In Israel: The Killer Walks Free… and the Victim Is Detained Even After Death

While the world’s attention is focused on what is happening in the Gaza Strip, settlers in the West Bank are seizing the moment to intensify their assaults on Palestinians and force them to leave. The method is constant: torture, displacement, and land seizure, under the silence of the Israeli army, judiciary, and state — and even with their support whenever possible.

A Striking Example: Yinon Levy
Just a week after killing Palestinian Odeh Al-Hathaleen in the village of Umm Al-Kheir, south of Hebron, settler Yinon Levy returned to the village to continue his “displacement” campaign, standing before the residents as if nothing had happened. The Israeli judiciary released him overnight, while about twenty village residents were arrested, some of them injured by settler bulldozers just minutes before the incident.

Odeh Al-Hathaleen

As for Al-Hathaleen’s body, the Israeli army held it for ten days as if it were a “weapon of war,” in a scene that sums up the reality of occupation and apartheid: the Jewish killer is free, and the Palestinian victim is detained even after death.

Land and Water Under Bulldozers
At the same time, Israeli bulldozers continued breaking water pipes and leveling the land to expand the “Carmel” settlement, in front of the residents and their children, while they are utterly unable to defend themselves or their land — since any Palestinian act is immediately classified as “violence,” while settler violence is deemed “self-defense.”

The Image of Israel Today
If you want a snapshot of Israel today, it is this: an armed settler, a bulldozer by his side, shielded from accountability, protected by the army, accompanied by the police, with the law and judiciary on his side. He is practically carrying out the occupation and plunder policy granted to Jews as the “masters of the land.”