Ahmad Sabarin, a Palestinian youth.
According to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency:
The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported on its website that within hours of its creation, a Facebook page calling for the hourly assassination of Palestinian “terrorists” had reached 10,000 likes.The three missing settlers are Naftali Frankel, Eyal Yifrah (both 16) and Gilad Shaer (19), who reportedly went missing while hitchhiking between Jewish-only settlements in the Hebron area of the southern occupied West Bank late Thursday evening. Since that time, Israeli political figures, including Netanyahu, have rushed to blame both the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas, who recently signed a reconciliation agreement to end a seven-year division.
The Facebook page called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “take responsibility instead of holding [Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud] Abbas responsible” for the allged kidnapping of three Israeli teens, Maariv reported.
Israeli officials claim that Palestinian political organization Hamas kidnapped the missing boys, but a Hamas spokesperson denied involvement and dismissed the accusation as “stupid.” Israel has yet to produce evidence supporting its claims, though it has arrested dozens of Hamas officials and activists including the speaker and several elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council in ongoing raids across the West Bank.
Dozens of photos and comments by both the page administrator and commenters offer a glimpse into the radical and violent anti-Palestinian climate in Israel. The dehumanization of Palestinians, including children, is common among Israelis on social media, especially Facebook users in Israel.
Resonating with reality
One of the photographs posted by the adminsitrator reads, “Return to Jewish war ethics: kill or be killed.” At the bottom, the photo adds: “Kill a terrorist every hour.”killeveryhour_1.png
Top: “Return to Jewish war ethics: kill or be killed.”
Bottom: “Kill a terrorist every hour.”
One commenter, Hariel Ben Michael, called for Israel to destroy entire Palestinian communities “every hour” until the missing boys “are released.”
His comments resonate with reality. Since its destruction of more than five hundred Palestinian villages and towns during the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israel has continued to demolish Palestinian homes and raze entire communities, particularly in places like the Jordan Valley region of the West Bank.
raze_villages.jpg
In Hebrew: “A friend suggested this idea: each hour
that passes and the boys (may god protect them) are not
released, we destroy a neighborhood in Hebron, and after
we’re done with Hebron, we move to Ramallah then to
Gaza, etc.”
“Get cancer”
An English-language commenter, Jordan Lerer, says he hopes Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip “get cancer” and “die with agony.” The picture he comments on shows many Palestinians between crosshairs of a gun and says, “kidnapped? kidnap!” — ostensibly calling for the kidnapping of Palestinians.englishcommeter1.png
An English-language commenter hopes Palestinians in
Gaza “get cancer” at a time when the Israeli military
bombards the besieged coastal strip.
Israel’s military has already bombed several areas in the Gaza Strip since the three boys went missing.
Crackdown
On Saturday evening, seven-year-old Ali al-Awour died as a result of injuries sustained by an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday night. According to statistics from Defence for Children International - Palestine Section (DCI-Palestine), 1,405 Palestinian children have been killed by Israel since 2000.ash_00_19-2.jpg
Relatives carry the body of Ali al-Awour during his
funeral in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, 14 June
2014. (Ashraf Amra / APA images)
In the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Israeli military last night reportedly injured two children and their father when soldiers “bombed open the door of [their] house,” according to Ma’an News Agency. That raid came only a day after Israel “detained eighty Palestinians across the West Bank,” as noted by another Ma’an article.
Israel’s crackdown has focused on the southern part of the West Bank, mostly in and around Hebron. As of Sunday, Hebron residents were banned from leaving the West Bank, Maan reported.
iss_00_2-2.jpg
A Palestinian kisses the face of Ahmad Sabarin, 20, who
medics said was killed by the Israeli army in a raid on
al-Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah, 16 June 2014. (Issam Rimawi / APA images)
Michael Ben Ari, a former member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, also called for the assassination of Palestinians while speaking to Hebrew-language media. Israel ought to “kill terrorists in public hangings,” Ben Ari said.
“Sit in the dark”
Another alarming Facebook page, created yesterday, is named “If our boys are sitting in the dark, Palestinians will also sit in the dark.”With more than three thousand members, the page calls for Israel to cut off all electricity to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Due to Israel’s suffocating restrictions, both regions are dependent on Israel for electricity.
removing_gloves.png
This photograph calls for Israel to cut off electricity
and water to Palestinians and to further limit their
ability to move freely.
A petition was also launched on Sunday demanding that Israel cut off Palestinians’ access to electricity. As of Monday morning, it had already received more than one thousand signatures.
Due to Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza, approximately 1.7 million residents of the coastal enclave have suffered deteriorating conditions over the last few years as a result of the lack of gas and electricity.
Dehumanization
This is not the first time Israelis have used social media to call for violence against Palestinians, including children. As Israel’s political establishment grows even more rightwing, much of the general population has embraced the increasingly anti-Palestinian climate.As Rania Khalek recently reported for The Electronic Intifada, a Facebook page supporting an Israeli soldier who was filmed pointing his gun at a Palestinian child’s face received more than 129,000 likes.
In February 2013, Ali Abunimah exposed an Israeli soldier’s violent pictures on the photo-sharing website Instragram. One of his pictures showed a Palestinian child as a target between the crosshairs of a rifle.
Since then, The Electronic Intifada has time and again brought to light the dehumanization of Palestinians and pervasive racism displayed by Israelis on social media outlets.
To read more about this, see The Electronic Intifada’s past coverage:
- Israel soldiers have depraved ‘fun’ making “Rachel Corrie pancakes”
- “Reprimanded” Israeli soldier still posting violent, racist material on Instagram
- Stoned, naked, armed and dangerous: more disturbing images from an Israeli soldier’s Instagram
- “Castrate them!” “Burn them!” “Bullet in the head!”: Facebook Israelis react to photo of Palestinian kids
- “Oops… one less Arab”: even more disturbing Instragram images from the Israeli army
“To argue with a man who has renounced
the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists
in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine
to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
http://electronicintifada.net/
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