Khadeeja Fatafta – an epitome of Israeli terrorism
By Khalid Amayreh Occupied Jerusalem: 19 September
From: F r e e d o m
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“If the world wants to understand what happened in New York and Washingtonon 11 September, the world must know first what happened to Khadeeja Fatafta in downtown Hebron on 17 September.” Khadeeja Fatafta, 22, and mother of two little children, was not hurlingstones on Israeli occupation soldiers tormenting Palestinian civilians intosubjugation and surrender.
Nor was she taking part in a peaceful demonstration protesting Israel’songoing rampage of murder and terror against a people whose only crime istheir enduring desire to be free. In fact, Fatafta didn’t even happen tobe in a place where “confrontations” between the occupation army andPalestinian resistors were taking place.
Khadeeja was sitting peaceably outside the Princess Alia hospital indowntown Hebron, awaiting to see a cardiologist to examine her child whosuffers from a congenital heart anomaly, the occurrence of which doctorssay has increased significantly in Palestine due to the intensive andunbridled use by the Israeli army of lethal weapons with long-lastingeffects.
And suddenly, on 17 September, calamity struck when an Israeli armysniper stationed on one of these strategic rooftops at Tel al Rumeidapushed the trigger: The result an 800 mm -caliber bullet strikingKhadeeja in the face, plucking out her left eye and causing a deep widehollow in the upper part of her face.
Unconscious and nearly dead, Khadeeja was rushed to Saint Johns eyehospital in East Jerusalem for treatment. There her calamity was describedas the worst of all the estimated 193 Palestinian civilians who have lostan eye or two as a result of being hit by Israeli bullets, often fired byarmy snipers stationed on strategic rooftops in Palestinian urban centers.
Her treating doctor, Aghlab Khouri, describes Khadeeja’s case as “theugliest I’ve ever seen.”
Speaking sorrowfully of Khadeeja’s tragedy, Khouri laments that not onlywill the young woman be blind for the test of her life, but will have tolive with serious defacement as well.
Khadija’s distraught mother, weeping outside the hospital, mourns thetragedy that befell her only daughter.
She asks in a lethargic tone, combining bitterness, anger and helplessness”what was her fault, why did they shoot her.may God avenge my daughters’calamity.may God destroy Israel, and American as well.”
In fact what happened to Khadeeja is only a small representative example ofwhat the Palestinian people have been going through in the past year.
Last week, a Palestinian medical doctor, Hussein Ikdeimat, was killed insimilar circumstances in the same vicinity when he sought to give first aidto a child who was shot by Israeli snipers.
The child survived, but Ikdeimat, 50 and father of six children, died to beadded to the long list of victims of the American-funded Israeli oppressionof a decimated people whose only crime is its enduring desire to be freefrom occupation and apartheid.
Two other children had died earlier in similar circumstances and in thesame area which townspeople have come to call “death square.”
All in all, the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish terrorists killed noless than 690 Palestinians in the last eleven months, a third of themchildren and minors.
And the injured exceeds 25000, many, very many, like Khadeeja Fatafta,with crippling disabilities and handicaps that will stay with them for therest of their life.
The Israeli army and government, indeed the heavily-armed fanatic Jewishsettlers, and also the media, view the daily Palestinian calamitiesblithely, even gleefully.
On 12 September, less than 24 hours after the tragic disasters in New Yorkand Washington, Israeli defense minister Benyamin Benalizer boasted thatthe Israeli army killed 18 Palestinians and the world didn’t utter a wordof protest at the carnage.
He was alluding to the murder of 18 Palestinians in the city of Jenin on12 September when as many as 60 Israeli tanks and several thousand soldiersrampaged through the town, spreading death and terror everywhere, takingadvantage of the world’s preoccupation with events in the United States.
Other Israeli spokesmen would only blame the victims, suggesting that “thisis a self-inflicted tragedy that the Palestinians brought upon themselves,”claims unscrupulously, even readily, parroted by CNN and otherZionist-controlled and manipulated American media.
Needless to say, Israel’s indescribably wanton terror and murder, whichvery often assumes a collective approach and often thinly concealsgenocidal undertones of unmistakable features, triggers deep feelings offrustration, vindictiveness and hatred, not only toward Israel, theexecutive and direct tormentor, but at the United States, perceived hereas the ultimate enabler of Israeli oppression and guarantor and sponsor ofits continuity.
Last week, most Palestinians did express genuine sympathy with the victimsof the suicide plane crashes in the United States. However, it is morallyimperative to point out that there was also a feeling permeating inPalestine, as in the rest of the Arab and Muslim world, that the US brewedwhat it baked and reaped what it sowed.
The wanton and brazen embrace by the United States of Israeli apartheid andcolonialism may not justify the deadly terrorist attacks in the UnitedStates. The murder of innocent people can never be justified, especially byMuslims whose religion teaches them that “killing an innocent soul is likekilling the entire humanity.”
However, it would be brashly dishonest and crassly stupid to think thatAmerica’s misdeeds in the Middle East, to put it very mildly , don’t leadto equally diabolic reactions such as what we saw in New York inWashington on 11 September.
It is wisdom’s turn now to mend the mess created so blithely andinsolently by greed and mindless power.