Hilmi Shousheh was only eleven years old when he was beaten to death.

On Sunday, October 27, 1996 he was playing with his friends outside his family home in Hussan, a Palestinian village on whose lands the Israeli settlement of Hadar Bitar was built.

A blue Jeep approached the children at breakneck speed from the bypass road connecting road no. 60 and the settlement.

Hilmi’s friend, Tahrir Muhammad Shousheh, described what happened next:

“We ran. Nahum [Korman] jumped out of the car. He chased Hilmi and caught him. He beat him brutally on the face and head. When Hilmi fell on the ground, the settler continued kicking him with his boots on the face and head. Then he stomped on Hilmi’s neck as he was lying flat on his back. He [Korman] took out his gun and smashed Hilmi’s forehead with the butt. I was terrified. I screamed until some [Palestinian] women came. One of them picked up Hilmi and carried him to the settler’s car. She screamed at him to take [Hilmi] to the hospital or to a doctor for treatment. He drove them to the entrance of the settlement.”

Muhammd Youssef, Hilmi’s uncle, described what he saw there:

“Hilmi was lying on the ground in front of the [military] camp. Israeli security men were trying to give him medical assistance. I heard them say that he was finished. They brought an ill-equipped ambulance. Hilmi was totally unconscious. He wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t moving. His face was blue and I saw on it the marks and bruises of beating.”

When Hilmi died, his sister Suha was also doomed.

Suha’s twin sister had died in 1995 from a blood disease. Suha, suffering from the same disease, was lying in her hospital bed (at Hadassah—Ein Karem) waiting for a life-saving bone marrow transplant.

“Hilmi’s was the only matching bone marrow,” said their distraught mother, Su’ad. “I don’t know what to do. All I know is that she’ll die too. Hilmi was the only one who could have saved her life.”

Yesterday, August 16, Jerusalem District Court Judge Ruth Orr found Nahum Korman innocent of all charges. He had been charged with “manslaughter.”

Judge Ruth Orr rejected the autopsy report of Chief Coroner Yehuda Hiss who had testified that the two major injuries he had seen on Hilmi’s body had been caused by a pistol blow and by stomping (on the neck). One had been the immediate cause of death.

Ruth Orr also dismissed as unreliable the eyewitness testimonies of the children who had been playing with Hilmi at the time of his murder.

Ruth Orr also found “no motive” for Korman to commit such a brutal crime.

Ruth Orr bought Korman’s story that the unarmed young boy (Hilmi) was running towards the armed settler security guard (Korman) when he fell down (and presumably was killed by the fall).

The logic of injustice is astounding.

The horror of “childslaughter” is unspeakable.

The politicization and distortion of the judicial system is incredible.

The institutionalization of racism is abominable.

The cold-blooded murder (with impunity) of Palestinian children by armed Israeli settlers is the sinister underbelly of the brutal military occupation.

The silence of those who rise up in moral outrage at the slightest threat to any Israeli (settler, soldier, or citizen) is deafening.

Over the last eleven years only, Israeli occupation’s violations have claimed the lives of more than three hundred Palestinian children (LAW Society Report).

Each child, like Hilmi, has a name. Each of the 300 had parents, sisters, brothers, hopes, dreams, fears, and the natural promise of a future.

Our children are not numbers or abstractions.

Each child felt the pain of the bullet or the beating at the moment of death.

Each child cried out, some silently, for his/her mother or father.

It is time to recognize the unredeemed childhood of Palestinian children as the innocent victims of a very adult and immoral military occupation and settler expansion.

Israel must come to grips with its own culpability. It must come to the moment of recognition of its own guilt.

Instead, Israeli military courts are now to try Palestinian children twelve years of age.

Previously, Israeli military courts used to try Palestinian children who were fourteen or older.

They were also held in adult detention centers and prisons, often with convicted criminals.

Their parents were also punished or fined.

Now, parents of twelve-year-olds can rest assured that their children will receive the adult treatment at the hands of Israeli military courts.

Individually or collectively, children suspected of stone throwing will face adult charges and trials.

Illegal armed settlers and occupation soldiers who murder Palestinian children, if charged, have several options: They are either found innocent, or they may be reprimanded, or they may receive light sentences in top facility prisons with weekend home visits. However, for the convicted, there is always the very real probability of early parole or reprieve.

As things stand, Nahum Korman is “innocent.” Hilmi Shousheh is dead. Palestinian children’s rights are annihilated. Justice is denied.

There is no end to grief.