In January 2023 alone, 35 Palestinian people were murdered by either the so-called Israeli ‘Defence Force’ (IDF) or by the even more bloodthirsty (if that is possible) zionist settler movement, a horrific fact that was marked mostly by its near total absence from the TV and newspaper reports emitting from within the multiheaded imperialist western media leviathan. While many of these were young people, and six were under 18, meaning they can only be described as children.
Because they are hidden by our media, we have decided to name the slaughtered Palestinians who died in January 2023 and give some brief details of their ages, as well as the place and method of their murder by the zionist occupation forces.
Zionism’s slow-grinding genocide machine never takes a holiday
Mohammed Samar Hoshiyeh, 22, and Fouad Mohammed Abed, 17, were the first victims. They were shot dead on 2 January after IDF troops raided the village of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin, to carry out a demolition of a Palestinian family’s home.
Adam Essam Ayyad, 15, was shot by Israeli forces on 3 January during an early morning IDF raid on Dheisheh refugee camp, south of Bethlehem. The raid which was met by groups of local youths, reportedly including Ayyad, who threw stones to resist the heavily armed soldiery.
When the IDF thugs raided the Balata refugee camp in Nablus on 5 January, they shot 16-year-old Amer Abu Zeitoun in the head.
Ahmad Abu Junaid, 21, was shot dead during another raid on Balata refugee camp on 11 January 2023.
Sanad Mohammad Samasra, 19, was shot dead by an Israeli settler after allegedly attempting to stab him on 12 January. The settler, who was at an illegal settlement outpost in Hebron, had a light, non-life-threatening wound, according to Israeli medics.
Habeeb Kameel, 25, was shot in the head, while Abdel Hadi Nazal, 18, was shot in the neck and chest during an Israeli army raid on the village of Qabatiya, south of Jenin, also on 12 January.
Samir Awni Harbi Aslan, 41, was murdered the next day, 13 January, when the IDF shot him in the chest at Qalandia refugee camp on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem. Aslan was unarmed and attempting to protect his son from being arrested by Israeli troops.
Izz Eddin Basem Hamamreh, 24, and Amjad Adnan Khalilieh, 23, were shot in their vehicle near the village of Jabba, south of Jenin on 14 January during a planned IDF assassination operation. The execution was carried out because the two young men were members of the al-Quds Brigades resistance force, armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Yazan Samer al-Jaabari, 19, also died in Jenin on the same day, finally succumbing to gunshot wounds sustained during the IDF home demolition raid that killed the first two victims of 2023 on 2 January.
Ahmed Abdel-Jalil Kahla, 45, was shot dead by IDF soldiers who were manning a temporary checkpoint at the entrance to Silwad, a town in Ramallah, on 15 January. Kahla was being driven by his 18-year-old son Qusai to their construction jobs before they were stopped. During that stop a verbal altercation took place between Kahla and the IDF gunmen. He was forced out of the car, shot in the neck and left to die. The IDF statements on the murder include claims that he was both waving a knife around and that he tried with both hands to grab one of the IDF killer’s guns. Eyewitnesses have denied both these contradictory claims.
Omar Lotfi Khumour, 14, was killed by an IDF hit squad near Bethlehem on 16 January. This young boy was shot in the head during a terror raid on homes in the Dheisheh refugee camp and succumbed to his wounds in hospital later that day.
Hamdi Shaker Abu Dayyeh, 40, was shot dead on 17 January after allegedly opening fire on Israeli troops in the north of Hebron. The Israeli army radio station accused Abu Dayyeh of shooting at IDF soldiers using an improvised submachine gun near an entrance to the town of Halhul. There were certainly no reports of wounded IDF soldiers and no witness accounts of any shooting. The IDF claim that its soldiers tracked him down later that day to shoot and kill him. It has been reported that the IDF would not allow any medics anywhere near Abu Dayyeh (who was a member of the Palestinian Authority security forces) so they could attempt to save his life.
Jawad Farid Bawaqta, 57, and Adham Mohammad Jabarin, 28, were both shot dead in the Jenin refugee camp during an IDF raid on 19 January. Jabarin, who was a senior member of the Jenin Brigades armed group, was shot in the torso during a heavy exchange of gunfire, while Bawaqta (a school teacher and father of six) was shot dead by an IDF sniper while trying to give first aid to Jabarin as he lay wounded outside of Bawaqta’s home.
