Mother of Girl Injured by Stone Throwing Responds to Ha’aretz: ‘Come to the Intensive Care Unit, and See My

Adele Bitton. Photo: Israel Matzav

The mother of a little girl fighting for her life in an Israeli hospital has responded to an editorial in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz that encouraged the continued stone-throwing by Palestinian Arabs as a form of resistance.

Adva Biton, whose  three-year-old daughter Adele was critically injured after the car her and her mother and two siblings were riding in was struck by a stone wrote, “Amira, come to the intensive care unit, and see my Adele, a three-year-old girl, attached to tubes.” Biton was addressing Ha’aretz correspondent Amira Hass, who published an article Wednesday in which she urged Palestinian Arab authorities to teach forms of resistance in schools and condoned stone-throwing, saying: “Throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule.”

“A rock kills. A rock is a deadly weapon in every way,” Biton writes.

“I believe in the value of life,” she continues, adding,”the paramedic who first reached our car, who saw us crushed under the truck, is a young Arab man. He came and started his sacred work. He didn’t utter lofty, hollow words like yours, words that kill. He simply saved lives.”

“I agree with you, Amira, that everyone is entitled to his or her freedom. Arab and Jew. I agree with you that we must all strive for liberty, but there is no one in the world who will achieve freedom and liberty by deadly weapons.”

On Wednesday Yesha (West Bank) Council head Avi Ro’eh and Chairman Ron Shachner sent a letter to Jerusalem Police accusing Ha’aretz of incitement to violence.