Part in italics culled from a call for condolences to Bassam Aramin and his family:

10-year-old Abir Aramin died on January 18th, 2 days after her skull was fractured. She was on her way home from school in the walled-off West Bank town of Anata when an Israeli Border Police jeep drove provocatively through the school zone. Eyewitnesses say the jeep was firing stun grenades and rubber bullets at the children when Abir dropped to the ground, bleeding from the head. Abir was the daughter of Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian human rights activist and founding member of “Combatants for Peace.” Adding insult to trauma, Bassam’s friends from CFP had to advocate for the release of his daughter’s body from the Israeli hospital in order to make it to her funeral. Incredibly, Bassam’s story is not unusual; disregard for human life is the norm under occupation. Please join us in sending this letter of condolence to Bassem Aramin and his family. We will arrange to have the letter and signatures delivered personally to Bassam and his family.

Gideon Levy has written a decent article about the incident and its aftermath for Haaretz. Interesting is the spin that certain members of the wingnut crowd feel is essential in order to whitewash what’s essentially the murder of a little girl. Abir Aramin has a good write up of the propaganda campaign at The People’s Voice in articles titled “Spinning Sorrow: Abir Aramin’s Death” and “Facilitating Genocide:The Reporting of Abir Aramin’s Death.”

Though it’s amazing to see the level hatemongers are able to sink to first hand. So sure are they that Palestinians are not to be treated as human beings that they have no problem fabricating what ever they choose around the death of a small child. In one racist diatribe at the Jawa Report, the author blindly assumes that if she was a Palestinian kid she must have been guilty of something and up to more than “playing jumprope.” Meanwhile, the media lobbiest CAMERA reports that Israeli soldiers have already been exonerated by the Israeli government, so what’s the big?

Meanwhile, the hilariously ironic self-described “News Busters” site can only come up with the notion that the young girl couldn’t have been killed by Israeli soldiers or else the event would have been photographed, and even attempts to call into question whether a large group of people actually grieved over her death.

Sorry charlies. You come off sounding as ridiculous as attendees at a Holocaust conference in Tehran. There’s no such thing as a valid investigation in the matter falls outside the realm of an autopsy. Ten-year-old Abir Aramin was killed by a rubber bullet shot to her head. It’s happened before. Likely, it will happen again. Sorry if it doesn’t fit your ideal public relations. It’s the result of by an independent autopsy paid for by B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights. Nothing the that occupation police can investigate will counter that with any sense of legitimacy. A 10-year-old girl was killed. Leave it to the rabid-right keyboard pundits to jump around in glee over it and defend the perpetrators. Sick stuff.

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