Tariq Odah Yoused Maali, 42, was shot dead by an Israeli settler on 21 January, after allegedly attempting to stab the Israeli settler at Sde Efraim, an illegal settler outpost on a farm near Ramallah (the accusation was made by an IDF spokesman) but there was no report of any settler being wounded and the only CCTV footage available merely showed a man entering the farm, to be shot dead soon afterwards.
Aref Abdel Nasser Lahlouh, 20, was killed in front of his mother and brother on 25 January in the occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya. According to the IDF version, Lahlouh was shot after attempting a knife attack against a soldier. As usual, no Israelis were reported to be injured and the grieving family of Lahlouh has refuted the official zionist narrative.
Mohammed Ali, 17, was also killed by the IDF on 25 January. He was shot in the chest in occupied East Jerusalem after an Israeli raid on the Shuafat refugee camp. Young Palestinians were throwing stones at departing Israeli vehicles when the IDF soldiers responded with live fire.
Ten Palestinian people were killed in Jenin refugee camp on 26 January, in one of the deadliest Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank in recent years. These martyrs were: Magda Abdel Fattah Obaid, 60, who was inside her home when she was shot in the head and neck during the raid. She was an unarmed civilian who was probably oblivious to the fact that the raid was even happening.
Mohamed Sami Ghonaim, 28; Saib Issam Mahmoud Izriqi, 25; Mohammad Mahmoud Sobh, 34; Nour el-Din Sami Ghonaim, 22; Waseem Amjad al-Jaas, 22; Motasem Mahmoud Abu al-Hasan, 40; Abdallah Marwan al-Ghoul, 18; and Izz Eddin Yassin Salahat, 18, were all killed by IDF gunfire during the raid. Omar Tariq Ali Al-Saadi, 24, who was also shot during the raid, only succumbed to his gunshot wounds three days later on 29 January.
This raid was a surprise massacre. IDF killers entered the camp in a civilian commercial vehicle, drove to a residents’ meeting place and fired murderously in all directions as they poured out of the truck in a manner that guaranteed the highest possible death and injury rate among the Palestinians herded into this ghetto.
Youssef Yahya Abdul Karim Muhaisen, 22, was shot in the abdomen and killed during demonstrations against the Jenin raid that took place later on 26 January in the town of al-Ram, north of Jerusalem. IDF executioners opened fire on those who came out onto the streets to protest.
Wadi Abu Ramouz, 16, died on 27 January after being shot in the abdomen two days earlier during an IDF terror raid on the town of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, despite being unarmed.
Khairy Alqam, 21, was also shot and killed on 27 January when Israeli police trapped and killed him after an exchange of fire. We will talk further of young Khairy Alqam and the heroic exploits that led directly to his death at the hands of the rabid zionist mad dogs a little later on.
Karam Ali Salman, 18, who lived in Qusin village near Nablus (Wafa), was executed in the West Bank province of Qalqilya on 29 January by Israeli settlers. The IDF claimed that a “civilian security team” shot a person “armed with a handgun” near the Kedumim settlement, north of the West Bank. But the Palestinian security sources have said that the killing was in “unclear circumstances” with no witnesses or any reliable evidence.
Nassim Abou Fouda, 26, was shot dead by the IDF in Hebron on 30 January. Fouda had been driving in central Hebron, near the Ibrahim mosque, when Israeli troops at a military checkpoint opened fire on him. The zionist lie machine instantly sprang into action claiming that Fouda had hit a soldier’s leg and tried to speed away. Once more, there were no independent witnesses to back up the IDF claim, not even an injured soldier!
In 2022, more than 170 Palestinians, including at least 30 children, were killed across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The start to 2023 would suggest that these figures will be surpassed this year.
Resistance regaining momentum
Change has already started, however. Palestinians understand that zionism wants to destroy them, their culture, their homes and even their children. There are no words they can speak that will stop the zionist beast from carrying out its desire. There are very few people who have any sway with this heartless entity, and the few who do are totally supportive of the murderous zionist plans to wipe out every memory of the beautiful land of Palestine along with all its people and their dreams.
In these circumstances, fighting back is one of two options: either fight back or die quietly, and watch your family and loved ones die with you. The fact that Palestinians still exist in the land of Palestine after 75 years of genocidal Israeli action speaks volumes about their understanding of this question.
In the zionist mindset, there has only ever been one holocaust in history. This self-serving narrative ‘forgets’ the many such crimes against humanity carried on from the start of written history and occurring in almost every land across the globe at one time or another. Zionism carefully pulls out the jewish dead from the Nazi concentration camps, ignoring the disabled, the gypsies, the Soviet citizens, and all the other victims of the Nazi-perpetrated holocaust. They don’t count!
