Sadly, Nagham was not the only Palestinian athlete to have been killed by Israel. In its letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) urging it to ban Israel from participating in Paris Olympics, The Palestinian Olympic Committee pointed out that since October 7, “Approximately 400 Palestinian athletes have been killed, and the destruction of sports facilities exacerbates the plight of athletes who are already under severe restrictions.”  

Israel invaded and occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967, in violation of international law. No international body had ever awarded Gaza to Israel. It was under the stewardship of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and Egypt until a Palestinian state could be established, as had been pledged by the British Empire in the 1939 MacDonald White Paper. Israel “de-developed” the Gaza economy, cutting it off from its traditional markets, and illegally implanted Israeli settlers there. As Michael Jansen explained, the International Court of Justice ruled in mid-July, 2024, that Israel’s presence in Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank since 1967 has been illegal:

The Court contended that Israel has violated international law by denying Palestinians their right to self-determination in the territories occupied in 1967. The ICJ argued that Israel’s 57-year occupation is permanent rather than “temporary . . .” The ICJ said Israel violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, which regulates belligerent occupation, by transferring its citizens into the occupied lands. Israel has illegally extended Israeli law to the settlements and has imposed on Palestinians a separate, discriminatory regime (akin to outlawed apartheid) and de facto illegally annexing the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Deliberate attacks on Palestinian men and women athletes are not new. In 2014, two Palestinian soccer players, Jawhar Nasser Jawhar and Adam Abd al-Raouf Halabiya, were stopped by the Israeli army on their way home after training and shot in the feet. Attack dogs, unleashed on them, mauled their limbs. They were dragged and beaten until the attackers were sure they would never be able to play soccer again.

In fact, Israel’s war on Palestinian sports in general is much older than that. I remember as a child during the first uprising between the years 1987 and 1993 which involved stone-throwing, the Israeli authorities suspended the soccer league and, indeed, sport activities. Israel also used the local soccer stadium in Nablus city as a military camp.

BBC Video: “The Palestinian Olympic athletes competing in Paris 2024”

As we all know, Palestinian athletes are not the only target of Israel. Well over 39,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza alone and more than 90,000 have been wounded since October 7, 2023. That this total war and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians (as most of them have been) could be justified as “fighting Hamas” is not plausible. It is a war on Gaza’s noncombatants, including its athletes.

It is profoundly troubling that Israel’s flag bearer in the Olympics, Peter Paltchik, is reported to have signed bombs targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Peter, who was born in Ukraine, is a settler colonialist who came from Europe to colonize the land of Palestine while cheering the savagery inflicted on the indigenous Palestinians by Israel.

Given all of the above, the normal response from the International Olympic Committee would have been to ban Israel from participating in the Olympics. Unfortunately, however, the opposite happened. While Nagham and hundreds of other Palestinian athletes were killed by Israel before being given the opportunity to participate in the Olympics, Israel is there in Paris, since the IOC ignored calls to ban Israel from participating. By doing that, the IOC let  itself down before anyone else.

This stance shows that the IOC is unprincipled and morally bankrupt organization. Nearly two years ago, it banned Russia and Belarus from participating in the Olympics after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Russia, is banned by the European Union also from participating in any continental or international competition including the FIFA World Cup and all the European UEFA competitions. Israel is not even in Europe, and is guilty of the same crimes of illegal invasion and occupation as Russia. This situation makes the FIFA, IOC and UEFA complicit with the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Furthermore, the IOC banned Apartheid South Africa from participating in the Olympics between the years 1964 and 1992 due to its implementation of racist policies known as apartheid. Ironically, the International Court of Justice has found that Israel is guilty of the crime of Apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.Still, the IOC failed to treat Apartheid Israel in the same way it treated Apartheid South Africa — which was an ally of apartheid Israel. International sanctions on South Africa Apartheid regime were crucial to bringing the era of racial segregation and discrimination to an end.

The IOC and France missed an opportunity to pressure Israel to stop the bloodshed and to be on the right side of history. They chose not to do so at the expense of their reputation and credibility. They also ensured Israel’s status as a state that can act with full impunity.

The appropriate response for that would have been for the governments that declared their support for the Palestinians to send a strong message to the IOC and France by boycotting the Olympics or at least to show some other form of protest against allowing Israel to participate in the Olympics. But unfortunately, politics and foreign policies are more likely to be based on interests, not ethics. Some governments will only pay lip service to the Palestinian cause as long as it serves their interests — something that we the Palestinians seem to struggle to understand. This collective failure of the international community to act will only encourage Israel to continue uninterrupted with its daily murder of the Palestinians, the bulk of whom are women and children.

