[Salon] A Palestinian Family Is Gunned Down and No One Will Be Questioned

FM: John Whitbeck

As indicated by today's HAARETZ lead editorial, transmitted below, some people in Israel have, exceptionally, been made to feel uncomfortable by a particular slaughter of innocent Palestinian civilians, one which inevitably recalls the slaughter of Hind Rajab and her family in Gaza but which has occurred this time in the West Bank.

Of course, unexceptionally, there will be no adverse consequences -- or even, in this case, any inconvenience of being questioned -- for the family's murderers.

As the editorial concludes: "The killing of Arabs, any killing of any Arab, is not a crime and doesn't merit an investigation.... Palestinian lives -- innocent adults, children, people with disabilities -- are cheap, their blood may be spilled with impunity. Did you kill without justification? Nothing bad will happen to you."

This "incident", as well as, to cite a non-exhaustive list of examples, Israel's current full-scale wars against Iran and Lebanon and periodic bombings of Syria, the repeated Israeli assaults on the people of Gaza culminating in the current and continuing Gaza genocide and the U.S. government's prior wars for Israel against Israel's perceived enemies Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran, are all illustrative of a fundamental reality: An injustice as monumental as the transformation of Palestine into Israel, necessarily requiring the dispossession and dispersal of the great majority of the indigenous population and the oppression of the survivors to encourage them to leave, can only be sustained by perpetual violence.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2026-03-23/ty-article-opinion/a-palestinian-family-is-gunned-down-and-no-one-will-be-questioned/0000019d-1753-d362-a7fd-1fd368b20000

A Palestinian family Is Gunned Down and No One Will Be Questioned

March 23, 2026

Nine days after the killing of members of the Bani Odeh family in the town of Tamum, none of the Border Police officers who took part in the heavy gunfire at the vehicle -- carrying four young children, one of them blind, and their parents -- have been summoned for questioning.

Sources familiar with the investigation said that the Justice Ministry department that probes allegations of police misconduct decided not to question the officers because the evidence supports their claim that they fired "out of fear for their lives."

It's unbelievable. An undercover unit hides behind a wall at night, a car whose passengers are unaware of the policemen emerges -- witnesses say the car was driving slowly, its windows open, so that it was easy to see who was inside -- and the Border Policemen shower it with bullets.

The officers did not call on the car to stop, did not fire into the air or at the vehicle's tires; rather, they immediately began shooting dozens of bullets at innocent passengers. Waad Othman Bani Odeh, her husband Ali Khaled Bani Odeh and their sons Othman, 7, and Mohammed, 5, died at the scene. Khaled, 11, and Mustafa, 8, survived. Khaled told Haaretz later that the officers beat him after they killed his parents and his two youngest brothers.

Such a serious incident must be investigated. The decision to blindly accept the Border Policemen's version of events without even questioning them marks another stage in the swift deterioration of the rule of law in Israel. It's also hard to understand the dubious excuse given by the Justice Ministry department: If the officers, the Palestinian eyewitneses and the two surviving children were not interviewed, then how do they know that the officers' version is correct? Based on what evidence?

In the past, Border Policemen were brought in for questioning immediately after such incidents occurred to prevent them from coordinating their stories and obstructing the investigation. Most of the cases were buried in the file drawers of the Justice Ministry unit without any legal action being taken.

This time, however, the agency responsible for investigating alleged police misconduct decided not to investigate at all. Perhaps its investigators know there's no point in probing the pointless killing of a Palestinian family because no one will do anything with the investigative material. In the background, there is also the chilling effect on the investigative entities in the wake of the Sde Teiman affair.

The gravity of these issues cannot be overstated. The "spirit of the commander" of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has also taken control of the Justice Ministry department:
The killing of Arabs, any killing of any Arab, is not a crime and doesn't merit an investigation.

The conclusion that Border Policemen are drawing is clear: Palestinian lives -- innocent adults, children, people with disabilities -- are cheap, their blood may be spilled with impunity. Did you kill without justification? Nothing bad will happen to you; you won't be troubled even with a questioning to determine the motives and circumstances of your despicable crime.

The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.