Who Cares if Palestinians Are Dead or Alive? – Haaretz.com
Gideon Levy:
A family is informed that their son has fallen in battle. Another family, from the same community, is informed that their son has been wounded and captured, and is now lying in the enemy’s hospital beyond the border. For over a month, this family has tried to visit their son, while the other family grieves over the death of its loved one, whose place of burial is unknown. Ultimately, the anticipated permit arrives and the mother travels to visit her wounded son. As soon as she enters his hospital room, her world collapses: The young man in the bed is not her son. He is the son of her neighbors who was believed to have died. The 40 days of ritual mourning have elapsed in any case.
This is what happened in recent weeks at Aqabat Jabr refugee camp, located on the outskirts of Jericho. Tayer Aweidat was declared dead; Alaa Aweidat was said to have been wounded. When the mother, Nawal, came to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital to visit her son, after a month of trying to obtain a permit, she was astonished to find a wounded man who was not her son. Since then, she and her family have been beside themselves. They want to know only one thing: What happened to their son?
The state actually replied: “The relevant person is apparently no longer alive and his body is being kept at the National Center of Forensic Medicine. … That ends our involvement,” wrote attorney Matanya Rosin, a deputy in the State Prosecutor’s Office, High Court of Justice department. The attorney was resolute: The son is “apparently” dead and that was “the end of our involvement.” That’s enough information for you subhumans, continue living with your doubts and don’t dare bother us again. The attorney also informed the family, with the humanity that so characterizes our enlightened country, that the family can go to the forensic institute to identify what is supposedly the body of their son.