A heartbreaking parting shot of Ahmad Jazar, taken the day before he was killed. His mother’s hand is on his shoulder, as if she is about to hug him; they both smile slightly as they look straight into the camera. The photo was taken by Ahmad’s older sister, Mira, an interior design student of 19, in Nablus, when Ahmad was visiting his mother. Ahmad had asked his sister to take their picture. No one imagined that it would be his last.
The next day, January 19, Ahmad was shot by an Israel Defense Forces soldier from a distance of a few dozen meters, in his hometown of Sebastia, in the northern West Bank. At the time, he was standing near the entrance to a kindergarten run by the international Save the Children organization. Images of cheerful children, naïve and colorful, adorn the stone fence around the building. Next to it Ahmad, a 15-year-old boy from a poor family, collapsed to the ground, bleeding, and died.
Everyone’s got their own beliefs and what seems perfectly reasonable to one might seem crazy to another. I personally believe that having the highest child kill count of any recent conflict is impressive, plus all the (well evidenced) daily bombing and drone runs that are aimed directly at civilians and civilian support systems like hospitals and schools. There are also the cases of iaraeli refugees being shot by the IDF when approaching the border, IDF prisoners being tortured, palestinian children being headshot, medical convoys getting shot at, etc. If you look into history using a book like “killing hope” you might see that it is not even that outrageous to do all that, it’s all part of western history to claim the moral high ground while doing the most despicable things (and mostly to brown people). I think nobody can justify any of that reasonably. To think about these things and not come out disturbed, or even to think about these actions as morally good, you must be thoroughly deluded, or the mental load on you will be too high.
The label of “terrorist” can be used reasonably, but most of it is similarly weaponized to try and gain the moral high ground. It really means challenging the status quo. Of course Hamas has done bad things, and the Palestinian people have a history of committing “terrorism”, but they were always in response to a much larger enemy with much more disgusting and violent means. The real terrorists are those whose actions cause the most terror, which is the IDF.