One example of that is when the British daily newspaper, the Times published an article on May 11, 2024 about the death of the Israeli hostage, Nadav Popplewell, titled ‘British hostage dies amid fears of wider Gaza offensive.’ The title ignored two important facts. The first is that the announcement made by Hamas about the hostage said that he was killed by an Israeli air strike, which was corroborated by an article published by Al Jazeera. The Times concealed Israel’s culpability and spoke of this dual Israeli citizen solely as “British.” Failing to mention that he was an Israeli makes it sound as if he was captured because he was British.

It got worse with the Times’ subtitle which stated: “The death was announced as residents in northern Gaza and eastern Rafah were told to move to humanitarian areas, raising concerns of further military assaults.” The subtitle did not even mention that it was the Palestinians who were told to leave their homes, denying their entire existence. Instead, it referred to them as “residents” — as if they are renting their land and not its indigenous inhabitants. Additionally, the Times decided not to mention that it was Israel that ordered another displacement of the Palestinians, who had already been displaced several times during the past few months by Israel. This is consistent with the mainstream media pattern of using the passive mood and avoiding attributing any guilt or responsibility to Israel, as if the Palestinians are always the wrongdoers — never mind the Israeli occupation of their land and their 76 years destitution and suffering, which continues to this day.

AJ+ Video: “Do Palestinians “Die”? Or Are They “Killed”?

Since a number of Palestinians who were kidnapped by the Israeli army died recently in Israeli custody, including the head of orthopedic department at al-Shifa hospital, Dr Adnan Albursh, I searched the Times site for coverage of these deaths, some allegedly involving torture. I couldn’t find any. Of course, it is no surprise to see this bias in the Times, given that it is owned by Rupert Murdoch–whose vast media empire includes titles like the Times, and the Sun in the UK as well as the Wall Street Journal and Fox News in the US.

The language used by politicians is also carefully selected to send a message to the public and influence their way of thinking. For example, when the Baptist (Mamadani) hospital was bombed, killing almost 500 Palestinians, US president, Joe Biden said that it was done by “the other team.” Whether that was true or not, clearly Biden’s choice of words implied that the Palestinians are the others, not the ones we stand with. The otherness is a massive statement that dehumanizes those referred to as others. It means that their values, culture and beliefs are seen as incompatible with ours and therefore they are inferior humans and whatever happens to them is acceptable.

At the same time, Biden implied that Israel would never bomb a hospital. The Israeli government then went on to disable or destroy almost all of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip, as well as killing tens of thousands of Palestinians — mainly women and children — and openly denying the civilian population basic necessities such as food, water, medicine and fuel, even starving some Palestinian children to death. Yet Israel is the one on our team and who are like us in the West and we should support them no matter what they do. It also showed that Biden never learnt from his first mistake when repeated the Israeli lies about the beheading of babies which was soon debunked.

The list can go on. When Palestinians are killed by Israel, they are often referred to by the media as “people” instead of Palestinians and the passive “died” is used instead of “killed.” They do the opposite in the case of the Israelis, referring to “conflict” instead of occupation and terming Israeli-squatter-settlements on Palestinian land “disputed” rather than “illegal” (as they are according to the Geneva Convention). This pattern demonstrates the importance of scrutinizing and challenging the language used to deal with the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.

Hordes of settlers continue to wreck havoc in Palestinian occupied territory .. another attack on Al-Mughair village near Ramallah that left a 35 year old man dead and so many houses and cars burnt. #ApartheidIsrael pic.twitter.com/pBcXuOMzqi

— Amal Jadou (@AmalJadou7) April 12, 2024

Palestinian civilians, especially in villages in area C have been abandoned by the world, and so, for that matter, have all the Palestinian populations facing the violence of armed Israeli settlers. The expansion of the Israeli settlements, considered illegal under International Law, and built on stolen Palestinian land, goes on at its fastest rate ever. Meanwhile, Israel exploits the diversion of the world’s attention by its barbaric assault on the Gaza strip to strengthen its grip on the West Bank.

According to a recent UN report which covers the period from November 1 2022 to October 31 2023, illegal Israeli settlements expanded at unprecedented rate since records began in 2017. Approximately, 24,300 units were advanced in existing Israeli settlements including 9670 in East Jerusalem. The same report also highlighted that about 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank including 465,000 mainly live in area C in the West bank and 230,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. Displacement or small scale ethnic cleansing were also carried out against Palestinian herding communities. This uprooted about 1105 Palestinians from 28 herding communities from their land between January 2022 and September 2023. Further 878 people including 435 children from 15 herding communities were displaced between 7th and 23rd of October 2023.

