His name was Nadim Nuwara

Published:
23 Jun 2014

By Hagai El-Ad, B'Tselem's executive director, Originally published in Haaretz



He was a premature baby when his mother was in the seventh month of pregnancy. When he was finally released from the hospital he still suffered from jaundice. In second grade, a passing car hit him after he played at the neighbors’ house. He was thrown in the air by the force of the blow from the car, and after two days in the hospital he was released. He loved to play on his Playstation and learned how to type quickly, and sometimes even typed in the dark. At 16 he began to feel grown up and rebel against his mother’s wishes. He loved her very much.

A month ago, when his father heard he was in the hospital, his legs collapsed. On the way to the hospital he said time after time: “O God, have mercy on us.”

I have hope that these days, when so many people’s hearts are filled with worry, love and identification with the fate of the three youths they never knew, in these days when our hearts go out to the suffering families, that these days will be a time of aspiration and not of hatred. A time of hope for the fate of the families and the young men we never knew; for families, some of whose loved ones no longer even have a tiny bit of hope.

The premature baby who was born to a Palestinian family in Ramallah, who knew how to type in the dark, who was shy and innocent, who would kiss his parents every time he returned home, who God did not have mercy on his parents, was Nadim Nuwara of blessed memory. He was 17 years old when a member of the Israeli security forces shot him at the Nakba Day demonstration in Beitunia. An hour later another youth was shot, Mohammad Salameh, at the very same place.

No Facebook campaign will return the youths Nadim and Mohammad to their parents, the Palestinians do not have an army to conduct house to house searches, and according to the Oslo Accords they don’t even have investigative authority.

in full: http://www.btselem.org/firearms/20140622_his_name_was_nadim_nuwara