A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy

by Nathan Thrall

The chances of Hadi being released were nonexistent; the military court’s conviction rate was 99.7 percent. For children charged with throwing stones, the rate was even higher: of the 835 children accused in the six years following Hadi’s arrest, 834 were convicted, nearly all of whom served time in jail. Hundreds of them were twelve to fifteen years old.

It opened her eyes to a hidden universe of suffering that touched nearly every Palestinian home.

If endless grief was the price of holding on to the fading memories of his son, Abed was willing to pay it. It was in the pain of remembering Milad that Abed kept him near.

“Every person is a world and its entirety,” wrote Justice Neal Hendel in his ruling. “The death of seven people is a disaster that cannot be measured by simple multiplication. The loss is greater than the sum of its parts.”