The figure of 700,000 settlers is particularly alarming. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, in 2002, the number of illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank was 380,000 settlers. This massive increase reflects how different Israeli governments worked tirelessly to almost double the number of settlers in the West Bank in 21 years. Such a doubling was also pursued by Israel after it signed the Oslo Accord with the PLO in1993, promising to withdraw from the Palestinian territories by 1997.

It is ironic that the Oslo Accords which were supposed to lead to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state, were followed by the creation of ever more Israeli settlements after dividing the West Bank into areas A, B and C, killing any hope for just peace. To illustrate, area A is about 18 percent of the West Bank and encompasses the main urban areas. Most matters there are under the authority of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Area B is about 21 percent of the West Bank. It is under joint control between Israel and the PA , which affects health, education and the economy. 60 percent of the West Bank is area C. It is mainly rural, and is where the Palestinians have their main agricultural land, so that it is crucial for their food security. Israel is in full control in this area.

The Israeli refusal to withdraw as agreed enabled Israel to deny the Palestinians permits to build new homes in most of the West Bank while construction in the illegal Israeli settlements was accelerated. These discriminatory policies forced desperate Palestinians to build without Israeli permission. Many of those who dared to do so had their homes demolished by Israel. Between 2009 and 2022, 9,128 Palestinian homes were demolished, causing the displacement of 13,171 Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Israeli government offers the Israeli settlers a wide range of financial incentives and subsidies, including but not exclusive of grants and preferential loans to buy property, reduced land prices, reduced taxes for individual and businesses and crucially, indemnity to compensate for any loss of income resulting from EU custom duties. This institutional racism is another manifestation of an apartheid state and settler colonialism.

CBC News Video: “West Bank engulfed by wave of settler violence”

For economic reasons, these racist policies are designed to encourage more Israelis to live on stolen Palestinian land in breach of the international law. This strategy is aimed at easing the demand on housing inside Israel and speeding up its colonization of the West Bank ahead of its declared plan to annex area C to Israel. These policies, combined with the settlers violence will force more Palestinians out of area C towards the already crowded and smaller areas of A and B. This is already causing property price inflation and decreasing affordability. Additionally, these areas are already subjected to frequent Israeli raids, sieges and extrajudicial executions. This is besides other socioeconomic problems such as unemployment and poverty caused mainly by the Israeli occupation.

While the world’s influential governments are allowing Israel to carry on with its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, the same governments are turning a blind eye to Zionist colonization and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the West Bank. Alas the Palestine Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and all the Palestinian factions in the West Bank are spectators, watching as if they are neutral without even attempting to organize an effective non-violent campaign to boycott Israeli products. If things continue as they are now, it is only a matter of time before the West Bank will face an ethnic cleansing similar to what happened in the 1948 Nakbah.

In this article I’m going to outline why it is wrong for the British government to pursue such dangerous policy and why supporting the BDS is important for peace and democracy for Palestinians and westerns alike.

The BDS movement is a Palestinian-led global campaign for freedom, justice and equality. It upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity. It was established in 2005 in response to the failure of the international community to hold Israel to account especially after the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice which declared the wall being built around the West Bank by Israel as violation of the International Law. The BDS movement includes unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. It uses non-violent pressure on Israel to end its occupation of all Arabs land and dismantle the wall, to recognize the rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and to respect the rights of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes according to UN resolution 194.

Novara Media: ” MPs Vote To Protect Israel; We Speak To The Founder Of BDS | #NovaraLIVE ”

Some of the notable supporters of the BDS movement include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Pink floyd musician Roger Watters and the renowned physicist the late professor Stephen Hawking who joined the academic boycott of Israel when in 2013 he famously puled out of a conference hosted by former president of Israel the late Shimon Peres in protest against Israel treatment of the Palestinian.

I find the British government move to prevent public bodies from engaging with the BDS disgraceful for several reasons. To start with, by its peaceful nature, the BDS movement allows larger public participation in politics and humanitarian issues where ordinary people and institutions can express their objection to Israeli policies, especially the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Putting increasing pressure on Israel peacefully including through cultural, economic and academic boycotts, is more likely to make Israeli politicians reconsider their inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. This has the potentials to prevent or at the least reduce bloodshed and save lives.

For any government to outlaw such harmless methods of protest and resistance means to push them in the opposite direction and to encourage more violence and bloodshed. This stance is astonishing, especially for the British government, considering Britain’s moral and historic responsibility in creating the suffering of the Palestinians. London accomplished this through the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration in which it gave Palestine to the Zionist movement and allowed it to ethnically cleanse most of the Palestinians and turn them into refugees in order create Israel in 1948 based on ideas of supremacy, racism and bloodshed.

