THE HEADLINE READS: Palestinian boy's death ignites blood libel firestorm on Twitter.
A sad event made worse by inciters and people not even on the same continent!
Let the death be investigated by both Israeli and PLO authorities and then everyone will know how the child died.
ACCORDING TO ISRAEL HAYOM (https://tinyurl.com/qsbqx9a), The body of 8-year-old Qais Abu-Ramila was found in a flooded reservoir on Saturday.
Read that sentence carefully.
“was found in a flooded reservoir.”
Tragic.
"We demand the police check security footage [from street cameras]. If it turns out he was kidnapped by settlers it would set the entire neighborhood on fire," Ma’ariv quoted a member of the boy's family as saying after it was thought that there was footage of the boy entering a car and possibly being kidnaped, the media reported.
I can understand why grieving relatives would “demand” something.
Moreover, the demand to check security footage [from street cameras] is reasonable, and one hopes this already has been accomplished.
Meanwhile, Hanan Ashara of the PLO Executive Committee, jumps on the the Jews did it soap box only later admitting in a follow-up tweet that My apologies for retweeting something that’s not fully verified. It seems that the news of his being kidnapped is not certain.(https://tinyurl.com/sthmand)
No one, so far, ever said the child was kidnapped. It was suggested this might be the case and the family demanded that cameras be checked.
Meanwhile, one of America’s most prominent congressional Jew haters and Israel bashers, Rashida Tlaib, re-tweeted Ashrawi's post, only to also delete it when it was apparent that the child was not kidnapped. No apology or back-tracking by this bigot, unlike Ashara of the PLO Executive Committee.
Israel HaYom reports that Former British Labour MP George Galloway, though, has yet to delete or apologize for his tweet asserting that the young boy was killed.
In a tweet now pinned to the top of his Twitter page, Galloway wrote, "This child, aged 7, has just been fished out of a well dead in Jerusalem Murdered by illegal Israeli settlers. Will anyone in power cry with his mother and father today? Will anyone check this evil rampage against the people of Palestine? Anyone?"
When did Tlaib or Galloway — continents away from Israel — investigate the death?
Galloway, instigating hate, tweeted that the child has just been fished out of a well dead in Jerusalem Murdered by illegal Israeli settlers.
Well?
I thought the child died in a flooded reservoir on Saturday.
Obviously Galloway never lets facts interfere with his bigotry.
TO THIS SCRIVENER’S mind, the incident should be investigated, by BOTH Israeli and PLO officials working together. Cooperation is possible; it happens frequently and, as long as bigots — on all sides — are kept at bay, cooperation seems to get things done to everyone’s satisfaction.
Certainly, check cameras.
Go house to house looking for witnesses.
Find the boy’s playmates and ask them if he, or they, were planning on going to the reservoir.
A handful of youngsters die every year around the world by swimming where they ought not to swim. All the children are not Arabs, nor are they Jews, nor Orientals, nor WASPS, nor blacks — they just are children who surrender to the temptation of a pond, a lake, a river, or a reservoir.
Perhaps the child WAS kidnapped, and if he was, why not by an Arab? Why automatically blame a Jew? Knee-jerk — and the emphasis is on “jerk” — reaction.
I learned many years ago to reserve judgment until all the facts are available; I sat in too many felony trials where the prosecutor convinced juriors, and me, too, that the defendant was guilty, guilty, guilty.
But when the defense presented its case, the jurors and I often had a change of opinion.
Perhaps the boy was kidnapped — albeit there seems no eviudence of that so far — or perhaps the temptation of a swim in the reservoir was too much for the boy and it cost him his life.
Will Israel HaYom follow up with the results of an investigation?
Probably not, but it should, if only to help put out the flames of incitement.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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