Bilal Yousef, a Palestinian producer and writer from the town of Dabburiya, semt me the following message, “We walked for six days, from Haifa to Jerusalem. Calling it difficult is an understatement!.” Yousef is a Palestinian citizen of Israel who has made several award-winning documentaries, among them a film he produced for Al Jazeera called ”Conflict of Loyalty.” It follows the story of Palestinian attorney and activist Yamen Zaydan. Zaydan is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, an attorney from the Druz community who leads the movement within that community to refuse service in the Israeli military. It is a riveting personal and political film that outlines the Druz community and the challenges it faces.
Another excellent film he produced, “Gideon Levy: Going Against The Grain,” is about the Israeli dissident journalist Gideon Levi. Yousef follows Levi on some of the more difficult stories he reports and documents the difficult environment in which Levi finds himself as he tries to tell Israeli readers about the horrific crimes committed by their state.
Currently, Yousef is working on a film about the devastating effects of crime in Palestinian towns within 1948 Palestine. The residents of these towns are Palestinian citizens of Israel and are directly governed by the State. Israeli police neglect to address the problem, mostly because no one cares if “Arabs kill Arabs.” It is not unlike the inner cities in the U.S. where young black men kill one another as a result of neglect by the authorities and the availability of arms.
Mothers began to march
When Muna Khalil told Israeli police in Haifa that she knew who murdered her 28-year-old son, Khalil, the police, who refrain from intervening in crimes when the victims are Palestinian, said there was insufficient evidence and did nothing.
Watfa Jabali is from Taibe, and her son Sa’ed was 26 when he was murdered. The police did nothing in this case either, and the two mothers decided to act. They left the northern city of Haifa and embarked on a 100 mile march to Jerusalem with a handful of supporters in what became known as Mothers for Life Movement.
“At first we were about 15 people,” Bilal told me. “Then gradually more and more people joined.” Knesset member Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint Arab List along with other Palestinian members of the Knesset joined as well. “Towards the end, we were more than one hundred people marching.”
With the exception of one night when the marchers were invited to stay with Israeli Jews on a Kibbutz, they were welcomed by Palestinian communities along the way as heroes and that was where slept and ate. With just a water supply truck and an ambulance, they march almost half the length of the country, carrying a message that they would not be silent in the face of the State’s callousness.
The Israeli press was notified of the march and was told that several parliamentarians were marching. Their response, according to Bilal, was that “This is not a news item, Israelis don’t want to see Arabs on their screen,” so there was no coverage in the Israeli press. Consequently, there was no international coverage either.
Then, on the final day of the march, the demonstrators reached Jerusalem and asked for an audience with the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin. Rivlin received three of the mothers, the two initiators along with Fardus Habib, who lost her daughter Arub. Arub was a 15-year old and a gifted musician from a town near Nazareth. She was run over by gangs racing their cars through town. The meeting with the President did garner media attention in the Israeli press.
Numbers speak for themselves
In 2019, there were 138 murder cases throughout the state of Israel. Out of those, 93 were Palestinian citizens of Israel, a community that makes up only 20 percent of Israeli citizens. Gil’ad Erdan, Israel’s former Minister of Internal Security, who is in charge of the Israeli police, stated in an interview that, these high numbers of murder cases are the result of a “violent culture.” “Palestinians society” according to Erdan, who is slated to be Israel’s incoming ambassador to Washington, “is very, very, very, a thousand times very, violent. These are cultural codes.” This claim, not uncommon among Israelis, is easily refuted.
Three million Palestinian live in the West Bank, almost double the number of Palestinian citizens of Israel. In that same year, 2019, there were 28 murder cases within that community. Racist arguments always fall by the wayside once the facts are brought to light. The simple fact is that Israel makes it very easy for criminals to purchase and sell weapons and drugs within that community, and that police do not intervene, as long as there are no Israeli Jewish casualties.
Aida Touma-Sliman, another member of Knesset that joined the march, is also a member of the Joint Arab List and in a piece she wrote for the progressive Hebrew publication, Mekomit, writes that women are rarely involved in crime in this community, nor do they carry weapons. “However,” she adds, “the women are the ones left to care for the family once the men are murdered. The women need to care for the wounded and injured survivors.” She calls this march “a cry to all women to join the struggle,” a struggle to end the senseless killing of innocents.
Arabs killing Arabs
The mothers’ march was initiated by women who lost what was most dear to them. The way in which they turned their grief into action is courageous and awe-inspiring. The response of the State of Israel and Israeli society, however, is sad and pathetic. For Israel, any Palestinian that is killed without the State having to spend money on a bullet is a bonus. In this case, these are mostly Palestinian criminals killing one another with bystanders getting caught in the middle.
At the end of the march, Rivlin sat with the mothers and listened to them. Rivlin is a racist Zionist, a right-wing neo-fascist. In 2015, he attended the funeral of Moshe Levinger, a man that headed the Israeli assault on Hebron and helped build the violent, racist Kiryat Arba settlement. Levinger was a vicious, violent leader of the “Religious Zionist” movement. He led the push to build Jewish-only colonies throughout the West Bank. His movement has cultivated some of the most fanatic, violent settlers, an entire community that views terrorizing Palestinians as a religious calling.
During his eulogy to Levinger, Rivlin said, “It is hard for us to say goodbye to you,” referring to the deceased Levinger. Rivlin, in his role as president, is the symbol of the State of Israel. He will do nothing to stop the killing, the racism, or the forced expulsion of Palestinians. Violence against the Palestinian people will only end when Zionism is brought down, when the land is decolonized and when Palestine is free.
Feature photo | Arab mothers from the Mothers for Life Movement march for the sixth day to call attention to Israeli inaction in their children’s murder cases. Photo | Sikkuy via Twitter
Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”
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