Inasmuch as it outlaws civil protest, the British government’s bill gives a green light to extremist Israeli politicians such as the Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Elyahu, who said that “one of Israel’s options in the war in Gaza is to drop the nuclear bomb.”

The legislation is also a threat to British democracy as it seems to be the case that supporting Israel oppression of the Palestinians by western governments is increasingly becoming a threat to free speech and therefore to democracy. Denying public sector organizations the right to decide their own policies in relation to ethical procurement of services and goods is an attack on their basic right to make their own decisions to reject dealings with governments and businesses involved in human rights violations.

For us as Palestinians, boycotting Israeli goods has been a method of non-violent resistance for many decades, wielded against illegal occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, land theft, killing, persecution and apartheid. Now, defending the right to boycott Israel and to stand for justice for the Palestinians is becoming a new battle ground in defending democracy and free speech in the west.

Palestinians in the West Bank tell me that since the start of the assault on Gaza, Israel hasn’t allowed in most of the Palestinians trying to enter the West Bank via King Hussein bridge. This entryway is the Palestinian West Bank’s only connection to the outside world, and from there they can travel to the international airport in Amman, Jordan.

Palestinians must leave through Jordan because Israel does not allow the Palestinians to have an airport. Palestinians from Gaza must use Cairo’s airport, assuming they are allowed to enter or leave the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing. My friends from Gaza who managed that expensive journey told me that normally the journey should take 7 hours but because of security measures it takes Palestinians three to seven days of travel through the harsh Sinai desert.

In addition to the restrictions on entering the West Bank, there are also restrictions on travelling within the West Bank. Roads between towns are cut off by Israel via checkpoints.

Travel restrictions are not the worst thing Israel is imposing. Since October 7 at least 136 Palestinians, including 43 children, have been killed by the Israeli army and by Israeli illegal squatters in the West Bank. This is a sharp rise in the death rate amongst Palestinians compared with the rest of the year. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 200 Palestinians had been killed by Israel from the beginning of the year through October 5, and 2023 had already seen one of the higher death tolls in recent years.

Furthermore, as in Gaza but on smaller scale, Israeli army raids also target the infrastructure. For example, the Israeli army raid on the Nour Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem in the north of the West Bank not only killed 13 Palestinians (including five children) but also wrought vast destruction on the roads and infrastructure of the refugee camp as a result of the Israeli army tactic of using bulldozers. Fathi Hamid who is a resident of the refugee camp said “we were at home and we heard an explosion and when opened the door to see what happened, we found nine Palestinians dead including my son. Other residents came to help but they couldn’t take anyone to hospital as the area was besieged by the Israeli army.”

Al Jazeera English: “At least nine Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army in Occupied West Bank on Thursday”

On the British Channel 4, a reporter interviewed a Palestinian girl from Nour Shams who witnessed her 16 years old brother Taha shot dead by the Israeli army.  He had wanted to become a doctor when he grew up.  Her father was also shot when rushed to help his son. During the interview she showed the sad events which they filmed from the window.

As if Israeli army brutality is not bad enough, Israeli extremist squatters have also intensified their violence against the Palestinians especially after the far right Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, handed out guns to the settlers, with 150,000 firearms distributed so far. For example in the village of Qusra in the Nablus area, an Israeli squatter walked towards a Palestinian man and his son as they waited to join the funeral of four other Palestinians who were killed earlier by Israeli squatters and shot them dead before the watching eyes of Israeli soldiers.  Mohammad Jawdat, an eye witness said: “A settler approached them and opened fire from a handgun then when people rushed to the site, the occupation army, who was standing by, opened fire at the crowd to disperse us.”

Extremist views are unfortunately not confined to far, far right figures such as Ben-Gvir.  The president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, who is also a member of the Labor party, prepared the ground for collective punishment to be inflicted on the entire Palestinian people as he accused them all of being responsible for the actions of Hamas when he said “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime.”  Some 50 percent of the population of Gaza consists of minors, and most adults are unarmed civilians unable to take on the Hamas Party-Militia.

In the Palestinian West Bank, Israeli squatters have gone beyond scattered attacks to threaten the Palestinians with ethnic cleansing. This happened in the village  of Deir Istya In Salfit district where the Israeli squatters posted leaflets on the villagers’ vehicles telling them to leave to Jordan and if they failed to do so they would face another Nakba (catastrophe, as befell them in 1948) and would be forced out of their homeland violently.  This long-term dream of the Israeli Right has already begun being implemented, as inhabitants of some hamlets have already been forced out of their homes. While the world is transfixed by Israel’s aerial destruction of Gaza, another sort of population transfer has begun in the West Bank.

