Ahed protesting with her father, mother and aunt. Photo by 2 Suns Shamsaan/Facebook

Having evidently "gone out of its mind" in its thirst for vengeance, Israeli forces just undertook a pre-dawn raid on occupied Nabi Saleh to arrest 10 relatives of Palestinian teenager and resistance hero Ahed Tamimi, currently in an Israeli prison awaiting trial on 12 assault charges after slapping an IDF soldier in December. For good measure, the soldiers also sprayed the village with putrid "skunk water," ostensibly designed for "crowd control"; it was the middle of the night, and there was no crowd. Those detained - half were children - included her 15-year-old cousin Mohammed, whose shooting in the head at close range by an Israeli rubber-coated bullet drove Ahed to her furious confrontation with thewith no parent or lawyer present, Major General Yoav Mordechai, who oversees the occupied rule of Palestinians in the West Bank, declared that the still-traumatized boy had "confessed" he was “injured while he was riding his bicycle and fell off.” "Oh wow. What a liar," he wrote on Facebook. "What is the truth about Mohammad Tamimi?" (Maybe that he was terrorizing and coercing a terrified child?) Mordechai insisted eyewitness reports in Israeli, Palestinian and international media of Mohammed's shooting were "fake news" and, in a final surreal flourish, accused the Tamimi family of “a culture of lies and incitement.” Savage pot/steadfast kettle.

Facts, it turns out, still matter. Noting "there is no limit to how low Israel is willing to sink in its attempt to discredit" them, the Tamimi