Two Palestinians, Aged 2 and 80, Dead: Case Closed - Opinion -
One after the other, the Israeli army legitimized two despicable acts by its soldiers last week. They weren’t put on trial and weren’t punished. The IDF totally cleared those who had thrown a bound, elderly Palestinian man to his death as well as those who shot a Palestinian toddler in the head, killing him.
The two acts are in competition with one another in their degree of barbarity. In the view of IDF commanders, both are proper, normal and acceptable. From now on, IDF soldiers will know what they have actually long known: They can do whatever they want, including shooting small children and brutalizing the elderly.
No harm will come to you, they are being told. You have acted as expected of you.
The first despicable act was committed about a year and a half ago at 3 in the morning in the prosperous, quiet West Bank village of Jiljilya. Soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda battalion (who else?) stop an 80-year-old man, Omar As’ad, for the sadistic enjoyment of it. He had been slowly driving home after visiting a friend in the village.
He begs them to leave him alone. They drag him out of his car by force, tie his hands behind his back, blindfold him with a rag and stick another rag in his mouth to prevent him from screaming. Then they drag him up the street. At that point, one of As’ad’s feet is already bare after a flip-flop slips off. They push him into the courtyard of a building that is under construction. There they throw him onto a concrete floor on his stomach and leave him in the cold night air wearing only a shirt. His kaffiyeh headdress had also fallen off.
He lies there for about an hour, not moving, until the soldiers return to untie his hands before they leave. They didn’t even notice that he was dead. Who cares?
As’ad owned a grocery store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and returned in his old age to the village of his birth to live out his remaining days with his childhood friends. The soldiers, who threw him like a sack for no other reason than that he was Palestinian, may have grandfathers his age. How would they have felt if their grandfathers had been treated lie that?
That question didn’t cross the minds of the soldiers in the battalion of Netzah Yehuda,which translates as Eternal Judea. As’ad’s eternity ended on that night, January 12, 2022. The Netzah soldiers threw him to his death.
An autopsy determined that he died of a heart attack caused by the violence that was directed at him. When I visited the site where he was thrown into the cold night with eyewitnesses who had also been arrested by the bored soldiers for no reason, it was difficult to understand such cruelty and insensitivity to a heavyset elderly, barefoot, helpless man.
The fact that As’ad was an American citizen raised a glimmer of hope that perhaps this time, the IDF would be forced to depart from its usual cover-up. Instead, a simple investigation was dragged out over the course of a year and half. No one has been arrested. No one will be put on trial. The U.S. State Department spokesman grumbled a bit about the case last week, but there’s nothing to worry about. The Americans will forgive their ally for treating one of their own citizens that way.
Men stand next to a poster of Omar As'ad, 80, in the West Bank village of Jiljilya, last January.Credit: MOHAMAD TOROKMAN / REUTERS
This month, the night of June 1 wasn’t as cold in Nabi Saleh as it was on that winter night in Jiljilya, and since then Netzah Yehuda soldiers have been removed from the West Bank due to their conduct – but the new soldiers from the Duchifat battalion, from the same Kfir Brigade, were also very excited about their first night in the village without Mom.
Someone had heard shooting. Soldiers entered the village and began firing into the air without coordinating what they were doing. The soldiers in the guard tower didn’t report it.
One soldier looking for action began riddling with bullets a car whose lights had been turned on at the entrance to a house at the edge of the village. Through his optical sight, he either saw or didn’t see the small head of 2-year-old Mohammed Tamimi and his father, Haitham. He shot both of them, killing the toddler.
This time, the investigation at the command level was quick. The only soldier reprimanded fired into the air. Shooting at the child and his father was the right thing to do – proper, legal and moral.