Israel Just Killed a Pregnant Palestinian Woman – And Western Media Doesn’t Care
How many Palestinian women and children have to be killed in the occupied West Bank before anyone in the US or UK gives a damn?
“To my unborn child, with you, I will become a mother for the first time. I can’t believe how quickly this pregnancy has passed and how you have grown quietly within my womb, waiting for my first joy.”
These were what would tragically turn out to be the last words posted online by Sundus Shalabi, who was eight months pregnant. Early on Sunday morning, the 23-year-old Palestinian mother-to-be was killed by the Israeli military in the Nur Shams refugee camp, on the outskirts of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, in what the Palestinian Foreign Ministry is calling a “crime of execution” and the targeting of “defenseless civilians.”
Shalabi and her husband Yazan Abu Shola were shot in their car, with her husband critically injured. Their unborn child was also killed in the attack. “Medical teams were unable to save the baby's life due to the [Israeli] occupation preventing the transfer of the injured to the hospital," said a statement from the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah.
Got that? The Israelis shot and killed an innocent young woman and then caused the death of her unborn baby, too.
Shocking, right? Depraved? Murderous? And yet, as of Monday morning, there was no mention of Sundus Shalabi on the websites of the New York Times or the BBC, and only passing, brief, buried references to her death on the websites of the Washington Post and CNN.
Also over the weekend, three Israeli hostages were released by Hamas, looking “gaunt and sunken-eyed.” Compare and contrast the coverage they received in the Western media with Shalabi. There were multiple and lengthy stories about their plight in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and the BBC. One of the headlines on the BBC website on Sunday night? “What will anger at sight of gaunt hostages mean for a fragile ceasefire?”
Really? Gaunt hostages? How about the anger from Palestinians at the non-stop killing of women and children during this “fragile ceasefire”? Or do Palestinian lives not matter?
Shalabi wasn’t the only young Palestinian who was killed in the West Bank on Sunday. The Health Ministry reported that a 21-year-old woman, Rahaf Fouad Abdullah al-Ashqar, was also killed by Israeli occupying forces inside her home. When asked by AFP about these killings, the Israeli military said, “An investigation was opened by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division.” These investigations tend to go… nowhere.
In the meantime, the Israelis can continue their “Operation Iron Wall” and other so-called “anti-terror” raids, which, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, have killed more than 70 Palestinians, including at least 10 children, since the start of the year and also displaced an astonishing 26,000 people from their homes.
Remember: all of this is happening in the West Bank, not Gaza. There is no ‘October 7th’ excuse for any of this brutal Israeli violence – from soldiers and settlers.
Last month, 2-year-old Laila al-Khatib was killed by the Israeli military inside her home in the village of Ash-Shuhada, just south of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. She was shot in the head.
If Laila had been an Israeli baby shot in the head by Hamas fighters, we would all know her name and face would have been plastered on newspaper front pages across the United States and the United Kingdom. If Shalabi had been an Israeli mother-to-be killed, along with her unborn child, by Islamic Jihad fighters, her story would be leading the news on cable channels across the West.
But they’re Palestinians. They’re unpeople. They don’t count.
Despite the recent flurry of coverage of Donald Trump’s endorsement of ethnic cleansing in the Middle East, much of the Western media has begun to ‘move on’ from the Gaza story in the wake of the so-called “ceasefire.”
Unlike other news organizations, however, Zeteo will not be turning a blind eye to Israeli atrocities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We will not be succumbing to “Gaza fatigue” or focusing only on the ongoing Trump outrages here in the United States.
We will not be ‘moving on.’
In fact, here are just some of the exclusive and important stories, interviews, and videos we have published on Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank since the beginning of this year - with your financial support.
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Peter Beinart on ‘Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza’
Peter Beinart is one of America’s leading Jewish columnists and political commentators. A former editor of The New Republic, he was once a supporter of the Iraq war and an ardent Zionist. But now, Beinart has questioned many of his previous positions and is a prominent voice for Palestinian liberation.
I have many relatives in Israel, most descended from Holocaust and Stalin survivors who somehow made their way to Israel. There was a time when I felt connected to them, but that feeling has gotten weaker with time and distance and the ongoing Israeli activities against Arabs. Nothing can break up a relationship as easily as massive, wanton murder.
It's sickening to hear this and it's not the first time, it's been going on for more than a year or should I say for more than 70 years since the illegal occupation of Palestine. Why would US or UK care about this, they gave the illegitimate birth to Israel.