Israel has managed to transcend even its own levels of inhumanity when an Israeli sniper shot double amputee Ibrahim Abu Thuraya through the head on December 15.
29-year-old Abu Thuraya lost his legs in an an Israeli airstrike on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2008. Israel crippled him, but he still had hands with which to hold the flag of Palestine and a tongue with which to call for its liberation.
Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy describes his murder, ‘The images are horrific: Abu Thuraya in his wheelchair, pushed by friends, calling for protests against the U.S. declaration recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; Abu Thuraya on the ground, crawling toward the fence behind which the Gaza Strip is imprisoned; Abu Thuraya waving a Palestinian flag; Abu Thuraya holding up both arms in the victory sign; Abu Thuraya carried by his friends, bleeding to death; Abu Thuraya’s corpse laid out on a stretcher: The End.’ (https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.829384).
Israeli Salma Salaime, writes, ‘… the Israel of 2017 has given me a free lesson in hatred and dehumanization of the entire population group to which I belong. I have seen with my own eyes and experienced in my own flesh, day after day, how the government, the sovereign power, with assistance from the media, can turn decent, rational women and men who could be my friends or neighbors into merciless lunatics, or at least people lacking any independent thought and any sense of responsibility or moral commitment. And all of us live in the heritage site whose name is ‘never again.’ (https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.831199).
Gareth W R Smith, Palestine Liberation Centre, Byron Bay (Echo Net Daily)