Ruthie Blum: Terror in Jerusalem, PLO flags in Tel Aviv
Neither the terrorist slaughter of seven Jewish worshipers and the wounding of three others in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood, nor the near-fatal shooting the following morning of a father and son at the entrance to the City of David National Park in the Israeli capital, prevented the anti-government protests from proceeding as scheduled.David Collier: No! The Jews were not ‘living happily’ in Arab lands
Lest they lose an inch of their self-claimed moral high ground, however, those who came out in disputed numbers for the fourth Saturday night in a row—ostensibly to decry Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s plans to overhaul the judiciary—kicked off their demonstrations with a moment of silence for the victims.
Given the personal and national tragedy of the previous 24 hours, the gesture was warranted. Still, nixing the rallies would have been far more appropriate under the circumstances.
Organizers reportedly considered this option, but decided against it. That the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee was set on Sunday to step up discussions on judicial-reform legislation tipped the scales in favor of virtue signaling in town squares.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the business-as-usual spectacle that followed the 60-second acknowledgement of the occasion was abhorrent. Participants prancing around bemoaning a concocted danger—the so-called “death of Israeli democracy” at the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition—made a mockery of the actual mass murder of innocents.
These were 14-year-old Asher Natan, married couple 48-year-old Eli and 45-year-old Natalie Mizrahi, who were gunned down while attempting to administer aid to the wounded; Raphael Ben-Eliyahu, 56; Shaul Hai, 68; 26-year-old Ilya Sosansky; and Ukrainian national Irina Korolova.
The disrespect shown to the shattered families of the slain and injured didn’t end there; among the sentiments voiced at the intersectional happenings was empathy for Palestinian terrorists.
Channel 14 correspondent Moti Kastel asked a group of “judicial reform” opponents in Tel Aviv whether they weren’t “ashamed” to be waving PLO flags, particularly on such an evening, in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Jews.
“Not at all,” one answered. “I’m proud of it. We [Israelis] murder in return.”
Another replied by pointing to the “murder” of nine Palestinians in Jenin. It was an interesting way to describe the elimination on Thursday of Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists plotting a major, imminent attack on Israelis.
According to the anti-Israel narrative, Jews and Arabs lived peacefully together – until of course the ‘Zionists’ arrived to spoil the ‘beautiful’ relationship.Seth Frantzman: The ‘cycle of violence’ dehumanizing cliches after Jerusalem massacre
This is one of the most offensive rewrites of history. It may be true that the Jews had a worse time in Europe – a deflective phrase I have even heard academics use – but let’s face it, is the industrial slaughter of 6 million Jews really the bar we want to measure things by?
The reality is that Jews in Islamic lands knew their place. Jews in Islamic lands were often third class citizens, with special taxes to pay, and a myriad of degrading rules to live by. Even looking a Muslim in the eye could result in death. This from Algiers (current Jewish population = zero) in the 19th century:
Sometimes, specific periods of acceptance or calm in nations such as Morocco are held up as examples – but this too is deceptive. Whilst a few Jewish families may have been given privileges now and again – the majority still lived in perpetual fear, and at the mercy of the Muslim majority population that surrounded them. Jews could be brutally attacked – but dared not complain.
Whilst doing research I have stumbled on numerous newspaper reports laying out the horror of the treatment of Jews in Islamic lands. All of them long before Israel’s war of Independence in 1948. I intend to create country-specific pages on the website to let others use them as a reference – part of a wider plan to greatly bolster the historical evidence available on this site. A depository of truth to help do battle with the revisionists. For now, I will just give an example or two from each country.
This is what it was really like for Jews living under Muslim rule:
It’s not a cycle, it’s a one way conflict in which the Iran-backed PIJ stockpiles illegal weapons and threatens Israel from places like Jenin. PIJ is an illegal armed terror group. There’s no cycle, it’s Israelis trying to pre-empt the group from expanding and carrying out attacks.
On the other hand the attack in Jerusalem, apparently carried out by one perpetrator who targeted Jewish civilians, is not a cycle. It’s two different incidents, one in Jenin and one in Jerusalem. Is there evidence that PIJ is involved in both? Not according to reports. Just because long wolf terrorists are angered by other incidents doesn’t turn their actions into a cycle.
The reason the “cycle” cliché is problematic is also because it is trotted out almost every day without introspection. The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process condemned a “cycle of violence” on January 26 and back on January 18 France’s mission to the UN also said the “cycle of violence” should end. January 18 was even before the Jenin raid and the Jerusalem attack.
These kinds of statements are banal and they are becoming so common that it reads like one of those articles written by artificial intelligence, where you just plug in the new parameters and the statement comes out the other end.
Victims deserve better. Not every Palestinian and Israeli is a victim of a “cycle.” There are individual actions behind these tragedies. This is not a script for a play, but human lives cut short. The “occupation” or “Israeli control” is not an excuse for attacks or a mitigating reason or them. Perpetrators who purposely target civilians are not fighters targeting an “occupying force,” they are committing a murderous crimes.
It's possible for commentators to write about the Jenin clashes and also about the attack in Jerusalem and see each as its own incident, and each civilian death as a tragedy. When commentators try to churn this into one process it not only wreaks of “all lives matter” excuses but also is not helpful either for peace or for humanizing the victims on both sides.