In response to:                                                                                                                   

An 8-year prison sentence for a soldier who killed an unarmed British peace-activist  Haaretz daily, August 12, 2005

 On Friday, March 28, 2003, I saw soldiers at Checkpoint Qalandiya shoot at children running away from them. 14-year old Omar Matar was hit by a live bullet in his neck, was brain-dead for a week, then died. Is the soldier who shot the unarmed, fleeing Omar Matar sitting in jail? No. For he is a soldier in the Occupation forces. And the Occupation ask its soldiers to murder. Look at the results. It happens like punctuation, it happens unpunished. It does not change. If they were not required to make this happen, it would not happen. If soldiers thought this was bad, wrong, or contrary to the rules, officially or unofficially, even in their mind, or if they would be seriously punished, or frowned upon, they would not do this with the malignant ease in which they do. As in anything. Were Palestinian lives worthy of sparing, they would not die like flies. It happens because this is wanted. Or because it doesn't matter. Which amounts to the same thing.

So why am I not happy when a soldier is charged with murder, actually termed manslaughter, and yes, these are only 8 years, a light and exasperating price, but still unprecedented. Perhaps it means that the state has changed, perhaps the murder of Omar Matar and all the rest is no longer the norm?

Nothing has changed. The soldier who murdered Tom Hurndall was Bedouin, and the victim British. And that is the difference. In other words, Tom Hurndall was not Palestinian, and the soldier not Jewish. That is all.

What soldier Tyasir al-Heb has done is by no means an exception, or extraordinary. Special is only his ethnic identity, and as we know anyway, in this 'Jewish and democratic', laws differ according to race, the right to possession differs according to race, civil rights differ according to race, punishment differs according to race, roads differ according to race, the right to live differs according to race, so in this case, too. The army's scapegoat, its exception to the rule so that policy will be upheld as is, differs according to race. The occasional bad guy is Bedouin. How unsurprising. A minority member. An Arab. He's the exception anyway, not the rule.

He's one of 'them'.

Thanks to the conviction of Bedouin soldier Tyasir al-Heb, 'our' soldiers will go on murdering nameless Palestinians, unhindered.

                                                                                                         Translated by Tal Haran