“Palestinians could not perform the roof-throwing of a gay man properly, and had no choice but to kidnap the Palestinian man from inside Israel, drag him back to Palestinian-controlled territory, and behead him.”
Ramallah, October 9 – Human rights groups and Palestinian officials lashed out today at a longstanding Israeli policy of destroying the houses of Palestinians convicted of deadly terrorist attacks against Israelis, this time emphasizing the cultural genocide inherent in reducing the number of structures at which to perform the cherished local rite of casting suspected homosexuals to their deaths.
Amnesty International, Btselem, Human Rights Watch, and several other organizations issued a joint statement Thursday decrying the demolition policy, which they have criticized hundreds of times over the last several decades. This time, however, the groups adopted a different angle, making brief obligatory references to the “Apartheid” and “collective punishment” tropes that has become the organizations’ bread and butter, and focusing instead on the deplorable Israeli suppression of indigenous Palestinian culture that the demolition policy represents.
“This outrageous practice drips with racist Islamophobia,” the statement read. “Muslims across the Middle East and beyond have for many centuries preserved their custom of casting deviants from the tops of buildings. Israel, however, in its zeal to cleanse the Occupied Palestinian Territories of those who stand in the way of Jewish supremacist expansionism, deprives traditional Palestinians of the venues where this sacred ritual would take place.”
“The lengths to which the brutal policies of occupation force Palestinians to go to perform even an approximation of this important ritual,” the statement continued, “came to light just recently, when Palestinians could not perform the roof-throwing of a gay man properly, and had no choice but to kidnap the Palestinian man from inside Israel, drag him back to Palestinian-controlled territory, and behead him. Israel’s suppression has wrought havoc with the traditional Palestinian way of life.” The statement referred to the lynching two weeks ago of Ahmed Abu Maria of Hebron, abducted from Tel Aviv, where an unknown number of Palestinians have sought refuge from the life-threatening homophobia rampant in Palestinian society.
Despite annexing some areas captured in 1967 from Jordan and Syria, Israel left most of the territory beyond the 1949 armistice lines under Israeli military rule; the military applies – in this case – Jordanian laws that permit house demolitions as punitive measures. Israel has faced numerous accusations that the practice amounts to excessive or collective punishment, but Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the policy adheres to legal constraints and has a proven deterrent effect on terrorism; multiple Palestinian families have turned relatives in to the IDF, knowing that the relative’s terrorist ambitions put the family home at risk.
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