Faris Odeh was 14 when he stood alone in front of an Israeli tank with a stone in his hand. Ten days later, a Zionist soldier shot him dead.

Hüseyin Doğru is a German journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Berlin. He has been sanctioned by the European Union

Cross-posted from Hüseyin’s Substack

On October 29, 2000, this photo was taken of a Palestinian boy in the Gaza Strip in the course of the Second Intifada.

Later this image became a symbol for the Palestinian resistance against apartheid.

The child was Faris Odeh, 14 years young. Ten days later, on 8 November 2000 after this image was taken Faris was again protesting. While standing up against a Zionist tank only with stones at the Karni crossing, soldiers of the IDF shot him with a bullet in his neck.

The setting for the photo was the eastern edge of Gaza City at the Karni crossing. In short order the picture of a boy and his stone before a tank was to be found in every corner, one of the most recognised depictions of the Palestinian resistance.

Faris came from the Zeitoun part of Gaza City where he was raised; he was born December 3, 1985. With the coming of the Intifada in September 2000 he left school and made for the places where the clashes were. His father resorted to locking him in his room, tying him down and even beating him to put an end to it. To no avail. Faris would make his way out the window and be back at Karni.

Then on November 1 the Zionists killed his cousin Shadi, a 17 year old with the Palestinian police. Faris made a vow of revenge.

He was at the head of the crowd at Karni on November 8 when the soldiers started shooting. The neck wound was fatal. He was some weeks short of turning 15.

He was not alone. In five weeks to early November the Zionist army had put 149 Palestinians in their graves, children for the most part with only stones to put between them and the army.

Yasser Arafat referred to him as “The General”. An exhibition in Ramallah in 2001, “100 Martyrs, 100 Lives”, put on display his slingshot.

That was 26 years ago. The tanks are still in Gaza. So are the children who stand in front of them, as Faris once did. Israel’s apartheid system has never feared the boy’s stone. It fears what the boy carries: the hope of a nation that will not stop fighting injustice, passed from one child’s hand to the next. Like Faris.

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