12. November 2005 · Comments Off on A Ray Of Light Through The Damnable Darkness · Categories: GWOT, Israel & Palestine

This from Scott Wilson at WaPo:

JENIN, West Bank — A photo of a slightly smiling Ahmed Khatib has joined the martyr posters on the walls of the refugee camp here. But the 12-year-old boy is shown cradling a guitar instead of the assault rifles brandished in the grim tributes around him. A large red question mark appears at the bottom.

“Why the Palestinian children are killed?” it asks in stilted English.


Ahmed Khatib

Ahmed Khatib, 12, was fatally shot by Israeli
soldiers on Nov. 3. (AP photo)


Ismail Khatib and his wife, Abla, have offered a response that has drawn praise from Israeli leaders and challenged Palestinians in this cramped refugee camp, a focal point of Israeli-Palestinian violence for years.

Ahmed, the couple’s son, was shot twice last week by Israeli soldiers in what the military said was a mistake made during the heat of street fighting near their house. The boy had been holding a toy gun. He died two days later in an Israeli hospital, and the Khatibs made the surprising choice of allowing his organs to be harvested for transplant to Israelis.

Six people, including five Israeli Jews, have received the boy’s heart, lungs, liver and kidneys since then. The recipients range from a 58-year-old woman to a 7-month-old girl, who died two days ago after failing to recover from surgery that gave her half of Ahmed’s liver. The rest are recovering.

I don’t think enough praise can be lavished on Ismail and Abla Khatib, for seeing past their own grief and the hatred teeming all around them.

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