In pretty much every country on earth, security forces are being attacked by members of the general public. Usually the assailant is brought under control, disarmed and arrested. In rare cases, the assailant is shot in self defence.
In Palestine, it goes the other way around. In rare cases (alleged) attackers survive the encounter with the Israeli military, while most are killed on the spot. The numbers alone should give a good idea of how little Israel values Palestinian/Muslim/Non-Jewish life. In addition, heavy surveillance by international groups and media regularly shows how people are being shot well after they are disarmed and under control. That’s what’s called extrajudicial execution but for some weird reason, Israel is still seen by the west as the shining example of human rights in the Middle East.
Israeli soldiers seem to have gotten a bit bored of killing males only and have switched to shooting girls as well. I wonder if anybody finds it implausible that a group of trained soldiers on high alert have no other way of reacting to a 17-year-old girl than to shoot her dead.
Left/liberal German newspaper sueddeutsche.de has reported on the Palestine issues in the past days and their language says a lot about their point of view. “Soldiers kill attackers” – whatever Israel reports, German media prints. Other media have the common sense to write about “alleged attackers”. But enough of frustration about Germany and its widespread support of human rights violations in the Middle East.
Part of me feels sad about having left so early. It feels like a failure, an abandonment. However the weeks of travelling after the sailing trip took a lot of energy and my tanks were pretty much empty. It didn’t take much to knock me out. And objectively it’s not the worst idea to leave an area where civilians are being killed in the streets on a daily base.
Will see how I feel in a couple of days. Looking forward to a quiet week or two with friends and family. No idea what’s up after that.
Preparing for my departure from Ben Gurion now. Deleting Palestinian numbers from my phone, pictures from my camera. Throwing everything away that has Arabic writing on it – SOP. Hope all goes well – departing Tel Aviv airport makes me more nervous than tear gas and gunshots.