Tamara Nassar, The Electronic Intifada, 25 April 2018
Israeli lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich published a tweet on 21 April calling for a Palestinian child prisoner to be shot.
Smotrich wrote that he was “very sad” that Ahed Tamimi is in jail because she “should have gotten a bullet, at least in the kneecap.”
“That would have put her under house arrest for the rest of her life,” the lawmaker added, according to the newspaper Haaretz.
Smotrich is a member of the extreme right-wing nationalist party Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home).
He has advocated a plan for the expulsion of Palestinians that a noted Israeli Holocaust expert has described as potentially genocidal.
That expert also said that Smotrich’s values resemble those of the Nazi SS.
Smotrich was responding to Israeli journalist Yinon Magal, who wrote, according to Haaretz, “I’m watching this clip again and I am so glad that Tamimi is still in jail. Sometimes, it’s good that the mill of justice grinds slowly.”
Magal tweeted a video that appears to show Ahed Tamimi confronting armed Israeli occupation soldiers on a different occasion from the one for which she was arrested last December.
Twitter temporarily suspended Smotrich’s account and the tweet was deleted.
But Smotrich said that he “stands behind every word in that tweet,” insisting that deterrence is “attained through a balance of terror which is based on our capabilities, on draconian and disproportionate punishment – house demolitions, deportation of families, etc.”
Islam Maraqa is a Palestinian activist and electrical worker from Hebron. He has been a human rights activist since the second Intifada, in 2003, when Israeli military forces closed his university. Since then he has founded and been an active member of many groups.
Joe Catron went to Palestine’s Gaza Strip in March 2011, on the first international solidarity delegation to cross the Rafah border after the fall of Egypt’s Mubarak government, and lived there through October 2014. Over three and a half years in the besieged coastal enclave, he accompanied farmers and fishermen in Israeli-enforced access-restricted areas, joined popular protests along Israel’s separation barrier, supported campaigns in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners, and assisted local organizations through editing and training. 
