Bloody Hands, Bloody Fools
That symbol the Hollywood glitterati sported is rooted in the horrific lynching of two Israeli men by a Palestinian mob.
A red pin with an orange hand, worn by some celebrities at the Academy Awards event on March 10, 2024, to show support for Palestinians in Gaza and call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. (via X, formerly Twitter)
Vadim Nurzhitz, a truck driver who made aliyah from Russia only a decade before, hops into his little Ford Escort and picks up his friend Yossi Avrahami, a toy maker by trade. The two men are reservists who have been ordered to assemble. Vadim gives his dad a ring, letting him know he has been called up and that he is heading to an Israeli army base near Beit El. It is the last time they will speak.
Wearing civilian clothes, driving a civilian car, the young men are neither highly experienced with the military nor the road system in the West Bank.
They make a wrong turn.
Yossi and Vadim find themselves at a Palestinian Authority roadblock. Instead of being turned back, the Palestinian policemen detain them and bring them to a local police station in el-Bireh, a small town outside of Ramallah.
As the funeral of 17-yr-old Halil Zahran concludes, rumors start to spread through the massive, angry crowd gathered for that event. The police have captured two undercover Israeli agents and have them in their custody. The mob quickly whips into a furious frenzy and descends upon the police station.
The scene is something out of a movie. A lynch mob coming to string up Tom Robinson with only Atticus Finch to defend him. Torch-carrying devils surrounding a Marietta, Georgia prison, calling for the blood of Leo Frank.
Palestinian rioters flood the building. Thirteen Palestinian police officers are injured try to stave off an endless stream of blood-thirsty men seething with hate, to no avail. Yossi and Vadim are beaten. They are stabbed. They are mutilated. They are murdered.
One of the rioters — a man named Aziz Salha — approaches a window in the station and holds up his two palms, smeared in the blood of dead Jews. The crowd’s ecstasy at the sight reaches a fever pitch.
Vadim and Yossi’s corpses are dumped from a high window down into the gathered, cheering crowd who proceed to tear them to pieces, like rabid animals shredding their prey to unrecognizable bits. They stomp on them, shoot them, set one on fire. They smash one of the men’s heads into “a pulp, like red jelly,” until his humanity is unrecognizable.
What remains of Vadim and Yossi is taken to Al-Manara Square and put on display and the mob break into spontaneous, mad, gleeful celebration at the blood they have extracted from their enemy.
A British photographer at the scene, Mark Seager, attempts to capture the event on film, but is beaten and his camera is destroyed. He describes the lynching as “the most horrible thing that I have ever seen and I have reported from Congo, Kosovo, many bad places…. I know they [Palestinians] are not all like this and I’m a very forgiving person, but I’ll never forget this. It was murder of the most barbaric kind. When I think about it, I see that man’s head, all smashed. I know that I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life.”
It all sounds depressingly familiar, reminiscent of descriptions from the Nova Festival or the Gaza Envelope kibbutzim and towns. The brutality. The mob mentality. The lack of humanity. The barbarism.
Yet this scene hearkens back to October 12, 2000, the early days of the Second Intifada. also known as the al-Aqsa Intifada. Along with the Dolphinarium nightclub and the Sbarro’s bombings, the iconic image of murderer Aziz Salha proudly showing the crowd his bloodied hands remains one of the most memorable and traumatic moments of the uprising for those who lived through it.
And, if one were to rely on the Oscars this past Sunday night as evidence, that image lives on in quite possibly the most sickeningly distorted and repellent form. Hollywood glitterati showed up for their cause du jour wearing red hand pins.
Instead of supporting the Israeli girls being raped daily in captivity in Gaza, over 400 celebrities formed a self-righteous group called Artists4Ceasefire, signed a letter calling on Congress to support a ceasefire out of compassion for the children — the children — and walked the red carpet with the arrogance of bloody fools. Ramy Youssef said it best when he explained they were “asking for justice for the Palestinian people.” Full stop. No need for justice for those attacked and murdered on October 7, for those still in captivity. He said the purpose of this movement is “to appeal to humanity.” The Artists4Ceasefire website offers free Instagram-ready images for public download, including this winner claiming “compassion must prevail” directly beside a red hand.
Artists4Ceasefire has made numerous Instagram-ready images such as this one available for free on their website.
If you are one of the many grossly misled individuals enamored of the red hand pin displayed by the cream of Hollywood’s antisemitic crop, if you are wearing one, if you are protesting on the streets or your campus while holding up red-painted palms, here is a little Public Service Announcement for you:
Those bloody hands that Salha showed the world in 2000 after ripping the organs from a dead Jew’s body? Those are the hands you are proudly wearing on your lapel. That is the context for and the origin story of the red hand image when used in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
What’s that, you say? It does not refer to Salha’s bloody hands but rather to the Red Hand of Ulster? That’s the best alternative explanation you’ve got? Why would a Gaelic symbol for the Irish O’Neill clan and warriors have anything to do with this conflict and be a more relevant explanation for the bloody red hand? I’ll let you mull that one over while you chew your cud and cry your crocodile tears.
In the meantime, you wear that bloody hand pin with pride, you dip your hands in red paint and wave them in solidarity with your Palestinian classmates, and you remember that you stand both for and with extrajudicial murder and lynching. Go you, you social justice warrior! You successfully have managed to pay homage to the basest and most inhumane detritus of society. How could your abiding compassion not prevail when promoted through the imagery of a bloody lynch mob? You keep making this world a worse place with your blind support for death, barbarism, and bloodlust!