How israel glorifies their killers

Israeli supermarket chain glorifies army killer on grocery bag

Grocery bags featuring Elor Azarya

“What distinguishes us from our neighbors is that we denounce and condemn murderers in our midst and pursue them until the end, while they name public squares after child murderers”, said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in August 2015, two days after the Dawabshe family in the West Bank town of Duma was torched by Jewish terrorists. He made the same claim a year earlier, after Muhammed Abu Khdeir, another young Palestinian, was burned to death in Jerusalem.

I have already provided a long list of Israeli streets named after Jewish terrorists, but now Netanyahu’s contention is being challenged in the most unlikely of places — the grocery store.

A freely distributed nylon grocery bag featuring a photo of Elor Azarya the medic-soldier who murdered the wounded and incapacitated Palestinian Abdel Fatth Al Sharif in Al-Khalil (Hebron) last March is being distributed at the Rami Levy supermarket chain, one of the major chains in Israel.  

The bag has a likeness of Azarya, who was recently convicted on the reduced charge of ‘manslaughter,’ smiling whilst holding a semi-automatic gun in ready-to-fire position. The text on the bag says “Bag is free. ELOR PAYS FOR US ALL. Happy birthday. Love from the nation of Israel” [which means ‘Jews’ – ed.].

The grocery chain founder Rami Levy claimed to not be aware of the initiative in advance, but nonetheless blessed it in effusive terms:

“Every soldier who goes to the army is everyone’s son [‘everyone’s son’ has been an iconic slogan concerning Azarya, ed.] – for good and for bad, we are talking about a positive initiative from my standpoint, and I have no intention of disturbing it, and surely, surely I do not oppose these bags being distributed free at our chain”, he said.

In a bizarre twist, an Israeli environmental organization has complained to the Ministry of Environmental Protection that the initiative violates a new law, against free distribution of bags (noted in Ynet, Hebrew, yesterday). The law requires a chain to take at least 10 agorot (cents) for a bag. The society notes that whilst it sees the political protest as legitimate, the free distribution violates the law.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection wrote to Rami Levy with concern. Ynet ends the article with the note, that the Rami Levy chain responded: “The bags are not ours”.

That’s it. The bullet just came out of Elor Azarya’s gun. It wasn’t Azarya’s bullet, it was the IDF’s bullet. Why does Azarya have to pay? The bags appeared at Rami Levy’s chain. He loves them. But what does he have to do with it? Move on. Just another little episode in the ‘only democracy in the middle-east’, with its ‘most moral army in the world’, a moral society that never glorifies its murderers.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

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