Israeli Press
Haaretz says Israel's leniency for Hadalin's killer sustains a chain of violence
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
The killing of Awdah Hadalin could have been prevented, and the lenient charge against the settler who shot him extends the chain of violence that killed him, the Israeli daily Haaretz argued Friday in its lead editorial.
Yinon Levi shot the beloved teacher and activist from Umm al-Khair, the editorial recounted, yet prosecutors announced he will face only reckless killing — among the lightest homicide charges, carrying at most twelve years — after he walked free from detention within a day of the shooting.
The paper turned the comparison on its own state. Most files opened over nationalist crimes against Palestinians close without indictment, it wrote, and no Palestinian suspected of killing a Jew could imagine investigation on such terms.
Even Hadalin's mourning was policed: a Border Police unit broke into last month's memorial and ordered everyone out within five minutes, the editorial noted. A month after the killing, settlers planted caravans beside the school whose construction Hadalin was filming when Levi shot him.
The editorial set the case inside the week's record — settlers burned homes in Tuba in Masafer Yatta on Thursday, injuring six Palestinians including four children, after similar attacks near Nablus days earlier.
Justice for Hadalin, the paper concluded, means protecting his family and village, stopping settler violence, and above all ending the occupation that taught Israelis his life was cheap.
