Is It Permissible to Rejoice in the Joy of Palestinians Released From Israeli Prisons?
This was a roller coaster of a weekend which left no one unmoved. The images of the released hostages, old women and little children, were the stuff of a thousand telenovelas with happy endings.
To see six-year-old Emilia and cry; to see nine-year-old Ohad and shiver; to see the release of Hannah Katzir, who was declared dead by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Yaffa Adar who survived captivity at 85 years old and feel a lump in the throat.
The fact that all are in good medical condition is cause for relief and happiness. This is what national joy looks like, mixed with the grief, anxiety and discomfiture that have prevailed in Israel since October 7. Just let them all come back already.
Israel in its mixed joy, and the Palestinians in their mixed joy. Is it permissible to rejoice in their joy? Who is even allowed to rejoice in this country? The emotional police has set boundaries: Palestinians may not rejoice.
Former Palestinian prisoners who were released by the Israeli authorities, kneel on the ground upon their arrival in the West Bank town of Beitunia on Friday.Credit: Nasser Nasser /AP
Israeli police representatives visited the homes of those released in East Jerusalem, warning the occupants to refrain from any display of joy. We are allowed to rejoice in the return of our children; they are not allowed to rejoice in the return of theirs. But the prohibition does not end here. We are not allowed to watch them rejoice, either.
The day after the hostages returned, the sun rose on Gaza. It was the first morning in 50 straight days that Gaza’s skies weren’t covered in plumes of smoke and dust from the bombings. People weren’t fleeing back and forth for their lives, helplessly trying to escape bombs that could fall at any moment without warning. Children, anxious at nighttime, still wet their beds (those who have beds), but less than before. Is it permissible to rejoice over that in Israel?
About an hour’s drive from the hospitals where families were reunited, sparking national joy, similar sights could be seen in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. A father who hadn’t seen his daughter in eight years reunited with her in a teary embrace. A woman ran hysterically toward her daughter, who had been incarcerated for seven years.
I saw the mother of Malek Salman of Beit Safafa hugging her daughter, weeping and shouting. “Mama, mama,” Malek yelled, and I felt joy. Is that a transgression? A psychological defect? A moral defect?
Thirty-nine Palestinian women and minors also made their way from prison to their families and to freedom. Some were convicted of stabbing attacks, possession of a knife, or attempted murder, others of throwing rocks or minor peccadilloes. None are innocent of the crime of violent resistance against the occupation, and the state was within its rights to try and punish them. But they are also human beings.
Former Palestinian female prisoners who were released by the Israeli authorities, are received by supporters upon their arrival in the West Bank town of Beitunia, Friday, Nov. 24, 2023.Credit: Nasser Nasser /AP
The children are certainly children, even when we talk about young rock throwers, sentenced in Israel to disproportionate prison terms and to far worse conditions than Jewish defendants of their age. I was also happy to see them walk free. I know that’s not permitted.
In one of the exceptional moments of the painfully one-sided TV coverage in Israel, Channel 13 News showed a very brief moment of Palestinian joy at the return of a daughter. Channel 13’s Almog Boker, a field reporter in his soul, who from war to war is becoming even more nationalistic, and can’t utter the word Hamas without tacking on the word “Nazis,” cried out in indignant fury, “We mustn’t show that.”
Journalist Raviv Drucker tried to convince him that it’s important to show that the Palestinians are happy in order to reveal their true face – this, after failing to persuade him that everything should be reported, simply because that is what journalism is about.
Boker thinks that during war the only things that should be shown are those that serve Israel’s interests. And indeed, in the Israeli media not only is Gaza’s suffering banned from the screen, so is the joy of parents upon their daughter’s return from prison, lest we be tempted to think that they too are human beings, with feelings and all.
These are the days of intense emotional swings. The roller coaster goes up and down, and it’s okay to leave a small place in it for the small joy of Palestinians. The war, the government keeps telling us, is only against Hamas.