Opinion

Stone that killed a mother

October 20, 2018

ALTHOUGH a gag order has been placed on the case, there has been no shortage of outpouring of grief for Aisha Rabi, the Palestinian mother of eight killed by a stone most likely thrown by a settler.

Yakoub Rabi was driving with his wife Aisha after dark along a main road near the Palestinian city of Nablus. He could not see who pelted the car with a stone and he lost control and crashed. Reports have differed on whether Aisha was killed by the crash or by the stone itself. Yakoub has said the rock hit his wife directly in the head and was the cause of her death. Yakoub said he heard people he believes were responsible speaking Hebrew. Although authorities have not ruled out the possibility that a group of Palestinian stone-throwers mistook Rabi’s vehicle for that of an Israeli, the Shin Bet suggested the incident was suspected of being an act of terror carried out by area settlers.

Yakoub took his wife to the hospital and one can only imagine the horror drive as his wife lay covered with blood and their nine-year-old daughter screaming and weeping seeing her mother dying. To no-one’s surprise, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called it “an ugly crime” perpetrated by settlers, while UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nikolay Mladenov condemned the incident. But it was surprising to see the US Jerusalem Consulate urge in a tweet that the perpetrators be brought to justice, and Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Mideast peace and who is not a friend of Palestinians whatsoever, call the incident “reprehensible”. The twin comments from the US made no mention of claims the assailants may have been Israeli, however, the real possibility that Israelis were the perpetrators — the killing was obviously unintentional if a Palestinian threw the stone — made such statements all the more remarkable.

Not everybody was on Aisha Rabi’s side. Tourism Minister Yariv Levin downplayed the incident, criticizing left-wing activists for blaming Jewish settlers, and saying they were basing their accusations on a “scrap of an incident”. Israelis take it very seriously when Palestinians throw stones at them. The Israeli penal code treats stone throwing as a felony, with a maximum penalty of up to 20 years for throwing stones at people and a maximum of 10 years for stoning cars. Fines are imposed on the parents of minors caught throwing stones. In some cases the house of the youth’s parents is demolished. In Israel, there is a legal equivalence between rocks and military weapons when the Palestinian is the culprit but when an Israeli throws a stone at a Palestinian, leading to death, it is a “scrap of an incident”.

In eastern Michigan in the US, though separated by 6,000 miles from the West Bank, another group of teenagers succeeded in murdering a driver who happened to be passing by. In both cases, the attackers had one thing in common — their choice of weapon: they both used rocks. The Michigan prosecutor did not treat rock throwing as if it’s child’s play. The five assailants were tried as adults, not juveniles, charged with second-degree murder, not vandalism or mischief.

Levin said Palestinians think they have the right to throw stones because Israel is the occupier. Obviously, that is a situation where power-equivalency is lacking because of the non-accessibility of weapons in the hands of the people. Stones are deployed against Israeli soldiers who are armed to the teeth. Palestinians see the stone as a way of expressing their defiance while Israel justifies its use of weaponry as legitimate in international law, criminalizing stone throwing as a threat to the security of an occupying state.

When a 47-year-old Palestinian mother of eight is killed by a stone thrown by an Israeli, then Israel must bring down the full weight of its own laws.


October 20, 2018
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