Not a single Israeli outlet covered the incident.
The Israeli army shot an 11-year-old Palestinian boy in the head with a rubber bullet Monday night during a raid on Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that the child was evacuated in a moderate condition to Israel’s Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem after Israeli forces shot him in the forehead with a rubber-coated steel bullet.
According to Ma’an News Agency, the boy was one of three Palestinians wounded by rubber bullets after Israeli forces entered the camp, leading to clashes with local youth. The boy was evacuated to Hadassah Medical Center. Two other Palestinians, including a 60-year-old man, were also wounded by rubber bullets. Ma’an reported that an Israeli police spokesperson said he was “not familiar” with the incident.
This is certainly not the first time Israeli forces have shot and severely wounded Palestinian children with riot dispersal weapons. In December 2014, Israeli troops shot five-year-old Muhammad Jamal Ubeid with a sponge-tipped bullet as he was stepping off a school bus near his home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. In May 2015, Jerusalem Police shot a 10-year-old boy in the eye during clashes in Shuafat refugee camp. In November 2016, 15-year-old Fares Bayed was shot in the head by a rubber bullet outside Jalazun refugee camp in the West Bank. He remained in a vegetative state for several months until he died in a Ramallah hospital. There are countless other examples.
Israelis rarely hear about such stories because the media tends not to give them much prominence. In the case of Monday night’s shooting, not a single Israeli outlet covered the incident. Can anyone imagine the same kind of radio silence had the roles been reversed and it were a Palestinian who shot an 11-year-old Israeli child in the head with a rubber bullet?
h/t Idan Landau
