Stephen Lendman

Last July, extremist settlers set the Dawabsha family home ablaze, immolating 18-month-old Ali, husband and wife Saad and Riham later succumbing to third-degree burns too severe to save them.

Four-year-old Ahmad alone survived, enduring months of excruciating treatment, recovering from third-degree burns covering most of his body.

Now aged five, his treatment continues in Ramat Gan’s Sheba Medical Center, the PA paying his medical expenses. Israel doesn’t recognize him as a terror victim. He needs many more months, maybe years, for full recovery. His scars remain deep. Perhaps lifetime trauma awaits.

His maternal grandfather, Hussein, intends caring for him as long as necessary, “want(ing) him to live without trouble and fear,” he said, expecting no justice from Israeli courts.

“There is no way under…occupation (to) find justice. This is not a country of democracy but rather a country of murder, a country that doesn’t respect law or human emotions. No one does this but a Nazi country.”

Another attack could happen any time. Extremist settlers harass villagers, chanting “Duma number two.”

Overnight Saturday around 2AM it came. Unidentified assailants firebombed Ibrahim Dawabsha’s home, the only eyewitness to the immolation deaths of his family members.

He and his wife fled for safety after hearing glass breaking, an explosion, followed by smoke and fire. They’re being treated at a Nablus hospital for smoke inhalation.

Two firebombs were reportedly thrown into their home. They’re lucky to be alive mostly unscathed. Ibrahim recounted the horror of last July’s Dawabsha family murders.

“I saw Saad and Reham burning on the ground,” he said. “Next to them were two masked men, one beside each of them…I was horrified by what I saw.”

Most often, Israel whitewashes investigations into crimes against Palestinians. Rare exceptions prove longstanding practice.

Jewish lives alone matter. Palestinian suffering is ignored. PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi issued a statement, saying:

“This heinous crime is not an isolated incident and demonstrates that the Israeli government continues to give the illegal Jewish settlers a free hand to commit acts of violence and terror against a defenseless civilian Palestinian population.”

“Clearly, there is no rule of law in Israel and as a state, Israel is responsible for generating a culture of hate and racism that has enabled the settlers to act as terrorists.”

Ashrawi called on the international community in vain to “act urgently and to assume its responsibilities to protect the Palestinian people and to put an end to the impunity that Israel and its settlers continue to enjoy at the expense of Palestinian lives.”

Israeli terrorism is considered self-defense or ignored entirely. Palestinian self-defense against a ruthless occupier is called terrorism.

Settler violence and vandalism are rarely punished. Security force extrajudicial executions are considered all in a day’s work.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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