This party is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a lawyer and serves as the National Security Minister in the Israeli government. Instead of condemning the killing or at least offer his condolences to the Palestinian victim’s family, he described the killers as heroes who will get his backing.

Ben-Gvir’s statement sent shock waves through occupied Palestine and beyond. Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Hussein Alsheikh called on the international community and international organizations to designate Ben Gvir’s party as a terrorist organization. Many Palestinians, however, still criticize the Palestinian Authority for its lack of action when it comes to Israel crimes against the Palestinians.

Even in Israel, opposition Labor Party leader, Merav Michaeli criticized Ben-Gvir’s visit to the settlers accused of the killing while they were in jail by posting on her X account “The political wing comes to visit the military wing.” She also said “This is how the organization works. A party of terror-supporters in Netanyahu’s coalition.” While it is becoming increasingly common in Israel to describe settlers’ violence towards the Palestinians as terror, it’s worth pointing out that it was the center-left Labor Party and its allies that started building the illegal Israeli settlements immediately after the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967.

In response to the recent killing, the US State Department said, “We strongly condemn yesterday’s terror attack by Israeli extremist settlers that killed a 19-year-old Palestinian.” It’s highly unlikely that the statement is a turning point in America’s foreign policy, but this announcement differs from the traditional State Department boilerplate expressing the cliche of “Israel has the right to defend itself” or at best equating between the Palestinian victims and their Israeli oppressors. The Jewish Power party was dismissive of the State Department’s remarks.

This dismissal reflects the confidence Israelis in general feel that no action will be taken against them by any Western power no matter what. Historically, any action against Israeli crimes against the Palestinians didn’t go beyond criticism, and the US has for the most part ensured this impunity by using its veto in the UN in order to block any practical punishment of Israel.

If there is a genuine desire to end to the suffering of the Palestinians and the ongoing ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel, the UN Security Council and other authorities have to take concrete action. Clearly there is a lack of desire to do so. The least that can be done is to designate the Jewish Power Party as a terrorist organization. Other actions can be freezing their financial assets or banning supremacists like Ben-Gvir from entering the US and other countries. An example of that was in 2008 when the British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, banned the Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin, who was the leader of the Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud Party and later became deputy speaker of the Knesset, from entering UK due to his extremist views. Feiglin was quoted by the website Mondoweiss praising Hitler.

The double standard foreign policy which involves turning a blind eye when it comes to Israel is evident in the way western countries dealt with Russia invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions were imposed on Russia immediately and military aid to Ukraine to defend itself hasn’t stopped. In fact what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is worse than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Israel has been carrying out ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians before its official establishment on Palestinian land in 1948 with a number of western countries supporting the ethnic cleansing by different means including arming and financing Israel.

Speaking of Russia, it hasn’t taken any action to help the Palestinians either. Putin’s Russia has allowed Israel to bomb Syria with stunning silence from those who are duped with Putin assuming that he is anti-imperialist. At the same time, despite Israel being heavily reliant on American military and financial aid, it has been reluctant to help Ukraine, desiring to keep its good relations with Russia, which decided recently to open a new consulate in Jerusalem.

Clearly ending the inhumane situation in Palestine might start by calling things with their real names. Treating Ben-Gvir’s party as a terrorist organization with all the implications that come with it would be a good start.

Just as when the Israeli army killed Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last year, their spokesman initially blamed Mohammed’s killing on Palestinian crossfire. Villagers, however, confirmed that the Israeli soldiers were the only ones who were shooting. Then the Israeli army changed its narrative to say that it had opened an investigation into the killing. Later it admitted that both of them were hit by Israeli fire.

This tactic seems to be common when there is media interest in such crimes. It starts with denial, then gradually the story changes. By the time they admit that the Israeli army was behind the killing, the media attention has turned elsewhere and the truth becomes another victim of the 24-hour news cycle.

Even the Office of Palestinian Affairs of the US State Department tweeted a mild rebuke of the Israeli occupation army, saying, “We express our condolences to the family of Mohammed Al-Tamimi. We urge Israel to evaluate all use of deadly force that involves civilian casualties, and we call on Israeli and Palestinian leadership to take responsible actions to end the conflict.” The US won’t do anything practical about the killing, but it is rare for Washington to go even this far in criticizing Tel Aviv.

Palestinian 2-year-old kid Mohammed al-Tamimi succumbs to his wounds sustained earlier in lsraeli gunfire near Ramallah. The little boy and his father were shot a couple of days ago near Nabi Saleh village by lsraeli occupation forces and were admitted into hospital since then. pic.twitter.com/y3rGIuCv5y

— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) June 5, 2023

Even in the cases where Israel accepts responsibility, the Israeli army and legal system seldom take action to hold those responsible to account. According to the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, between the years 2017 and 2021, the Israeli military law enforcement system received 1260 complaints. Only 248 criminal investigations were opened and 11 led to indictments filed against soldiers of which only three involved killing Palestinians which means soldiers were prosecuted only in 0.87 percent of all cases.

