Arab fathers don't mourn?

The State of Israel's security policy is based on a worldview according to which everything is kosher in order to prevent its citizens from being harmed.

When decision-makers are faced with a choice between taking risks and maintaining a hint of humanity, and utilizing strict rules that keep Palestinian citizens from any possible contact with Israelis? The State chooses to adopt a tough, merciless approach that makes no distinction between potential fighters with violent intentions and a public that yearns for a daily routine, including health and education services, family visits, job opportunities, and the protection of personal assets such as a home, fields, olive trees, etc.

Through its soldiers, officials, governors, and representatives, the State runs an occupation regime (that some time ago was even referred to as "enlightened",) which prevents Palestinians from moving freely within their areas. It also makes it difficult, at times severely so, to enjoy health services during emergencies and features arbitrary delays at roadblocks; it requires students to walk every day, twice a day, through unreasonable routes, just so they can reach their school through the gates of the separation wall; and it prevents the protection of assets and crops in the face of violence and abusive settler intentions.

Yet the State does not make do with the occupation regime, which is taking on an increasingly more evil character; it also doesn't' believe in reasonable neighborly relations between the suppressed and subjugated of Palestine and the Israeli masters of the land; it does not encourage mutually moderate relations between the two populations, which are interfaced, but rather, chooses arbitrary separation at residential areas and agricultural land, along roads, and in the daily contacts between the masters of the land and the "tainted," who have no rights and see their lives managed based on the arbitrary decisions of military officials, settlers, and Israeli public opinion.

Only sensitive to our own victims

Yet this is nothing compared to the latest display of evil by occupation authorities and the Israeli legal system. First, soldiers shot ? With cold blood and without a permit ? A 14-year-old girl, and later they prevented her father, who is detained in Israel on suspicion of illegally entering the country and stealing cars, to mourn her death with his relatives at her funeral.

We of all people, the people of Zion, developed extra sensitivity to bereavement and the loss of children through the ongoing war. We sanctify the stories of terror attacks and murdered children in all media outlets, because we really do care, and are saddened and hurting. Yet as far as we are concerned pain, sadness, and fair treatment are only designated for the "chosen people"; We have no compassion for a Palestinian family, whose daughter died only because it got too close to the separation fence.

The soldier who fired as a result of "a judgment error" has been suspended and will likely soon spend some time with his friends at a pub, unless he has already done so in the past weekend. Yet Nasser Abdul Kader, Dua's father, will continue spending time at the Abu Kabir detention center ? after all, he's a Palestinian "illegal alien" lacking any human rights in our law-abiding country.

Anyone who still has humanity left in his heart must get up and scream: That's enough! We must get up and protest the indifference that has spread to all layers of society, including the justice system; we must cry out with pain over the continuing deaths of children in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We must not stand on the sidelines and silently legitimize such terrible deeds.

Dr. Yona Bargur belongs to the Israeli-Palestinian bereaved families' forum for peace, reconciliation, and tolerance