Ruthie Blum: A tale of 2 Israeli heroes
Last Friday night, an Israeli soldier on leave for the weekend acted coolly and courageously, rushing to the rescue of neighbors he heard screaming. "Sgt. O.," whose full name cannot be disclosed due to the sensitive nature of the elite IDF special forces unit in which he serves, ran to the home of the nearby Salomon family to investigate. When he saw through their window that they were being butchered, he promptly grabbed his rifle and shot the perpetrator.David Harris: Stop Infantilizing the Palestinians
By the time the scene was over, Yosef Salomon, 70, his daughter Chaya Salomon, 46, and son Elad Salomon, 36, were lying in pools of blood on the kitchen floor. Tova Salomon, 68, would only learn of the death of her husband and two of her children upon awakening from the surgery she underwent to repair the multiple injuries she sustained in the knife attack.
The terrorist who maimed and murdered the Salomons was evacuated to an Israeli hospital, where he was treated for the bullet wound from Sgt. O.'s weapon.
Sgt. O. is an Israeli hero whose identity cannot be published, but whose life is intact. A different Israeli hero -- one who has been a household name in the country for his decades of musical prowess and gay-rights activism -- was not so fortunate last weekend.
Amir Fryszer Guttman, 41, died on Saturday of organ failure, after rescuing his 9-year-old niece from drowning off the coast of Atlit. Fryszer Guttman held the flailing child, his brother's daughter, above the surface of the waves, forcing himself to stay conscious while bobbing up and down in the water until help arrived. It was not until he was told that the little girl was safe that he passed out for good. He was rushed to the hospital in a coma, and died the following day.
Fryszer Guttman's story gripped the nation more profoundly than the international crisis surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The ongoing chaos, sparked by an Arab terrorist attack on July 14 -- in which two Druze Israeli Border Police officers were killed outside Al-Aqsa mosque -- feels like yet another chapter in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By now, the matter-of-fact heroism displayed by people like Sgt. O. is something that the public has come to take for granted.
But Fryszer Guttman's death caused everyone -- even the most secular of his peers in the entertainment industry and LGBT community -- to gasp at its eerily divine significance. This is because he lost his life on the very day that he and his friends and family were celebrating the anniversary of the beginning of his new life.
It's high time for the international community to wake up to certain Palestinian realities that many would rather avoid. I write as the representative of an organization, AJC, long committed to the search for an enduring two-state agreement, coexistence between Muslims and Jews, and friendly ties with moderate Arab countries.What kind of society has the Palestinian Authority created?
An obsession with Israel and what it should (and should not) do blinds too many observers of the region to the other side of the equation - what the Palestinians should (and should not) do. Why doesn't the international community show more backbone in insisting that Palestinians take responsibility for their own behavior?
The Palestinians could have had a state on more than one occasion between 1947 and 2017, yet they rejected each opportunity. The price was recognition of Israel as a sovereign nation alongside the Palestinian state, a price they have been unwilling to pay.
While Israel has come to accept Palestinian nationalism, there has been no reciprocal movement on the Palestinian side to accept Jewish self-determination as its complement.
Moreover, the popular Palestinian belief that Jews are "outsiders," "interlopers," "colonialists," and "crusaders" must be confronted. Jews are indigenous to the region. The age-old link between the Jewish people and the land is documented and irrefutable.
Indulging the Palestinians in their fanciful history allows them to live in an alternate universe, one where Israel doesn't exist, or, if it does, is only a "temporary and illegitimate" phenomenon.
Ending the infantilization of the Palestinians - and beginning to hold them responsible for their actions - could be one promising way forward for the peacemakers.
On July 14th, Palestinian terrorists smuggled guns into their own holy site, then used those guns to murder two Israeli Druze police officers guarding one of the entrances to the al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet, it's the installation of metal detectors and cameras - nothing more nothing less, not the heinous use of a holy site as a launch pad for murder and terrorism that has the Palestinians enraged.
To an objective observer, the crisis that erupted in the aftermath of a bloody terror attack makes no sense. Israel’s placing security devices at the entrance to all al-Aqsa entrances was a preventive security matter plain and simple and designed to detect metal objects being carried onto the Temple Mount to prevent a recurrence of the crime and to protect worshipers coming to pray.
Sadly, mere rumors by Palestinians regarding al-Aqsa are enough to ignite a conflagration. In effect, by pretending that the al-Aqsa mosque is under Israeli attack, Palestinian political and religious leaders have deliberately drummed up senseless violence. Nor is this sham new. Palestinian leaders have been making false claims of Jewish threats to the al-Aqsa mosque since 1929.As a result, the predictable response from Palestinians was general outrage and mass riots if the security devices were not removed. So the question arises, how could the installation of metal detectors and high-tech cameras to protect a holy site be considered a cause of war or worse - a new holy war?
Even the King of Saudi Arabia said he saw no problem with the installation of electronic means of inspection, which are the same ones used at Islam's holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina. In Mecca, for example, there are 5,000 closed-circuit television cameras (overseen by a British company, G4S) and, as a security measure, an electronic bracelet is attached to each of the millions of pilgrims throughout their entire stay in the kingdom, allowing the authorities to monitor them. That hasn’t stopped the pilgrimage.