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<font size="1"><a href="https://english.palinfo.com/news/2020/5/22/Ben-Uliel-and-the-murder-of-the-Dawabsheh-Family">https://english.palinfo.com/news/2020/5/22/Ben-Uliel-and-the-murder-of-the-Dawabsheh-Family</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Ben Uliel and the murder of the Dawabsheh Family</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Ramzi Baroud - May 22, 2020<br></div>
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Israeli media and Zionist apologists everywhere are busy whitewashing
Israel’s globally-tattered image using the rare indictment of an Israeli
terrorist, Amiram Ben Uliel, who was recently convicted for murdering
the Palestinian Dawabsheh family, including an 18-month-old toddler in
the town of Duma, south of Nablus.<p>
The conviction of Ben Uliel by an Israeli three-judge court on May 18,
is expectedly celebrated by some as proof that the Israeli judicial
system is fair and transparent, and that Israel does not need to be
investigated by outside parties.</p><p>
The timing of the Israeli court’s decision to convict Ben Uliel of three
counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder was particularly
important, as it followed a decision by the the International Criminal
Court (ICC) Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to move forward with its
investigation of war crimes committed in Occupied Palestine.</p><p>
Considering how Israel’s extremists, especially those living illegally
in the Occupied West Bank, are governed through a separate, and far more
lenient system than the military regime that governs Palestinians, the
seemingly-clear indictment of the Israeli terrorist deserves further
scrutiny.</p><p>
Israel’s apologists were quick to celebrate the verdict by the court, to
the extent that Israel’s own internal intelligence agency, the Shin
Bet, known for its notorious torture methods of Palestinian prisoners,
described the decision as “an important milestone in the battle against
Jewish terror”.</p><p>
Others labored to separate Ben Uliel’s grizzly attack from the rest of
Israeli society, implying that the man was a lone wolf and not the
direct outcome of Israel’s unhinged racism and violent discourse
directed at innocent Palestinians.</p><p>
Despite the clear indictment of Ben Uliel, the Israeli court was keen on
accentuating the point that the Israeli terrorist acted alone and that
he was not a member of a terrorist organization. Based on that logic,
the court argued that the judges “could not rule out that the attack was
motivated by a desire for revenge or racism without Ben-Uliel actually
being a member of an organized group.”</p><p>
The verdict was a best case scenario for Israel’s image under the
circumstances, as it deliberately absolved the massive terrorist network
that spawned the likes of Ben Uliel and the Israeli army that protects
those very extremists on a daily basis, while whitewashing Israel’s
deservingly bad reputation as a violent society with an unjust judicial
system.</p><p>
But Ben Uliel is, by no measure, a lone wolf.</p><p>
When the Israeli terrorist, along with other masked assailants, broke
into the house of Sa’ad and Reham Dawabsheh at 4 am on July 31, 2015, he
was clearly on a mission to elevate his name within the ardently
racist, extremist society which has made the murder and ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians a sort of a divine mission.</p><p>
Ben Uliel achieved his objectives completely. Not only did he kill Sa’ad
and Reham, but their 18-month-old son, Ali, as well. The only surviving
member of the family was 4-year-old Ahmed, who was severely burnt.</p><p>
The murder of the Palestinian family, little Ali in particular, quickly
became the source of joy and celebration among Jewish extremists. In
December 2015, six months after the murder of the Dawabsheh family, a
25-second video clip that went viral on social media showed a crowd of
Israelis celebrating the death of Ali.</p><p>
The video showed a “room of jumping, dancing men wearing white
skullcaps, many with the long sidelocks of Orthodox Jews. Some of them
are brandishing guns and knives,” The New York Times reported.</p><p>
“Two (of the celebrating Israelis) appear to be stabbing pieces of paper
they hold in their hands, which the television station identified as
pictures of an 18-month-old child, Ali Dawabsheh.”</p><p>
Despite Israeli police claims that they were ‘investigating’ the hate
fest, there is little evidence to suggest that anyone was held
accountable for the unmitigated celebration of violence against an
innocent family and a toddler. In fact, Israeli State prosecutors later
claimed that they had lost the original video of the dancing extremists.</p><p>
