An IDF soldier in the West Bank aimed his gun at 9-year old Muhammad al-Hallaq, and shot him. As the boy was bleeding to death, the soldier and the other IDF soldiers around him, cheered and celebrated. As we read in Haaretz:

The soldiers fired dozens of rounds into the air, scaring off children who were playing soccer on the basketball court of the local girls’ school nearby. Terrified, the children scattered. Muhammad also fled to the street and stood next to a stone wall, arms folded on his chest. Apparently he thought there was no reason to keep running: The soldiers were far away, the street was quiet.

But one of the soldiers decided to teach the boy a lesson. According to the testimony of eyewitnesses Haaretz spoke to, the soldier knelt, aimed and fired a single shot. The bullet struck Muhammad in the right hip and exited from the left hip after ravaging major blood vessels and organs. Muhammad didn’t stand a chance. He managed to take a step or two, collapsed and tried to crawl on the ground, until he stopped moving.

About an hour and a half later he was pronounced dead at the hospital. He was the third child of the al-Hallaqs, an impoverished family living in the remote village of al-Rihiya, south of Hebron.

The IDF had no reason to raid the village, still less to kill a child. This is yet another case of the incursion of the war in Gaza into the West Bank. What’s allowed there is allowed here, too: killing for the sake of killing … 

To Haaretz’s query as to whether the soldier who killed the boy had been detained for questioning, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit offered its usual response. The one generic sentence – “The event is known and is under examination by the Military Advocate General’s unit” – was apparently sufficient to acknowledge the army’s moral imperative with respect to the killing of an innocent child. In another year or two the case will be closed on grounds of lack of public interest.

…

Eyewitnesses told us that after the soldier fired he raised his arms in a gesture of apparent joy; his buddies joined in the gaiety. Then they fired tear-gas grenades at some of the locals who tried to save the boy, before leaving a few minutes later.

…

At about 5 P.M. two IDF jeeps suddenly swept into the village. The kids were still on the basketball court. The soldiers fired shots into the air to disperse the local residents and make them go home, the way you chase away stray dogs. It’s become routine: The army invades this village three times a week on average, usually at night. This time its troops showed up in daylight.

The streets emptied out. The kids playing soccer also scattered. Muhammad fled the schoolyard together with them and stood near the wall. The soldiers were in the valley below, some 250 meters away. They shouted and fired into the air. Immediately afterward one of them apparently knelt and shot Muhammad.

The soldiers then fired four tear-gas grenades at passersby, leaving Muhammad to bleed for three-four minutes before it was possible to evacuate him.

One of the boy’s uncles, who lives nearby and saw what had happened, rushed out into the street and, together with his son, and carried Muhammad to the uncle’s car. A video shows the uncle bundling his nephew, who seems to be lifeless, into the car. This week the uncle – he is afraid to have his name published – related that he found a pulse in the child’s neck, albeit weak. He wanted to evacuate the boy to the government hospital in Yatta as fast as possible, but saw the same two jeeps he’d seen in al-Rihiya driving slowly in front of him. He was afraid the soldiers would delay him and might also abduct Muhammad, so he chose a bypass road that doubled the time of the trip: 30 minutes instead of 15.

Another cousin, Aiham, 19, told us that he saw the moment at which Muhammad was hit, from the roof of his house. He related that the soldiers raised their arms in what looked to him like a gesture of triumph or joy. Other eyewitnesses confirmed this to Manal al-Jabari, the Hebron-area field researcher for B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. They also told her that the security camera installed on a street that overlooks the site of the shooting had  been removed sometime later by soldiers.

You can see a photo of Muhammad al-Hallaq bleeding to death in a vehicle:

This is the evil sickness of Israel, enabled by the praise of the Christian zionists who are acolytes of antichrist and the synagogue of Satan.