Darren Ell/Demotix. All rights reserved.
The death of an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler in an arson attack on 31 July was wrenching evidence of the dangers faced by Palestinian children. Some Israeli officials, like education minister Naftali Bennett, are pretending that the problem is just a “tiny group” of Jewish extremists who “represent nobody but themselves.” In fact, those extremists are enabled by Israel’s culture of impunity for settler violence, and abetted by Israel’s unlawful military policies. Palestinian kids are suffering the result.
Israeli leaders have promised to bring Ali Dawabshe’s killers to justice—echoing the promise they made last year after Israeli extremists burned to death 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Abu Khdeir’s killers are on trial, and a Jewish Israeli suspected of other violence is in administrative detention—the form of detention without charge or trial that Israel has inflicted on thousands of Palestinians.
