Drowned Syrian boy exposes Israeli hypocrisy

Outspoken Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy wrote:

Two photographs.

In the first a face buried in the sand, a tiny body dressed in rags, his bare feet askew, dried blood on one of them.

In the other, face buried in the sand, feet in small shoes resting next to each other, the tiny body awash in water.

They are almost the same age and the similarity between them is amazing and shocking.

Ismail Bahar, in the first picture, Aylan Kurdi in the other.

Two dead toddlers, lying on the seashore, separated by a year and a few months and a few hundred kilometers.

The first photograph appeared all over the world and was concealed in Israel.

That compassionate newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, did not publish it on its front page and did not caption it “the toddler who moved the world.”

The death of Ismail did not move anyone in Israel.

In contrast, the dead Aylan became a worldwide icon, including, of course, Yedioth Ahronoth, which knows what is likely to move Israelis.

A Palestinian child in Gaza, killed by Israel Air Force pilots’ bombardment together with his three small cousins during the genocidal war on Gaza, while they were playing soccer on the beach, is not “moving.”

A Syrian child of the same age, who drowned while fleeing with his family to Europe is “the toddler who moved” the world.

And if this amount of hypocrisy was not enough, we will add only that no one stood trial in Israel for the criminal killing of Ismail (the case was closed).

Following Aylan’s death in a criminal accident, a few suspects were arrested in Turkey.

Israel has no right to sanctimoniousness over the tragic death of Aylan Kurdi, nor to tsk-tsk at the photograph, nor to feign shock, nor to “offer aid,” and certainly not to preach to Europe.