The celebration of Israeli terrorism carried on unabated for years, to
the extent that on June 19, 2018, Israeli extremists chanted openly,
taunting Ali’s grandfather as he was leaving an Israeli court, with such
obscene slogans, as “Where is Ali? Ali’s dead,” “Ali’s on the grill”.</p><p>
The heinous murder of Ali and his family, and the subsequent trial were
added to an array of other events that starkly challenged Israel’s
carefully concocted image of being a liberal democracy.</p><p>
On March 24, 2016, Elor Azaria killed a Palestinian man, Fattah
al-Sharif, in cold blood. Al-Sharif was left bleeding on the ground
while unconscious after, per Israeli army claim, trying to stab an
Israeli soldier.</p><p>
Azaria received a light sentence of eighteen months, soon to be freed in
a massive celebration, like a conquering hero. Israel’s top government
officials, including Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
supported the cold-blooded murderer throughout the trial. It will not
come as a complete surprise if Azaria claims a top position in the
Israeli government at some point in the future.</p><p>
The celebration of murderers and terrorists like Ben Uliel and Azaria,
is not a new phenomenon in Israeli society. Baruch Goldstein, the
Israeli terrorist who killed scores of Palestinian worshipers while
kneeling for prayer at Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil (Hebron) in 1994,
is now perceived as a modern martyr, a saint of biblical proportions.</p><p>
In such cases, when the nature of the crime is so overwhelmingly
violent, the extent of which forces itself on global news media, Israel
is left with only one option – to use the indictment of ‘Jewish
terrorism’ as an opportunity to reinvent itself, its ‘democratic’
system, its ‘transparent’ judicial proceedings, and so on. Meanwhile,
Israeli media and its affiliates worldwide labor to describe the
collective ‘shock’ and ‘outrage’ felt by ‘law-abiding’, ‘peace-loving’
Israelis.</p><p>
The murder of the Dawabsheh family, although one of numerous acts of
violence perpetrated by Jewish extremists and the Israeli military
against innocent Palestinians, is the perfect case in point.</p><p>
Indeed, a quick look at the numbers and reports produced by the United
Nations indicates that the Jewish settlers’ murder of the Palestinian
family was not the exception but the norm.</p><p>
In a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA) in June 2018, UN investigators spoke of an exponential
rise of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians.</p><p>
“Between January and April 2018, OCHA documented 84 incidents attributed
to Israeli settlers resulting in Palestinian casualties (27 incidents)
or in damage to Palestinian property (57 incidents),” the report read.
That trend continued, at times markedly increasing, with very little
accountability.</p><p>
The Israeli rights group, Yesh Din, has been following up on the small
percentage of settler violence cases that were opened by the Israeli
military and police. The group concluded that, “of 185 investigations
opened between 2014 and 2017 that reached a final stage, only 21, or
11.4%, led to the prosecution of offenders, while the other 164 files
were closed without indictment.”</p><p>
The reason for this is simple: the hundreds of thousands of Jewish
extremists who have been transferred to permanently settle in the
occupied territories, an act that starkly violates international law, do
not operate outside the colonial paradigm designed by the Israeli
government. In some way, they too, are ‘soldiers’, not only because they
are armed and coordinate their movement with the Israeli army, but
because their ever-expanding settlements lie at the heart of the Israeli
occupation and its continued project of ethnic cleansing.</p><p>
Therefore, Jewish settler violence, like that committed by Ben Uliel,
should not be analyzed separately from the violence meted out by the
Israeli army, but seen within the larger context of the violent Zionist
ideology that governs Israeli society as a whole. It follows that
settler violence can only end with the end of the military occupation in
the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, and with the demise of the
racist Zionist ideology that spews hatred, embraces racism and
rationalizes murder.</p><p>
<em>- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine
Chronicle. He has authored a number of books on the Palestinian struggle
including ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’. Baroud has a Ph.D. in
Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident
Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies,
University of California Santa Barbara.</em></p></div></div>
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