The six million jewish dead are waved around like a ghastly trophy, an ever-present excuse for the zionists to commit any atrocity using the horror inflicted on European jews as justification for the new holocaust being inflicted on Palestinians by the zionist heirs of that fascism of the 1930s and 40s.
Ignore the fact that many of those six million whom the zionists deem ‘important’ were also proud Soviet citizens! The rise of German, Italian and Japanese fascism, spurred on by all western imperialist ruling circles until the fascists turned on them, cost the world a huge number of butchered peoples, but only the six million of the dead count in zionist eyes.
The Soviet Union bore the death of at least 27 million of its citizens; China suffered the loss of over 35 million, but only the 6 million who were members of one ethnicity count as far as the zionist narrative is concerned.
Let us revisit the case of young Khairy Alqam, and look at the circumstances of his short life and death. Alqam’s grandfather, after whom he was named, was murdered by an Israeli settler in 1998. The settler, Haim Ferelman, who killed 51-year-old Khairy Alqam and three other Palestinian men, was later acquitted of the crime and released on house arrest by an Israeli magistrates court in 2010.
Outside of this personal family history, young Khairy had witnessed too many deaths and mutilations of his friends and neighbours at the hands of a largely foreign occupation whose members walk free from law courts laughing and smiling on those rare occasions that anyone even limply attempts to bring them to justice. For a Palestinian youth, even to lift a stone in defiance can lead to a death sentence, but zionism’s children strut around armed to the teeth and dispensing their version of justice with total impunity.
Following the election of an even more fascistic and racist government and a sharp rise in the daily and nightly bloody raids in the Palestinian refugee camps, Palestine’s brutalised youth are once again taking up armed resistance in an organised way.
In September 2022, the first of a handful of armed resistance groups announced itself as the ‘Jenin Brigades’. These have been followed by the Nablus Brigades, the Lions’ Den, the Balata Brigades and, most recently in Jenin, the Yabad Brigades.
Khairy Alqam sat waiting in a car on the night of 28 January near a synagogue in Neve Yaakov, a neighbourhood of Israeli settlers in occupied East Jerusalem. The previous day had seen a particularly bloody IDF raid in Jenin that killed 10 Palestinians. At the end of Shabbat prayers, the settlers started filing out into the streets and Alqam opened fire on them. Eight were left dead, five at the scene and three either on the way to hospital or having arrived there.
In marked contrast to the deaths of the Palestinians mentioned above, the world was made aware almost instantly. News cameras were everywhere as any and every zionist knesset member jumped in front of camera crews to express horror and to declare that this now justified all the prior Palestinian deaths, torture, mutilations and mass jailings carried out by the zionist occupation over 75 long years.
Throughout the western world, newspapers screamed about the horror of a mass shooting in a land where such things happen daily and are daily ignored. Much was made of the successful attack coming on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (remember, there was only one holocaust!), yet none of the petty-bourgeois ink-flingers thought it worth mentioning that the attack followed, and was a direct response to, the previous day’s massacre of Palestinian people in Jenin. We were once again treated to reams of outrage regarding the Arab terrorists’ targeting of poor civilians, etc.
We must stress here that we stand with the Palestinian people and their struggle to free their land from the zionist occupation by any means they deem necessary. Also, it needs to be stressed and re-stressed, that the targets of this attack were Israeli settlers, settled illegally and contrary to international law on occupied territory, and comprising one of the most vicious, cruel and intolerant organised groups of people anywhere in the world.
The Israeli settler movement glories in using extreme violence against Palestinians, whether that be ganging up on an old woman and kicking her to death in the streets, burning a baby alive, or any stop between.
The zionist rulers of the Israel project are prepared to spill any amount of blood to keep that foul and oppressive experiment running. The IDF and the settler movement joyfully carry out the orders of the zionist toe rags who currently run the knesset. But change has arrived. A new generation of Palestinians has come to the conclusion that it no longer has any choice.
Israel has no future, just as it only has a short, albeit bloody, history. Ordinary people who share a culture related to the jewish religion must learn to reject those who, claiming to share their culture, are practising fascism and seeking to clear out all those of a different cultural background, in particular Arabs, from the territory of historic Palestine.
The interests of ordinary jews lie not in treating Palestinians in such a way as to turn them into enemies but in learning to live as equals, in the same way that jewish people would want to be treated, and ought to be treated, themselves in all the countries where they are a minority.
Let all of the land from the river to the sea be freed from the grip of fascists and racists, so that jews and Arabs can live together in a Palestine reborn!
