Days after a Palestinian artist memorialized African American George Floyd who was suffocated to death by police in the US city of Minneapolis last month, the same artist memorialized Palestinian autistic Iyad Hallaq, 32, who was shot dead by Israeli police in Jerusalem for no reason other than he was Palestinian and an easy target.
Artist Taqieddin Sabatin painted the Floyd and Hallaq murals on the concrete wall Israel has built to separate the biblical city of Bethlehem from Jerusalem in order to commemorate both victims of police brutality.
On May 30, Hallaq was walking with his teacher to go to Elwyn center, a special needs school for people with disabilities inside Jerusalem’s Old City wall when Israeli police called on him to stop. Being autistic, Hallaq apparently did not pay attention to them and kept walking away. Police immediately opened fire and killed him, claiming he had a gun but later retracted their story and said he was unarmed.
His murder in cold blood brought to mind the killing in Minneapolis days earlier of George Floyd and made parallels of police brutality in the US against African Americans and in Palestine against Palestinian Arabs.
