Ebrahim Moosa | Palestine Information Network
May 2022
Of the disturbing images to emanate from Masjid al-Aqsa this Ramadan where those of Zionist officers trampling upon the carpets of the main prayer area, forcing a number of worshippers face-down onto the ground, and arresting them, with hands tied tightly behind their backs. The invading forces nonchalantly broke exquisitely crafted Masjid windows that take months to manufacture. They scurried around the sacred space, unleashing baton strikes with impunity on all who crossed their invading paths. A female Palestinian activist was mercilessly descended upon as she reported on the proceedings, an elderly man was shoved to the ground, and a father was beaten in front of his terror-stricken son.
As was observed correctly as the time, with such crimes meted out upon worshippers, women and children on sacred ground, at a most sacred time, the Israeli occupier had crossed all red lines and understood conventions of decency.
Coming from such as low threshold, it was nonetheless still alarming to witness the targeted Israeli murder of Palestinian Christian veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and the inhumane attacks on her funeral thereafter.
An Israeli storming of her final send-off sent shockwaves worldwide as a handful of pallbearers facing a storm of Israeli Occupation police beatings desperately hung on, trying to prevent her coffin from falling.
The Israel State propagated a narrative that Abu Akleh was killed in doubtful circumstances and that it could not be held responsible for her murder. At the same time, its brazen crimes at her funeral made it was altogether harder for the Occupation to prove to anyone that its actions were “accidental”.
“I have never seen something like this,” tweeted scholar Dr. H.A. Hellyer. “Israeli forces are fully aware the media is filming them, [then] attack a funeral procession of a journalist Israeli forces are accused of killing. Not the slightest bit of reticence, in spite of the exposure. Appalling.”
Insult was added to injury when persons from among those who carried the coffin were arrested, and yet another funeral of a Palestinian, this time Walid al-Sharif, who was martyred from wounds incurred inside Masjid al-Aqsa in Ramadan, was attacked. This event saw the firing of gas bombs and rubber-coated metal bullets inside the Al-Quds cemetery where the burial occurred. Ultimately there were reports that Israel would not investigate the killing of Abu Akleh altogether because it felt the reaction to such would draw a negative response from right-wing Israeli society. Contrasted with its ineffectual and superficial ‘investigations’ of previous crimes, Yesh Din, an Israel NGO, observed that army law enforcement mechanisms had now reached a point where they no longer bothered to even give the appearance of investigating.
Such blatant intransigence by the Israeli State could be characterised as a show of infinite strength, and a sense of confidence from Israel that it can wilfully subvert the international order and face no consequences.
However, its violation of one of the most ancient of human customs – the taboo against dishonouring the dead and the obligation to ensure a dignified disposition of the deceased’s body – is also telling reflection of the present state of Israeli society.
“The obligation to allow burial of one’s fallen enemies is part of every international convention on the laws of war,” wrote Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport. “A society that shirks its responsibility to honour the dead, its own or its enemy’s, is renouncing a fundamental tenet shared by all humans and is relinquishing its own humanity.”
In spite of the strides Israel has made in recent years normalising with Arab regimes and consolidating its military strength, Rapoport says Israel’s conduct in the Abu Akleh affair conveys a distinct weakness.
“Israel has completely lost its way. Israel has no idea where it wants to take the conflict with the Palestinians, not in the long term nor even in the short term, and the only thing left is to wield its power for no defined purpose.”
A sense of Israeli insecurity and fragility is manifest from the recent attacks on the vulnerable, the media, and the dead, and Israeli leaders’ own predictions about their State’s future.
Says Nooran Hamdan, “a state threatened by the mere presence of Palestinian flags, by a collective grief of a people, by a woman in her life and in her death; a state operating purely on fear and weakness despite all its weaponry and walls is not a state that will last. That is the reality.”