IPNOT PICTURE OF THE DAY September 1st: From Israeli occupation's freezers to a shared grave

IPNOT PICTURE OF THE DAY September 1st: From Israeli occupation's freezers to a shared grave

Bahaa' Elyan(22) and Thaer Abu Ghazaleh(19) have been buried in the same grave in the al-Mujahedin cemetery in Palestine's

occupied East Jerusalem after their bodies were finally returned by the Israeli occupation - in exchange of monetary payments (in case of Elyan, 20 000 shekels) and with strict demands of night burials with few people attendances. 

Their bodies have been kept since by Israel in extremely low temperatures - to make autopsy in the allowed time-frame after return impossible. According to testimonies given to the United Nations, Palestinians bodies have often been "kept in poor and inhumane conditions, stacked on top of each other."

Thaer Abu Ghazaleh(19) was shot and left to bleed to death after it was claimed he had "stabbed" four people in Palestine 1948's

Tel Aviv on October 8th 2015. His mother put on his grave nineteen roses, each for one year her son had lived.

Bahaa' Elyan, a scout leader and social organizer - one of the persons behind the reading circle that encircled occupied East Jerusalem's Old City in March 2014 - was shot, stripped naked and left to bleed to death on October 13th 2015.

On that dat Elyan and Bilal Ghanem(23) allegedly killed three men, two of them elderly, in a bus in West Jerusalem. Ghanem survived the treatment of being shot, stripped and left to bleed while hand-cuffed and in public display against all odds.

Their family homes were later destroyed by the Israeli occupation as a collective punishment.

Israeli occupation drained all optimism and hope of peaceful change from them, and apparently led them on to the 'path of the martyr',

towards whose depiction in Palestinian society Elyan himself had previously offered some criticism. In the end it was the path he

ended on or felt he had to choose.

But blame must lie with the Israeli occupation and those in the 'West' which allow it to block other paths forward for Palestinian

youths, Palestinian people and Palestinian society overall.

When non-violent, peaceful resistance is not supported then what remains is a violent attempt to gain, even for a few minutes before death, feeling of freedom challenging the brutal Israeli occupation.

The three men allegedly killed by Elyan and Ghanem, as unfortunate and condemnable as their deaths were, are primarily victims of Israel's regime, 'collateral damage' in its project of Greater Israel and part of the price the state of Israel and majority of its

voters are and have been for the last 49 been ready to pay for the continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinians.

We have to remember that Israel, and through it's 'democracy' a majority of the Israeli voters, are not ready to just sacrifice the lives of Palestinians like Bilal Ghanem, Bahaa' Elyan and Thaer Abu Ghazaleh but also the lives of people like Alon Govberg(51), Haviv Haim(78) and Richard Lakin(76).

SOURCES:

19-year-old Palestinian laid to rest after Israeli authorities withheld body for 10 months

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=772908

After 325 days, Israel returns body of slain Palestinian Bahaa Elayyan to his family

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=772944

End of mission statement of the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=19926&LangID=E

Fighting to bury their sons: on the necropolitics of occupation

https://roarmag.org/essays/israel-witholding-palestinian-martyrs-bodies/

How a scout leader became a martyr

https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-scout-leader-became-martyr/14943

"My Son Was Beautiful": Palestinian Bodies and the Truths That Do Not Reach Us

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35907-my-son-was-beautiful-palestinian-bodies-and-the-truths-that-do-not-reach-us

Thousands of Palestinians surround Jerusalem Old City

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=682006