Israel’s increasing airstrikes on the West Bank have killed 55 Palestinians — 24 of them children — in the past year.

Around 9:30 p.m. in late February, a white Mazda pulled up near a game cafe in the Jenin refugee camp on the northern edge of the West Bank, where a crowd of boys and young men often gathered to socialize.

As the car stopped, a few people walked by on the narrow street. Two motorbikes weaved past in different directions. “Everything was fine at the time,” according to an eyewitness sitting nearby in the camp’s main square.

Then the car erupted in a ball of flame. Two missiles fired from an Israeli drone had hit the Mazda in quick succession, as shown in a video the Israeli Air Force posted that night.

According to the IAF, the strike killed Yasser Hanoun, described as “a wanted terrorist.”

But Hanoun was not the only fatality: 16-year old Said Raed Said Jaradat, who was near the vehicle when it was hit, sustained shrapnel wounds all over his body, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine. He died from his injuries at 1 a.m. the next morning.

Jaradat is one of 24 children killed in Israel’s airstrikes on the West Bank since last summer, when the Israeli forces began deploying drones, planes, and helicopters to carry out attacks in the occupied territory for the first time in decades.

  • @[email protected]
    5•5 months ago

    This is literally the same argument bigots have always made. Lemme ask you a question: if we let women vote do you really think they would make the right choices?

    If we let black people use the same bathrooms as white people do you really think they’d behave?

    If we let those refugees in do you really think they’ll contribute to society?

    If we dismantle apartheid do you really think they can govern themselves?

    If we free the slaves do you really think they can do anything but menial labor?

    What I think is whenever someone asks me if I really think we should stop discriminating against a group of people because they’re not worthy of respect, dignity, and basic right to life, I think that person fucking sucks

    • @[email protected]English
      -1•5 months ago

      What the fuck? No it isn’t. You’ve got that shit backwards.

      Women were making perfectly intelligent choices BEFORE they got the vote, they didn’t need the vote to change the way they thought.

      Black people behaved just fine BEFORE they got to use the same restrooms, segregation had nothing to do with behavior.

      Refugees were contributing to their own society BEFORE they left their home country.

      etc. etc. etc.

      There is an entire army in Gaza actively attacking Israel, with quite high support from the population, funding from foreign governments, and illegally smuggled weapons.

      Palestinians are not behaving like they want to get along. They need to do that BEFORE the attacks stop.

      • @[email protected]
        1•5 months ago

        Again, same tired arguments. You are claiming the same thing bigots have claimed for time immemorial.

        When women were fighting for the vote the argument made against them was that they would make poor choices. You arguing differently about women now doesn’t matter - you are making the same type of argument against Palestinians that were made against discriminated against groups at every turn.

        White enslavers argued that black slave revolts justified continued enslavement, and this is precisely the argument you’re making.