On the night of June 12, three Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Frankel, went missing after reportedly hitch-hiking from their yeshiva to their home in the West Bank settlement of Gush Etzion. The rescue mission, dubbed “Operation Brother’s Keeper,” has resulted in a series of Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) raids across the West Bank, and reportedly the worst violence Palestinian communities have felt since the Second Intifada, which ended in 2005.
On the other side of the world, Murad Odeh, a 26-year-old community organizer from Bethlehem, Palestine is sitting on a porch in St. Louis, watching shaky videos of the raid on Dheisheh refugee camp, his home, on his iPhone.
Israeli jeeps line the streets. Flares illuminate street scenes of familiar storefronts. Rounds of live ammunition pierce the night sky as hundreds of masked soldiers bash down the doors and windows of homes and businesses, running inside in packs. When the soldiers come out a few minutes later, they’re dragging young Palestinian men through the streets in handcuffs, throwing them in the back of the armored jeeps.
Murad takes a long drag from his cigarette.
“If I were there, it could be me,” he says.
Over a three-week rescue mission to find the three Israeli teenagers, more than 700 Palestinians were arrested, with more than 400 still being held, according to Palestinian prisoner’s rights organization Addameer. Many are being held in administrative detention, an Israeli practice that holds prisoners without charge or trial set, but renewable amounts of time. At least 58 of the arrestees are former prisoners released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap; their re-arrest directly contradicting the terms of the agreement. One of these prisoners is Samer Issawi, who was released last year after engaging in a prolonged hunger strike protesting his first arbitrary re-arrest.
As the frantic search for the three boys continued, it became more and more violent. In Gaza, missiles rained. In the West Bank, I.D.F. soldiers raided and ransacked homes, throwing the contents of cabinets and closets on the floor and knocking over jars of brining olives in Palestinian kitchens as if this would somehow reveal the whereabouts of the missing boys. A Facebook page calling for Israeli vigilantes to “shoot a terrorist every hour” quickly gained more than 20,000 likes.
On June 30, an I.D.F. volunteer found the bodies of the three boys, hastily buried in a cave just outside of Hebron. A few hours after the boys' bodies were identified, President Barack Obama issued a statement. “As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing,” he said. “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth.”
President Obama did not comment on the six Palestinians who had been killed during the raids.
It has not stopped. The morning after the bodies were found, 16-year-old Yousef Abu Zagha was shot dead by I.D.F. forces in Jenin refugee camp in the north of Palestine. To me, and the Palestinian friends I made while spending time in Dheisheh camp, his picture looks like many of our friends and brothers. In the Israeli media, he was labeled a Hamas-affiliated terrorist. He is not.
More than 50,000 people attended the joint funeral service of Eyal, Gilad and Naftali that day, including heads of state and international media, broadcasting it across the country and around the world. Rachel Frankel, Naftali's American-born mother gave a heart-breaking eulogy, “We will learn to sing without you,” she said, tears streaming down her face as she lay her son to rest.
As night fell, radical right-wing mobs began to mobilize in the streets of major cities, shouting, “Death to Arabs!” and attacking passers-by that looked Palestinian. The next morning, 16-year-old Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir was found dead in a forest outside of Jerusalem. Much like Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali, he was hastily buried, left to quietly decompose. An autopsy suggests that he was burned alive, pointing to violent Israeli vigilantes as the perpetrators of his death. Secretary of State John Kerry released a surprisingly strongly worded statement: “It is sickening to think of an innocent 17-year-old boy snatched off the streets and his life stolen from him and his family. There are no words to convey adequately our condolences to the Palestinian people.” (Israel announced Monday that suspects held in Israeli custody have confessed to killing Muhammad.)
Just last Thursday, Tariq Abu Khdeir, Muhammad’s Palestinian-American cousin, visiting from Florida, was arrested and brutally beaten by the Israeli border police. A video of the incident proliferated online, though Israeli police allege that the footage was doctored. Although Tariq was released, he is still being held on house arrest and risks being jailed in an Israeli prison. President Obama has not commented on the case, despite the fact that Tariq is a U.S. citizen, and Tariq’s family says they have yet to hear from their congressional representatives. (A State Department spokeswoman said the government was “profoundly troubled” by reports of “any excessive use of force.”)
On social media, the overwhelming grief and sorrow for Eyal, Gilad and Naftali coalesced into a hashtag, #EyalGiladNaftali. People from around the world can share their grief and condolences to the families, and many such messages have gone viral. But there is no mainstream viral hashtag for the slain Palestinian youth, no collective expression of grief or sympathy sent to the families. It is even difficult to find their names in the media; while Muhammad and Tariq’s cases are starting to draw international attention, many articles that mention the deaths of other Arabs often merely state that “a Palestinian” was killed. Nameless. A number, to be filed away.
“In the newspaper, it is only numbers—10 were killed here, 10 were killed there,” Odeh says. “But this is not true, because I experienced losing ten friends and family members.”
In a three week period ending July 4, eight Palestinians were killed in the West Bank. In Gaza, seven-year-old Ali Abdel-Latif al-Awoor was killed by one of the first air raids (the raids and arrests have continued, resulting in the deaths of seven more Palestinians, who Hamas claimed as among its ranks). In the West Bank was 20-year-old Ahmad Sabareen, shot in the chest near his home in Jalazon refugee champ. Next were Mahmoud Jihad Muhammed, killed in the village of Dura near Hebron, and Mustafa Hosni Aslan, who died from injuries sustained from a clash involving live fire near Qalandia refugee camp. Ahmad Fawami was shot with four rounds of live ammunition near Nablus and Mahmoud Ismail Atalla Tarifi was found with a bullet in his chest in Ramallah. Most recently were, of course, Yousef Abu Zagha, and Muhammed Hussein Abu Khdeir.
“I don't want to call them ‘10’ or ‘11,’” Odeh says of the innocent Palestinians who have been killed. “I want to call them by their names. Because each one is a story of a struggle, a story of resistance, a story of trying to make change. And those are not terrorists.”
Update:An earlier version of this story translated a Hebrew phrase to mean “kill an Arab every hour.” The literal translation is “shoot a terrorist every hour.”
