A few days ago, Canada's diplomatic representative to the West Bank and Gaza Strip tweeted a selfie of herself in front of the rubble of the Salhiya family business in the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood of occupied Al-Quds. Robin Wettlaufer reminisced about the plants she had bought from the plant nursery, said she was sad to see the flower shop demolished, and added that "another Palestinian family loses their home."

The Canadian representative omitted to explain why this Palestinian family was losing their business and eventually their home, and she also avoided showing the demolishing agent in her photos: the Israeli military forces. Wettlaufer suggested a blue truck as the perpetrator and as a possible answer to our questions: how sad is this world, a blue truck demolishes a Palestinian nursery where I was buying flowers.

Robin Wettlaufer was in one of several diplomatic excursions that day to Sheikh Jarrah to "observe the eviction" of the Salhiya family and took the opportunity to take selfies, including the EU and their group photo. In their messages, they did not name the actor "Israel" and obscured the deployment of their forces. They all omitted terms applicable under international legality such as "occupied territory", "expulsion" or "violation of international legality," and they all used the term "eviction". They applied the Israeli narrative style book to turn a violation of UN resolutions or the Fourth Geneva Convention into a real estate dispute.

For their part, the Salhiya family already knows what it is like to be expelled by invaders. In 1948, the Salhiya and the other 4,000 inhabitants fled their village, Ayn Karim, because of the assault of the Zionist Irgun militias against their village, the birthplace of St. John the Baptist. A few weeks before this attack, in the village next to Ayn Karim only 2 km away, Zionist terrorism had executed in cold blood hundreds of inhabitants in the massacre of the village of Deir Yassin, so their neighbors in Ayn Karim were terrified and all fled as soon as the Zionists appeared. That was the fate of all the native inhabitants of West Al-Quds, and that is why today there are no Palestinians in that part of the city, yet their occupied houses are still standing who expelled them. The Salhiya's empty house and those of the entire village were handed over to Israeli settlers with artistic pretensions, and thus the ethnic cleansing of Ayn Karim was coated with a bohemian and picturesque varnish useful for Israeli tourist guides. Waiting for their right of return to be fulfilled, most of the Palestinian owners survive to this day as refugees in camps, and some in houses provided to them by the Jordanian government in the 1950s, like the Salhiya. 

Returning to the present East Al-Quds invaded by "Israel" 55 years ago, the resistance of the Salhiya family, threatening self-immolation, succeeded in preventing the destruction of their home on January 17. But just two days later, during the freezing early hours of the morning and while the whole family was asleep, Israeli forces carried out the demolition, beating all 15 members of the family, including the children, out into the cold.

Robin Wettlaufer has not tweeted after the expulsion of the Salhiya family and their forced conversion into refugees for the second time. This gives us time to understand that his sorrowful face was sincere, although more for not having a plant nursery near his home than for the execution of a war crime that has not merited his pronouncement. Perhaps the Israeli settlers who will now move into the site will open a flower shop and Wettlaufer's grief will be resolved.

The EU representatives were more honest as they did not express sadness or condemnation in their photos. In fact, with the rubble still warm, a few hours after this episode of ethnic cleansing in occupied Al-Quds, the French Embassy held an "exciting" meeting with journalists and representatives of the Israeli regime discussing the benefits of diplomatic normalization of apartheid with the feudal monarchies of the Gulf.

These EU representatives chose to follow the model of the selfie without any sadness of the President of the Committee on Freedom and Justice of the European Parliament, Juan Fernando López Aguilar, when he photographed himself smiling and without any regret next to the wall enclosing the Gaza macro-prison. Recall that two million Palestinians have been crowded and imprisoned in this indigenous area in Gaza for seven decades after being forcibly dispossessed of their homes and land in 1948. The European President of Freedoms and Justice did not call for the application of either of the two words he presides over, neither freedom nor justice, for those confined in the area despite being ordered to do so by international law, that is, that the wall falls down and the Palestinians return to their homes and lands and be compensated. But let's leave López Aguilar and his work for freedom and justice.

Robin Wettlaufer's over-acting sadness and his cheating staging of an evil blue truck added to the use of lies in her confrontation a few weeks ago with Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah denying that Canada finances the Israeli regime. Not only is it true that Canada and "Israel" sign huge arms deals, but they have a free trade agreement and Canada votes hand in hand with "Israel" and the US at the UN against any resolution or report on Palestine, as on December 9, 2021, when this trio formed a sad quintet with Micronesia and the Marshall Islands voting against the agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. When these Pacific Ocean archipelagos disappear due to rising seas and their inhabitants become refugees, I am sure the Palestinians will forget this petty pettiness and advocate that the UN provide for them.

This imposture pose of sadness of Robin Wettlaufer while pulling the trigger is called shoot and cry, and it is common in Western politicians. A literal example was given a few months ago by Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she apparently shed a few tears after changing her vote against and finally consenting with her abstention to the additional delivery by the US of 1 billion dollars in armaments for "Israel". Ocasio-Cortez's subsequent written or interviewed justifications for these events were an insult to the Palestinian victims of Israeli massacres, past and future.

A more subtle shoot and cry was also seen in the New York Times and the Israeli daily Haaretz when they published on their front pages the photographs of the 67 children killed by "Israel" in the eleven-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip in May 2021. Both media maintain staunch support for Zionism and the Israeli regime and were able to combine their daily support for apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and collective punishment in slow motion with that lauded front page.

The NYT, Haaretz, and the Western media, in general, do not explain these war crimes, much less the origin of the Palestinian neighborhoods, nor the legality flouted by "Israel" preventing Indian reservations from disappearing.

This decontextualization sends several messages. On the Israeli side: they attacked us, we defended ourselves, and sadly 67 children died. They are adorable indigenous people but unfortunately, they had to be killed, there was no other choice. We shot and we cried. From the NYT and Haaretz: we support apartheid but reject some of its less desirable acts.

The whole provides self-justification in the service of "Israel" without any hint of a demand for accountability or coercive measures against the apartheid regime to abide by legality.

As the brother and sister Mohammed El-Kurd and Muna El-Kurd, inhabitants of Sheikh Jarrah and threatened with expulsion, say: in the Western media "Palestine provides the dead and Israel provides the narrative."