Salocin

Schoolgirl shot to pieces in Palestine

This kind of thing really frightens me. When I say that, I don't mean the fact that this person got off without a censure, although that of course is repugnant, but the fact that a 13-year-old schoolgirl should have been shot 17 times for walking in the wrong place should indicate that perhaps there are some unreasonable things going on in the occupied territories.

Kudos of course to the Israeli officers who denounced the man himself, although I believe he wasn't the only one shooting the girl. What is clear here though is that for whatever reason (fear of child bombers, hatred of Palestinians and so on), someone felt it necessary to shoot this girl dead without knowing if she was a threat.

She was a long way away from the nearest Israeli, and she was not warned.

She was shot once in the leg (not a warning shot, a direct hit), and dropped her satchel and tried to hobble away. At this point, she was shot over and over. Then an Israeli soldier walks up to her, shoots her, begins to walk away, turns around and empties the entire clip of his gun into her dead body. Alternatively, the Guardian is making it all up, which I personally think is unlikely.

It's an all-too-common perception of the situation that Palestinians hate Israelis, and Israel is therefore constrained to defend itself using every means at its disposal, including this latest offensive which, by some accounts, has killed 85 Palestinians, with Israel claiming at least 45 were militants. When I hear about a story like this, in which a soldier will shoot repeatedly into a dead 14-year-old girl's body, and the Israeli establishment - despite testimony from his unit - acquitting him of any wrongdoing, I wonder who hates who the most.