Analysis of: ‘Palestinian lives are disposable – even a baby’: new footage shows shooting of seven-month-old
The Guardian | June 10, 2026
TL;DR
Israeli soldiers killed a 7-month-old Palestinian baby despite video evidence showing the family's car was stopping, not threatening. The near-total impunity for such killings reveals how colonial occupation depends on rendering colonized lives legally and morally disposable.
Analytical Focus:Contradictions Historical Context Interconnections
The killing of seven-month-old Sam Abu Haikal crystallizes a fundamental contradiction of colonial occupation: the gap between the stated legal and moral frameworks that supposedly govern military conduct and the systematic violence required to maintain territorial control over a dispossessed population. The Israeli military's initial claim—that soldiers perceived an 'accelerating vehicle'—was immediately contradicted by video evidence showing a car slowing to a stop. Yet this contradiction matters little in practice: Israeli soldiers face indictment in less than 1% of cases involving harm to Palestinians. This is not a failure of the system but its intended function. The incident occurs within what B'Tselem's director identifies as a broader pattern: 'tens of thousands of children' killed in Gaza and the West Bank over two and a half years, enabled by 'immunity from the international community.' This immunity is not accidental but structural—rooted in Israel's strategic importance to Western powers and the ideological work that frames Palestinian resistance as terrorism while rendering Israeli military violence as 'security.' The soldiers' failure to render aid, standing by as civilians rushed to help, reveals the dehumanization necessary to sustain occupation. The material reality of occupation—checkpoints, military posts, restricted movement, settler expansion—produces daily encounters where armed soldiers confront unarmed families, creating conditions where killings become routine rather than exceptional. The father's account is devastating in its ordinariness: 'There was no clear checkpoint, just soldiers standing in the street.' The arbitrary exercise of lethal force without consequence is not a deviation from military occupation but its essential mechanism. The investigation announced afterward performs accountability while the statistical record (less than 1% indictment rate) demonstrates its absence.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Israeli military/state apparatus, Palestinian civilian population under occupation, International human rights organizations (B'Tselem, UN, Yesh Din), International community/Western states, Israeli settlers (implied through occupation context)
Beneficiaries: Israeli state maintaining territorial control, Israeli military personnel enjoying effective immunity, International powers benefiting from regional stability under Israeli hegemony, Defense industries supplying occupation infrastructure
Harmed Parties: Palestinian families subject to arbitrary violence, Palestinian children (240+ killed in West Bank/East Jerusalem since October 2023), Broader Palestinian population living under restricted movement and military control
The power asymmetry is absolute: an occupying military with advanced weaponry and legal immunity confronts a civilian population with no effective legal recourse. The father's raised hands and complete compliance offered no protection—demonstrating that Palestinian survival depends entirely on soldier discretion, not rights or law. Human rights organizations can document but not prevent violence, while international bodies issue reports without enforcement mechanisms.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Control over Palestinian territory and resources, Military-industrial complex sustaining occupation infrastructure, Economic strangulation of Palestinian territories through movement restrictions, International military aid (primarily US) subsidizing occupation
The occupation functions as a system of primitive accumulation—the ongoing dispossession of Palestinian land, water, and labor. Checkpoints and military posts don't merely provide 'security'; they regulate Palestinian movement to serve Israeli economic interests, restricting access to labor markets, agricultural land, and trade routes. The West Bank's fragmentation prevents coherent Palestinian economic development while enabling settler extraction.
Resources at Stake: Territory in the occupied West Bank, Water resources increasingly controlled by settlements, Palestinian labor as a controlled and exploitable workforce, Geostrategic position in the broader Middle East
Historical Context
Precedents: Colonial massacres and 'pacification' campaigns throughout European imperial history, South African apartheid's pass laws and township violence, US frontier violence against Indigenous populations, Algeria under French occupation, Previous intifadas and Israeli military responses
This killing fits a pattern spanning colonial history: settler-colonial projects require continuous violence to maintain dispossession. The legal architecture mirrors historical precedents—from the British Empire's emergency regulations to apartheid South Africa's security laws—where colonized populations exist outside the protection of law while remaining subject to its punitive force. The 1% indictment rate echoes the virtual immunity enjoyed by colonial forces from Algeria to Kenya to the American frontier. The current phase represents settler colonialism's continuation in an era of nominal human rights norms, requiring more sophisticated ideological justification while the material violence remains constant.
Contradictions
Primary: The contradiction between Israel's self-presentation as a democratic state governed by law and the systematic lawlessness required to maintain military occupation of a civilian population. Video evidence directly contradicts official military claims, yet this exposure changes nothing materially—revealing that legitimacy operates independently of truth.
Secondary: International community's proclaimed commitment to human rights versus its material support for occupation, Military 'investigations' that perform accountability while statistics demonstrate impunity, The IDF's expression of 'deep sorrow' alongside continued lethal practices, Democratic states' support for practices they would condemn elsewhere
These contradictions cannot be resolved within the current framework. Either occupation ends—requiring fundamental transformation of Israeli state structure and international power relations—or violence continues to escalate. The growing documentation of atrocities may shift international opinion, but material change requires disrupting the economic and military support structures sustaining occupation. The South African precedent suggests international isolation can eventually force transformation, but only when the material costs of maintaining apartheid exceed its benefits to ruling interests.
Global Interconnections
This killing cannot be understood apart from the global system sustaining it. U.S. military aid to Israel—approximately $3.8 billion annually—directly subsidizes the occupation infrastructure within which this shooting occurred. European states provide diplomatic cover through selective application of international law, condemning violations elsewhere while treating Israeli actions as legitimate 'security measures.' The ideological framework that renders Palestinian lives disposable operates through Western media, think tanks, and political institutions that systematically privilege Israeli state narratives. The occupation also serves broader imperial functions: Israel operates as a strategic outpost for Western interests in a resource-rich region, a laboratory for surveillance and military technologies exported globally, and an ideological model demonstrating that settler-colonial projects can succeed in the contemporary era. Palestinian resistance, conversely, connects to global struggles against colonialism and occupation—from Kashmir to Western Sahara. The international solidarity movement's growth reflects recognition that Palestinian liberation is inseparable from challenging the imperial system that sustains dispossession worldwide.
Conclusion
The killing of Sam Abu Haikal represents not an aberration but the routine functioning of colonial occupation stripped of its ideological cover. The video evidence—car stopping, soldiers firing, baby dying—contradicts the official narrative so completely that it reveals narrative itself as irrelevant to the operation of power. For those committed to justice, this clarity is both devastating and potentially radicalizing. The near-total impunity documented by Yesh Din (less than 1% indictment rate) demonstrates that accountability cannot come through existing legal channels. Material change requires disrupting the economic, military, and diplomatic structures sustaining occupation—through BDS campaigns, arms embargoes, and building political power capable of redirecting state policy. The international community's 'immunity' grant that B'Tselem identifies is not passive; it is actively constructed and can be actively challenged. Palestinian lives become non-disposable only when the costs of disposal become unbearable for those who currently profit from the arrangement.
Suggested Reading
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961) Fanon's analysis of colonial violence—how it dehumanizes the colonized while corrupting the colonizer—directly illuminates the psychological and structural dynamics enabling soldiers to kill a baby without consequence.
- Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams (1944) Williams demonstrates how economic interests, not moral considerations, drove slavery's abolition—a framework for understanding why international condemnation of Israeli violence remains rhetorical without material pressure.
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's documentation of how Israel has become a global laboratory for occupation, surveillance, and 'security' technologies explains the international interests invested in the occupation's continuation.