The Murder of Faith

Mantiq al-Tayr

Iman al-Hams 1. Iman is a great Arabic word to ponder. It means "Faith" and faith is what so much of life if all about. Faith is also a girl’s name in Arabic, just like it is in English. I remember well back in 1994 when Iman (Faith) al-Hams was brutally murdered by the Israeli military. It was a horrible event and the Israeli response was just so awful that it deserves to be resurrected. Below is a comment posted to the Mantiq al-Tayr site today in response to Obama’s meeting with the Jewish Lobby. The comment references in considerable detail the murder of Iman al-Hams and we here at Mantiq al-Tayr believe that the comment, posted by "Freeman", is a fitting tribute to her memory and to the memory of all the Palestinian children murdered by Israel. It is not milk for babes, so please make sure you have a tissue handy. Here is a photograph of Faith, the 15 year old girl murdered by an Israeli soldier. The Israeli soldier who murdered her was promoted. May God have mercy on her soul. 2. Here is Freeman’s post in its entirety. I do not really think that Obama and his guests from the 16 Jewish Organizations actually heard of the above 'incidents’ of Jewish justice in the Jewish State reported by Ha’aretz , although they may just keep a watchful eye or two on this business of investigations into possible war crimes committed by the Army of the Jewish State ('AJS’, for short, since IDF is a misnomer) during the Gaza War. Keep a watchful eye -yes, but loose sleep over it, no. The drill for de-sticking the AJS of feven the stickiest of criminal investigations is well rehearsed . The machinery is well oiled both inside the Jewish state and internationally so that it is 'easy’ now to dive and duck and twist all 'evidence’ and eventually nothing will ever stick to the Teflon AJS. Yet, I can safely bet that there is one name, which is connected to a distant AJS 'incident’, and which most if not all of the Jewish reps will be familiar with. I can equally bet that Obama did not hear of that name or of the incident concerning it. It happened 15 years ago this October. Probably he was too otherwise engaged to notice it. But definitely not his guests- no matter how otherwise engaged they may have been, they know the name very well even if they were only "three years old" at the time. I place the words "three years old" in quotation marks because they are not my own words. They are part of an infamous statement related to the incident. The complete version of the quote is engraved in my own memory and they will stay there. The name is Iman Darweesh Al Hams, aged 13 who was shot 17 sometimes while wounded laying face down on the ground, by "Captain R" of the AJS in Rafah, Gaza, on October 15th 1994. Captain R radioed back to his unit walking away from the body of Iman: "This is commander. Anything that’s mobile, that moves in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed. Over." The Jewish Captain R went through no less than 2 Jewish internal investigations plus a Jewish Military Tribunal over a period of two years following the 'incident’. The Jewish verdict: Promotion to the rank of major and compensation in the amount of 83,000 shekels. It was not just full acquittal, but the Jewish Justice just had to throw in promotion and compensation, for good measure. The medal was withheld, strangely enough. I strongly believe that the Jewish reps who met with Obama know this incident extremely well, even those of them who were still sucking Jewish milk from their moms’ Jewish nipples at the time. That was exactly the kind of incident which would rattle an American Jewish activist to the very core of his being whether he or she fully backed or was completely against Captain- well, now Major R. "…..even if it is 3 years old……needs to be killed. Over." This is so bad that it is even worse than the Mohammad Durrah affair, the child who was shot almost in his own father’s arms. It is bad bad bad, not necessarily because of the pathologically criminal nature of the act, but definitely because it is the sort of thing which is bad bad bad for the image of the Jewish State and the Representatives of the Jewish Organizations in America will need to spend so much time and so much effort to 'Teflon-ise’ this one off the AJS. They ALL must have had to chip in then. I can also safely bet (if I was a betting person, which I am not) that the case of Iman Al Hams and Captain R- now Major R – of the Teflon AJS became a text book case study for the Organizations on what went 'wrong 'and how to handle it again in the future. No no no, don’t get me wrong!!! The lesson was not how to avoid killing Palestinian Arab civilians, but rather, how to carry on killing them in LARGE numbers, equally brutally, and get away with it with no less effort than wiping off cooking oil off a Teflon pan. It worked. More than 1300 hundred people half of whom were women and children were killed by the AJS in Gaza in just above three weeks, and not a word from Obama about it then, and not a word from him now. To use a bit of the Manteq al-Tayr logic: if (for example) a Lebanese army officer shot a wounded Jewish Israeli girl of 13, who was running "scared to death" having blundered across some invisible line on the ground, and was already 'taken’ by a Lebanese army gun post and dropped on her face bleeding – if the Lebanese officer approached her with his soldiers, shot her at least twice in the head in order to 'verify the kill’ as a 'standard procedure’, walked away and then walked back and riddled her dead body with another dozen or so shots from his gun…. AND.. . if this Lebanese officer got promoted and received compensation after an extended multiple enquiry by the Lebanese military and by the Lebanese State…..then, WHO in this whole wide world will appoint the Lebanese as chiefs of staff and advisers and receive the reps of the Lebanese Organizations in their country and wear the Lebanese red fez (tarboush) to show their deep affinity [Aah wallah ya a’7i MT , 3urwa wuthqa, no less!] to Lebanon? Obama may never have heard of Iman, or of the two Ha’aretz 'incidents’ above, but there is no doubt whatsoever that he did hear of Gaza and the HUNDREDS of children who were bombed out of existence last December and January by the very same Teflon AJS- and yet he expects Palestinian Arabs to actually join him in crediting Israel for, "…..recent steps including opening up roads and providing more access for Palestinians in the West Bank." Waow! Iman died almost fifteen years ago, and I never heard of her before that. As it turned out, Iman actually started living inside me, since October 5th, 2004. She never left me since then…and she will be 15, come next October. Iman sends a message to Mr. Obama: Iman says that if she is to follow his logic in attributing credit to the Jewish State, then Israel deserves credit for nothing less than NOT machine gunning 300 Palestinians everyday at point blanc. THAT is truly credit worthy for Israel, Iman says. Salam