generalspeaking

What Has Gone Wrong

"Whatever fuel was used to ignite the fire seemed to stick to the victims' skin. The father was melting before my eyes."
"I finally saw him [18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh]. He looked like a piece of charcoal with a face."
Yusef Deryeh, paramedic, Duma, West Bank

"To my great sorrow, until now, it seems we have been lax in our treatment of the phenomena of Jewish terrorism."
"[It pains] that from my people [Jews], there are those who have chosen the path of terrorism, and have lost their humanity."
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin

"We are at war. He who burns a Palestinian baby declares war on the State of Israel."
"He who stabs young people on a Pride March declares war on the State of Israel. He who burns down a church declares war on the State of Israel."
"They are traitors to all that is sacred to us, traitors to the very idea on which the State of Israel was founded, traitors to Judaism."
Yair Lapid, leader, Yesh Atid [There is a Future], Israel

"And no, this has nothing to do with any political stance. Early Friday morning, a family was targeted for no reason. This is a foul crime, and is regarded as a foul crime by the most of the Jewish settler population. But the silent majority has allowed these despicable people to grow and flourish. And the state has demonstrated untenable tolerance and turned a blind eye, time after time."
Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel's Middle East analyst

The early Friday morning firebombing of a home in a village of 2,800 Palestinians left the parents of the dead infant and his four-year-old brother severely burned with his mother in critical condition, sustaining burns to 90 percent of her body. The attack on the three-room concrete home is believed to have been a triumph of Jewish terrorists, ultra-Orthodox Jews pursuing an agenda of "pay-back", of "price-tag" vengeance.

Whenever authorities or the law rule against their interests, these extraordinarily entitled religious zealots plan revenge attacks on innocents, although attacks on police or military are not entirely unknown. None deadly, until this past event occurred. Giving ample evidence that stomach-turning acts of violence are common to any rigid religious fanatics, placing the interest of their singular religious devotion well above respect for humanity.

A month ago Malachi Rosenfeld, 25, returned to his home in the settlement of Shilo. Palestinians in a car fired at him and his companions, wounding the young man mortally. He died the following day. Yazid Dawabsheh, a lawyer from Duma and of the same clan as the parents and two children whose home was firebombed, believes that there is a connection between the two events. Which simply repeats that violence begets violence.

Palestinians are well known to attack randomly, and frequently, throwing rocks at cars driven by Jews, or shooting at them. Suicide attacks were common before the restraining wall was built, and they still occur. Perhaps it is to be expected that raw emotions run high and drive fanatics to commit acts of despicable violence. Targeting the innocent, the vulnerable, the helpless.

The difference has always been that the Palestinian Authority has incited to violence, urging 'resistance', whose code meaning is clear enough to most Palestinians. No 'resistance' against the 'occupier' would be required if a) a peace settlement was reached, b) attacks by Palestinians against Jews would cease. The difference is that the Authority has been pleased to honour those who have set out to slaughter by naming them martyrs and calling streets and plazas and buildings after their noble attempts at achieving revenge.

The difference is that horror is expressed collectively in a national shaming when a Jew runs amok of his own volition, driven by the lunacy of real or imagined victimhood to balance against the zeal of treasured victimhood by the Palestinians, to emulate the end-effect of assassins striving to raise a body count of innocents whose deaths they feel will appease the demon within.

And so, West Bank Palestinians now call for revenge. "With our souls and blood we shall redeem you, martyr", chanted men carrying aloft the infant's coffin with the Palestinian flag draped upon it, from the mosque to the cemetery where the child was to be interred. Yet another victim to rage, hatred, the will to slaughter on behalf of a maddening cause; a religion of peace and goodwill.

"Ali is a symbol of what has gone wrong between our peoples", said Samir Dawabsheh a clan member and relative of the firebombing victims. He had that right, and it's a pity that his mind did not move him in a direction that would recognize it is past time to put an end to the wrong between the two peoples. Instead, he completed his thought by capping it with the statement that "His death must keep our Palestinian cause alive."

Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Human Relations, Israel, Jews, Palestinians, West Bank

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, August 04, 2015