Last Sunday, several Hollywood stars had the opportunity to show their well-known combination of woke frivolity and supine ignorance at the 96th Oscar Awards ceremony. This time, they wore pins that showed an orange hand with a black heart inside, surrounded by a red circle. Artists such as Billie Eilish and Mark Ruffalo wore the brooches at the request of the group Artists4Ceasefire. The group promoting this may not have explained to them the nefarious meaning that surrounds that image, but the red hand raised in that way has a history of atrocious antisemitism. It is the symbol that celebrates the Ramallah lynching.
On October 12, 2000, two Israeli reserve soldiers in civilian clothes, Yossi Avrahami and Vadim Nurzhitz, were heading to a city near Jerusalem, but they didn't know the way. They got lost and took a wrong turn, ending up in Ramallah. The Palestinian Authority police who found them lost did not show them the way but detained them and took them to a local police station while they spread the news that there were Israeli soldiers in the building. Immediately, a crowd gathered in front of the station, calling for the death of the Israelis. The mob managed to overcome the police and enter the building, although it was later learned that Palestinian Authority police officers even participated in the lynching. Because, in effect, what followed was a savage lynching. The crowd beat and stabbed the Israelis, dismembered the men limb by limb, and gouged out their eyes. Avrahami's wife called him on his mobile phone, and an unknown voice answered the phone: "I just killed your husband."
The crowd that remained outside applauded and cheered, asking to enjoy the carnage too, so they threw the body of one of the soldiers from the window. The crowd continued to beat and trample the lifeless body. The other soldier's body was burned and hung upside down from a rope. They then dragged the two butchered bodies to the nearby Al-Manara Square, and the "celebrations" began. While all this was happening, a man was at the window encouraging the delirious crowd below. To invite them to the lynching, he placed his hands soaked in the blood of the torn-apart soldiers against the window glass so that everyone could see. That is the symbolism of the Ramallah lynching, a symbol that is promoted by pro-Palestinian terrorism. The man in the window was Aziz Salha, and these were his testimonies when he was arrested:
"We were crazy to see blood. I entered the room... I saw an Israeli soldier lying on the floor in front of the door," Aziz Salha said. "I approached him and saw a knife lodged in his back, near his right shoulder. I took the knife from him and stabbed him in the back two or three times... while others in the room continued to kick him. I put one hand on his mouth and the other on his shoulder to strangle him."
"I saw that my hands were soaked in blood, as was my shirt," Salha continued. "So I went to the window and waved to the people in the yard."
The testimonies first appeared in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Salha was arrested by Israel in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison but was released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal in 2011. During the lynching of the soldiers, Salha was filmed by an Italian television crew proudly showing his hands bathed in the soldiers' blood, inciting the massacre. It is impossible to separate that image from the one captured in the symbol the movie stars proudly wore this Sunday. Mark Ruffalo, Billie Eilish, Ava DuVernay, Cate Blanchett, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Bradley Cooper, America Ferrera and Ramy Youssef proudly wore the pin.
Like every year, Hollywood opts for a new witch hunt. This year, when there are still people kidnapped by Hamas in the October 7 massacre, they are calling for a ceasefire that would guarantee that jackals like Aziz Salha go unpunished. They do not ask for the surrender of terrorism. They are not interested. They seek the complacency of the antisemitic hordes that justify terror throughout the West. Therefore, believing in coincidences, innocence, accidents or excuses is very difficult. Everything seems to indicate that the new cause chosen by Hollywood is to pay tribute to the Ramallah lynching.
