Nightclub adventure ends with murder
Palestine, Culture, 6/26/1998

The murder took place last week but for the bereaved family it feels as if their son was killed only seconds earlier. The wound is still wide open and the parents are forced to live with their grieves, certainly forever.

For the parents of Ala' Radi Muzalbat, what happened last Saturday was a parents worst nightmare. Their son went out at night with a group of his friends to spend a few hours at a nightclub in Haifa. But his teenager's adventure ended up with a murder of first degree.

Ala' Radi Muzalbat of the Arab village of Al Maghar in the Galilee left last Saturday night his home heading to a nightclub in Haifa. He never returned home. "He took with him his little bottle of perfume and a comb and never had on him any canes or knives," said his father, Radi who blamed the murder of his son on the anti-Arab hysteria that has struck many Jewish sectors in Israel.

Ala' and three of his friends found themselves in the middle of a fist fight in the night club, shortly after they went in. Jewish hoodlums attacked them with knives and sticks, killing Ala' and badly injuring his three friends. The fight, eyewitnesses said, started inside the nightclub. Later guards of the club forced all the Palestinians out of club. Armed with batons and knives, many Jewish hoodlums waited outside for the Palestinians to show up. They attacked them, fatally injuring Ala' and wounding his colleagues. The police later arrested five Jews who were later remanded in custody for interrogation.

The incident in which Ala' was killed was not unprecedented. Similar scuffles have broken out in the past and Palestinians have usually been regarded as persona non grata in nightclubs. Even soldiers in the Israeli army who come from a Palestinian origin are not welcome in some of those places.

"I cannot remember all the details," said Ala's father. "All I remember is that he finished his secondary school this year and looked for a job to occupy himself in the coming three months waiting to enroll in university where he planned to study engineering." He said that though similar incidents had broken out in the past, "they have been repeated more frequently under the present right wing government of Netanyahu." He blamed the local guards of the bar and the owners of the place for not summoning the police immediately. "They could have faced my son's life but none of them did anything that would prevent the murder."

Many families in the Palestinian villages blame the Israeli authorities for not furnishing their villages with leisure places for youths. "There are no theaters in our village, neither there are any other public places where youths can kill some time," said Ala's father. "What are we supposed to do, lock our children behind doors and prevent them from going out to spend some time?" He stressed that the mounting anti-Arab racism among Jews in Israel can never be solved as long as a permanent peace agreement is not reached between the Arab states and Israel.

Azmi Rashrash, whose son was one of those injured in the quarrel, said his son and Ala' had been friends for a long time. He said his son once told him that he was easily identified as a Palestinian and therefore he was not allowed to go into some of those nightclubs. He said that immediately after a verbal debate broke out inside the nightclub, the guards ordered his son and his friends out though they saw that a group of Jews, well equipped with knives and sticks, waited for them outside.

"They simply set a trap for all of them. Once the Palestinian youths walked out, the Jews attacked them under the nose of the Jewish guards. None of those present tried to intervene and stop the fighting or at least call the police." Azmi believes that similar quarrels among Jews themselves rarely end up with murder but when Palestinians are involved "anti-Arab racism becomes the name of the game." He called on fathers to prevent their children from spending extended periods of time out of their homes at night and to explain to them how risky it is to go into those nightclubs.

Jiries Kamel Muzalbat, Ala's uncle, said there are no places in their village for youths to go out at night and that is why most of them choose to drive to Haifa where there are plenty of nightclubs and bars. He urged Palestinian youths to keep away as much as they can, yet admitted it would not be so easy to convince those youths to stay at home.

Previous Stories:
  Interesting data for researchers: Gap between Palestinians is still there   (1/12/1998)
  The racist who wanted to throw a pig's head into Al Aqsa mosque   (12/29/1997)
  Palestinian academic calls for preservation of Arab sites' names   (11/26/1997)

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