Israel’s Jerusalem District court has convicted a 14-year-old Palestinian boy on two charges of attempted murder after he allegedly carried out a stabbing attack on two Israelis. Ahmed Manasra was with his cousin, 15-year-old Hassan Manasra, who was shot dead by Israeli police after the incident on October 12 at the illegal Pisgat Zeev settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.
“There was no kind of justice in the court’s handling of the case – this was an unjust decision. We did not expect it,” Ahmed’s father Saleh Manasra told Al Jazeera.
Shortly after the alleged attack, Manasra was hit by an Israeli driver who rammed him with his car. A video showing Ahmed bleeding on the ground and gasping for help was shared widely, garnering media attention. Voices of Israeli bystanders shouting and swearing at the boy, telling him to “die”, were heard in the video, causing outrage. “He did not have the intention to kill anyone – he and his cousin were merely trying to scare Israelis with the knife. There is no evidence that he tried to stab anyone,” Tariq Barghouti, Ahmed’s lawyer, told Al Jazeera.
“This is a racist court and a court of the occupation. It had a preconceived notion about the incident due to the media uproar and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s statements about it. The Israeli public opinion influenced the court decision and led to the conviction of the child Ahmed Manasra on no basis and without any explanation,” he added.