This impunity encourages the Israeli soldiers to act recklessly when they deal with the Palestinians. It is no wonder why the number of Palestinian children who got killed by Israelis keeps rising. According to Defence Children International Palestine (DCIP), 2,267 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israelis since the year 2000, which is about 100 children a year or 2 children every week. They should not be seen as just numbers, all of them had their own story, dreams, life, ambition and loved ones whose lives are devastated by their loss.

Having grown up in occupied Palestine, I experienced the violence of Israeli soldiers when I was 17 alongside two friends aged 16 and 15. As we were handcuffed and blindfolded, we were beaten and kicked on the testicles. Despite that treatment, we were the luckier ones. Many other Palestinian children were killed by the Israeli army and settlers including my 16-year-old classmate who was shot by an Israeli driver of a fuel tank truck on his way home from school. Our right to education was also denied as Israel closed sour schools for long periods and Palestinian universities were closed for 3 years 1988-1991 while Israeli schools and universities were kept open. Once again, another evidence of apartheid system.

Furthermore, a report by the DCIP, titled “Arbitrary by Default,” and based on 766 statements given by Palestinian children who were detained by Israel forces between 2016 and 2022 found that most of them were denied their basic human rights, inasmuch as they were subjected to physical torture and were not informed of their rights. Additionally, 97 percent of them were interrogated without their parents’ presence. Like the rest of the Palestinians, they were all subjected to the Israeli military law which denies them a fair trial. They were also prosecuted in a military court system that is not impartial.

The report concluded that “Israeli forces and authorities’ systemic non-observance of the obligatory and absolute prohibition against torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment constitutes arbitrary detention.” That Israel applies its military law only on the Palestinians, while law-breaking Israeli squatters who live in illegal Israeli settlements in the same occupied West Bank are subject to the Israeli civil law, is a manifestation of a racist apartheid state.

Al Jazeera English: “Palestinian toddler funeral: Two-year-old shot & killed by Israeli forces”

Moreover, research conducted by Save the Children charity investigating the impact of the Israeli occupation and blockade on the mental health of Palestinian children in Gaza showed that they are in a constant state of fear, worry, sadness and grief. They struggle to sleep or concentrate. Bed wetting is another common problem. They also expressed feelings of nervousness, anxiety, stress and anger. Things they disliked included violence, death, nightmares, poverty, war and the occupation including the blockade.

Asked what makes them feel better, they said they would like to experience feelings like courage, joy, strength, calmness, safety, security, love and optimism. But mainly they want to enjoy their lives and to pursue their dreams like other children around the world.

As demonstrated above, Palestinian children continue to suffer under the Israeli occupation. With every atrocity committed by Israel, leaders of the EU, US and UK keep regurgitating the same victim-blaming cliche of Israel’s right to defend itself. Surely a Palestinian toddler did not pose any threat to nuclear-armed Israel. This hypocritical policy only means that more children will suffer. Western politicians who constantly defend Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians have the blood of Mohammed Altamimi and other children on their hands. Governments that pretend to support the Palestinians in order to gain popularity, without doing anything tangible to ease their suffering, are also hypocrites.

Nablus is considered one of the world’s oldest cities, possibly built 9000 years ago. The Palestinian News Agency Wafa site states that the ancient Canaanites built Nablus in 4500 BC then it was re-built by the Romans in 72 CE. Its ancient archeological sites are a reflection of its rich history including a site that dates back to the bronze age, showing a Canaanite temple and a defensive wall. During the Roman era, the city had horse racetracks, a theatre and amphitheatre. There is also a church built on the site of Jacob’s Well in the 4th century CE where Christians believe Jesus met the Samaritan woman. Nablus also has various mosques and landmarks that relate to different periods of its Islamic history including a mosque built in the 7th century CE. Other buildings relate to the Mamlouk and Ottoman era, most notably its historic khan or souk which was built in the 16th century and is still a busy market.

It is a city of great culture. The renowned Palestinian poet Ibraheem Tuqan (1905-1941) was from Nablus. One of his poems became Iraq’s national anthem. His sister Fadwa (1917 – 2003) was influential in modernising Arabic poetry. Al-Najah National University in Nablus is the largest Palestinian university. There is a healthy peaceful co-existence between its Muslim majority, its Christian minority and its small ancient Samaritan community. Smoking shisha (hookah) is common amongst Nablus women.

