The need for social distancing is making this Ramadan tough for many families in the West Bank.— ICRC in Israel & OT (@ICRC_ilot) April 28, 2020
It will be especially so for those with relatives in detention in Israel, who are currently unable to visit their loved ones due to the #covid19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/Rs8auTDMhS
A poor old woman, pining to visit her son in prison, but she is being stopped. How sad.
Except that there is no difference between her and pretty much everyone else on the planet who cannot visit their relatives. What makes her situation any different? Prisoners in Israel can and do make phone calls, the same way we are all getting by with phone calls. The COVID-19 restrictions are meant to save people like this old woman.
On first glance, this tweet seems like a gratuitous effort to keep the plight of Palestinian prisoners in the spotlight when the world has other issues to deal with.
On second glance, this is much worse.
The unnamed woman was profiled by the ICRC last year, giving only her first name, Mayzouna. They did a photo essay on her visiting her son, where she told them that she lost her eyesight four years ago after a stroke but has not told her son when she visits him.
Yet the photos shows her looking at her outfit to wear, looking out the window of the bus, walking unaided.
A little research shows that this is Mayzouna Ben Srour, and the son she is visiting is Nasser Abu Srour, who along with his brother Mahmoud and another relative murdered a Shin Bet handler for yet another relative. In 2016, when 19-year old Abad al-Hamid Abu Srour killed himself with a bomb on a Jerusalem bus, Times of Israel ran through the family history:
Abad al-Hamid Abu Srour is not just another “lone wolf” terrorist. He was known to Palestinian security forces, and possibly the Israelis too; one of his family members was killed during recently during clashes with Israeli security forces not far from his home near Bethlehem.There was an article in the Washington Post about the family:
His last name is well known among operatives in the Shin Bet security service: In January 1993, Maher Abu Srour, a Palestinian informant who comes from the same clan, along with two members of his family, Nasser and Mahmoud Abu Srour, killed his Shin Bet coordinator Chaim Nachmani.
Maher had made an appointment with Nachmani in a safe house in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. When he arrived, Abu Srour charged at Nachmani with a knife before his two family members joined him to finish off the murder. A week later, Nasser and Mahmoud were arrested but Maher repeatedly evaded arrest by Israeli security forces until he was killed while trying to carry out another attack five months later in Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood.
But his relatives said Abu Srour was more of a Palestinian preppy, the scion of a well-to-do and well-known clan of eight prosperous brothers, who own and operate a string of furniture outlets and are rich enough to take their young sons for holidays in Jordan and to set them up with their own shops selling clothes.
“We are financially comfortable, you could say very comfortable,” said his uncle Mahmoud Abu Srour, who was gathered with relatives in a courtyard at a family house in Bethlehem awaiting the return of his nephew’s body so they could bury him.
Abu Scour’s teenage cousins listened to their uncles speak but kept silent. They wore pricey watches, skinny jeans and fancy sneakers.
Mayzouna is part of a family that is not poor, not desperate and quite well-off.Even though some of them still choose to live in the Aida "refugee camp" where UNRWA provides free housing.
The story doesn't end there. Mayzouna is a celebrity, a go-to person for interviews by dozens of news outlets, as a symbol of Palestinian suffering.
She spoke to Russia Today about being a witness to the "Nakba." She told Mondoweiss that money from the PLO paid for Nasser's bachelors and masters degrees from Hebrew University while in prison and how the family couldn't afford for him to even buy olive oil from the prison canteen if it wasn't for the program now known as "pay for slay." Only last month she described how she is dealing with being under closure for the pandemic and she told Arab media that no one should complain about being in quarantine since her son has been in prison for 27 years.
In 2018, she was scheduled to travel to Ireland to speak about the plight of the Palestinians. The PLO has sent high-ranking officials to honor her for mothering a terrorist.
This is who the ICRC is choosing to highlight as an example of the cruelty of the Israelis and the coronavirus.
(h/t iTi)