The first moments following the release of Dima Al-Wawi, considered to have been the youngest Palestinian incarcerated by Israel, were disseminated for the whole world to observe, along with perfunctory reports that should have had the entire world seething with outrage.
Al-Wawi had been accused of a stabbing attempt and convicted by Israel’s military courts of attempted murder, after she pleaded guilty under the conditions of a plea bargain. The underlying motive behind Al-Wawi’s arrest is the crackdown upon Palestinian minors within the context of the current uprising, after weeks of Israeli state and settler incitement. The post-Oslo generation has not exhibited the same complacency characterising previous generations hence the Israeli efforts at stifling resistance, be it through extrajudicial killings, mass incarceration, the detention of minors and fabricated narratives.
As usual, contradictions abound. In this case, the discrepancies between language and visual depiction are horrendous. Instead of Al-Wawi’s release providing an opportunity to insist upon an elimination of Israel’s impunity, the media has glorified Israel to the point of benevolence. Linguistically, the substitution of “released” for “freed” in some news reports constituted a manipulation of fact. There is no freedom in the concept of release when it comes to Israel’s military courts and jails. Like other Palestinian political prisoners who struck a deal with Israel following lengthy protests after being subjected to severe human rights violations, Al-Wawi’s return to her family is the result of her defence team asking for her early release.
It is ethically absurd to even accept the juxtaposition of Al-Wawi’s vacant stare in the first photographs narrating her first meeting with her family away from jail, alongside reports that credit Israel for her return, without the slightest shard of indignation at the colonial enterprise that smothered her freedom. This should have been even more pronounced when there is an abundance of research and reports pointing towards the routine practice of torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including minors, in Israeli jails.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Al-Wawi described the humiliating and violent behaviour she experienced upon her arrest. “When the Israeli soldiers arrested me, they kicked me a lot. One of the soldiers kicked me hard in my back.” Al-Wawi also stated that the humiliating behaviour continued during interrogation when psychological tactics were applied as a form of coercion. “There were like five men questioning me at the same time, it was confusing … They were screaming at me angrily and then laughing as if I was a joke, all of them.”
The reports, however, opted for a vague inscription that eliminated all contexts from Al-Wawi’s experience, normalising Israel’s macabre torture tactics in the process. There is an absence of thought that renders humanitarian consciousness negligible – an omission which is reflected in the alienation from the political ramifications of Israel’s colonial brutality. Al-Wawi represents her own experience and is also a reflection of the other Palestinian minors who have been incarcerated by Israel, tortured and deprived of the slightest humane gesture. If anything, this sliver of Palestinian narrative should serve as a reminder of how an opportunity was squandered in silence, even as Al-Wawi’s eyes revealed an inscription usually confined to shelved reports.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.