On February 22, the news started coming about the Israeli raid on Nablus at about 10:00 am local time, which is different from previous raids in the middle of the night or early morning. It became obvious, since I know the area well, that they planned a massacre, provoking the people with this brazen incursion so that they would have a pretext for a harsh crackdown. The city has a busy market, and a number of schools are a stone’s throw away from it. Eleven Palestinians were killed including a child and three elderly men. More than 100 were wounded, some of whom are still in the intensive care unit. This was the third massacre within a month after Jenin and Jericho.

With this incursion, Israel slapped the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the face. The PA had bowed to American pressure to withdraw a draft UN Security Council resolution against the continued building of Israeli squatter-settlements in the West Bank in exchange for Israel announcing a temporary halt to such new construction. Squatter-settlements are a violation of International Law and the Oslo Accord signed by PLO and Israel in 1993, which was supposed to lead to a Palestinian state by 1998.

While US official policy is to create a Palestinian state on the land occupied by Israel in 1967 (about 22% of historic Palestine) alongside Israel, which was created by Britain in 1948 on about 78% of Palestine after ethnically cleansing over half of the Palestinians. Washington, however, paradoxically keeps blocking any UNSC resolution against the settlements. These vetoes de facto endorse the building of illegal squatter-settlements on the land where the Palestinian state should exist, and the US makes no real effort to stop Israel. Indeed, only one day after the Nablus massacre, Israel humiliated the US by approving building 7000 housing units, which will cut the West Bank in two.

Instead of responding to Israeli aggression, the Biden administration went further in supporting Israel’s far right government by putting more pressure on the Palestinians. Blinken acted as if he was the Israel security minister by pressuring the Palestinians to accept a security plan prepared by American Lieutenant General Michael Fenzel, which requires the PA to fight the resistance groups instead of deterring Israel from raiding into Palestinian territory. To put this in context, it is as though America had demanded that Volodomyr Zelensky in Ukraine fight against the anti-Russian resistance groups, and insisted that he protect the Russian soldiers who invaded Ukraine, all while arming and financing Russia.

Despite Israel’s proven untrustworthiness on this issue, the PA still went to the Aqaba security summit in Jordan on February 26, attended by Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the US. A resolution was agreed upon to reduce the level of violence and for Israel to suspend planning more illegal settlements for four months. A few hours later, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that settlement construction will continue. His far right National Security Minister who lives in an illegal settlement, Itamar Ben-Gvir, dismissed the decisions of the summit by saying “whatever happens in Jordan stays in Jordan.” The squatter-settlements are always illegal in international law, but the summit statement makes it sounds as if they are illegal for the only the next four months.

During the summit, events on the ground exposed its flaws. As a result of the Nablus massacre, two Israeli settlers were shot dead in Huwara just outside Nablus where an Israeli soldier executed a Palestinian last December. As a result, Israeli squatters attacked Huwara and other towns. Hundreds of Palestinians cars and properties including a school were burned, one Palestinian was killed and hundreds were wounded. Although the Israeli army accompanied the violent settlers to protect them, the army senior command later denounced the squatters’ violence as “terrorism.”. Even the PA deployed its security mainly to block unarmed Palestinian protesters who came out in solidarity with Huwara from reaching a disputed site in Nablus, which is often visited by Israeli settlers.

In other words, the PA and Israel protect the illegal Israeli squatters but offer no protection to the Palestinians. A Palestinian child from Huwara summed up the events of that night by saying that he thought it was going to be the last night in his life. He also said that settlers harassed him often and one day Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at him while he was just walking in his village.

Obviously, the US is dealing with the issue as a security matter that can be resolved by deploying more guns. In reality, it is a political issue. Washington can only genuinely work toward a just peace by treating the Palestinians as human beings equal to the Israelis and by shifting US foreign policy from knee-jerk, total support for Israel, including its illegal occupation of Palestinian land, toward a policy based on applying International Law and the UNSC resolutions.

To illustrate this, in the 1990s, a friend told me that a Western doctor who he accompanied in a day visit to the West Bank told him the Muslim women they met didn’t look Muslims because they were educated and beautiful. Another Western man told me that his favorite Palestinian city was Nablus but he did not want to go there because its population are almost entirely Muslims and prefers to visit Bethlehem and Ramallah as they have more Christians. Based on that I advised a Western tourist to visit Ramallah while she was in Jerusalem. She told me the church she was visiting advised her to avoid Arabs and Muslims and that going to the West Bank was dangerous.

It is, therefore, not surprising that there is a campaign to discourage football fans from traveling to an Arab country. Admittedly, some critics of the Qatar World Cup there are sincere people with genuine human rights concerns. Let us, however, examine the issues raised by the press. White nationalist Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing British newspaper, The Sun published an article entitled “…Only six percent of Brits believe Qatar should host 2022 World Cup. It highlighted issues like the high price of alcohol and accommodations. The newspaper suggested moving the tournament to England. Note that there have been forms of alcohol ban in Italy and France at World Cup tournaments.

The Times cited such issues as LGBTQ rights and the deaths of migrant workers who helped building the tournament venues. Yet the World Cup in Russia was not criticized despite the harsh treatment of LGBTQ persons there, and many World Cups were held in Western countries at a time when LGBTQ rights did not exist there. Migrant workers in Qatar have a lower fatality rate than they do in their home countries, though admittedly this statistic does not include infant mortality at home. It seems likely that the workers’ fatality rate as guest workers is similar to that in their countries of origin. Official Qatari numbers show that 37 workers died building the stadium, but with millions of guest workers in Qatar, this is not out of line with the expected death rate. The Guardian printed an op-ed on the subject with a highly misleading headline that implied that there had been 6500 such deaths, which the article beneath the headline did not allege. The false number has nevertheless gone viral. All this is not to say that there is no room for improvement in the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar. Bandying about phony numbers, however, is irresponsible.

Migrant workers in Qatar typically earn ten times there what they did in their home countries. The World Bank argues that more labor migration to rich countries could transfer $1.7 trillion to the developing world. World Bank economists have also estimated that migrant workers from low-income countries who work in a Gulf oil and gas state for three years and live frugally during that time can accumulate enough wealth permanently to move up half a class back home. That is, members of the working class can become lower middle class, and those from the lower middle class can become middle class. Returning workers often open a business.

Professional journalism implies representing both sides of the story. An AlJazeera program in Arabic devoted one episode to dealing with this issue. Former professor and Oxford lecturer, Farhang Jahanpour told the program that the reasons behind the call for the boycott are economic and political as some Western media outlets will lose money due to broadcasting rights. The program highlighted that Rupert Murdoch who owns The Sun and FOX News complained to FIFA that the timing of the event will cost him money. The program also revealed that The Daily Telegraph, which is partially owned by Qatar’s rival Saudi Arabia, promoted relocating the world cup elsewhere by falsely trying to link Qatar to extremism.

Furthermore, the general secretary of the International Trade Union, Sharan Burrow told the program that the Guardian figure was a mistake as this included all deaths of all causes since the start of construction not only deaths related to construction work. On the same topic, FIFA Ethics and Regulations Watch campaign director in London Alistair Thompson said that the Western media did not pay much attention to an Amnesty International report which highlighted improvements in work regulations and rights in Qatar.

Marc Owen Jones, an associate Professor in Middle East Studies at HBKU pointed out that Western media tends to report negatively on smaller, less powerful and less visible countries when they host major sports events. Moreover, when it comes to Arab and Muslim countries, Western media tend to represent them negatively. In comparison with the last world cup in Russia, the British press was more lenient with Russia and separated its coverage of the World Cup from Russia’s brutality.

In France, another country with a colonial history in the Middle East, some cities decided to show black screens in public places instead of World Cup games. Unlike the British press, however, the French press didn’t attempt to hide its Islamophobia. One French Newspaper depicted Qatar football team as terrorists. Speaking to Aljazeera program, founder and director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, Pascal Bonifac was more straightforward and said some hate the idea that a Muslim country is hosting the world cup. A Brazilian former sports minister also highlighted that the Western press don’t like it when major events are held in the southern hemisphere and they gave Brazil and South Africa some hassle when they hosted the World Cup.

The hypocrisy is clear when we consider that few in Europe were concerned about human rights when the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest was held in Israel, which is militarily occupying 5 million Palestinians deprived of basic rights, or seemed to care Europe immigration policy causes the deaths of thousands of immigrants in the Mediterranean annually. Some critics –a minority– are genuinely concerned about human rights but it is obvious that the main reason behind calling to boycott this World Cup is because it is held in an Arab Muslim country. The Western media which have long demonized Arabs and Muslims hate to allow the world to see anything positive happening there. For a lot of people outside the Western world, this is a case of West is best that re-enforced the racist idea of clash of civilizations and the illusion of Western supremacy.

Nobody, however, said it better than the European FIFA president Gianni Infantino: “We are told to make many lessons from some Europeans, from the Western world. I’m European. I think for what we Europeans have been doing for 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people.

“How many of these European companies who earn millions and millions from Qatar or other countries in the region — billions every year — how many of them have addressed migrant-worker rights? I have the answer: none of them because if they change the legislation it means less profits.”