Thursday, April 07, 2022
From Ian:
Two killed as terrorist opens fire on Tel Aviv bar; gunman still on loose
Two killed as terrorist opens fire on Tel Aviv bar; gunman still on loose
Two people were killed and several were wounded as a gunman opened fire on a bar in central Tel Aviv Thursday evening in an apparent terror attack, the latest eruption of violence to strike Israel in recent weeks.
The shooting took place on Dizengoff Street, turning an area normally crowded with people out for Thursday night at bars, restaurants and cafes lining the popular thoroughfare into a scene of chaos and panic.
As the street filled with ambulances and rescuers, police carried out searches for a gunman thought to have escaped, going door to door and telling people to stay inside and lock their doors.
The attack began when at least one gunman walked up to Ilka, a popular bar with a large outside seating section, and opened fire.
“We dove under the tables and people started crying, it was horrible,” said Evelyn Gertz, 34, who was having dinner next door.
Ten people were rushed to the nearby Ichilov Hospital with gunshot wounds, two of whom were later declared dead, the hospital said. Four others were listed as critical and were undergoing surgery, according to the hospital. Two were seriously injured, and two were mildly hurt.
Another four people with mild injuries were taken to Wolfson Hospital in Holon and Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer.
Melanie Phillips: The canaries in the cultural minePolice video shows response to Tel Aviv shooting pic.twitter.com/UT7aezXZmB
— Luke Tress (@luketress) April 7, 2022
In America and Europe, attacks on Jews simply because they are Jews have reached horrifying proportions. Does anyone imagine that if, say, black people or Muslims were being attacked by white people in anything like these proportions the media wouldn’t be absolutely packed with outraged and anguished commentaries drawing attention to a terrifying cultural breakdown? Yet these attacks on Jews in Britain and America receive hardly any mainstream coverage — and in France they are often actively denied as antisemitic attacks.Dave Sharma: My posting showed me the Israel I know
Why is this? Why are these attacks on Jews happening in such disproportionately large numbers? And what does this tell us about the state of western society?
Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism is a book written by Elder of Ziyon, the ironically named, pseudonymous and eponymous writer of an excellent website about Jewish issues and who explores this issue.
Elder notes that a string of attacks on Jews in America have been downplayed or fallen off the radar altogether. These include the 2019 Jersey city grocery stores shootings; the murder of a rabbi at a 2019 Chanukah party in Monsey; a “pogrom” in Crown Heights in 1991; a fatal shooting at a van of Hasidic men on Brooklyn Bridge in 1994; a 2011 Manhattan synagogue bomb plot; a 2016 attack on an Ohio restaurant with an Israeli flag; a 2016 plot to blow up a synagogue in Aventura, Florida; a 2009 plot to blow up two New York synagogues; and a foiled 2005 attempt to bomb synagogues in Los Angeles.
Pointing out that many of these attacks have been perpetrated by Muslims or African-Americans, Elder points the finger at the anti-Zionist left for downplaying or excusing them — while justifying attacks on Jews by Palestinian Arabs and pretending that Palestinian antisemitism is anti-Zionism. Elder writes:
Just like most of the physical attacks on Jews, the rhetorical attacks on Zionist Jews — the vast majority of the community — are also antisemitic. They can and do result in murderous attacks on Jews around the world. They must also be rooted out as unacceptable in any society.
For that to happen, modern antisemitism must be called out for what it is — hate. The same hate that animates the physical attacks on Jews lies behind the NGO reports and demonstrations that paint the Jewish state as uniquely evil. We must expose and stop that hate before that hate manifests as violence.
Too true; but just to state this reveals the scale of the challenge. For in the west, these Israel-bashing NGOs are regarded — heaven help us — as the voice of conscience. Far from being excoriated as disgusting bigots, they are actually held up as the arbiters of morality. And anti-Zionism — at the heart of which lies the willed destruction of Israel, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people who are thus singled out for murderous demonisation and delegitimisation inflicted on no other people — is the cause of causes in progressive circles.
When I arrived as Australia’s ambassador to Israel in 2013, in my first week or so in the country, I read a very small item in the side bar of the Jerusalem Post that caught my interest.
At the time the civil war in Syria was at a high level of intensity, including in an area just across the border with Israel, near the Golan Heights.
This news report, in a matter-of-fact way, as if it was the most regular thing in the world, stated that Israel had recently admitted across its border 20 or so Syrian civilians who had been injured in the fighting, and was now treating them at Israel’s main hospital in the north, Ziv Hospital in Tzfat.
I found this a little perplexing. Syria was formally in a state of war with Israel. Syria had never recognised Israel as a state or its legitimacy to exist. The border between the two countries across the Golan Heights was heavily fortified and militarised. Syrians could not travel to Israel and vice versa.
A few weeks later, my wife Rachel and I took a road trip up north, to visit Ziv Hospital and see for ourselves. What we saw astounded us. Young Syrian children, who had lost limbs during the conflict, were being fitted with prosthetic limbs by Israeli doctors and taught to walk again by Israeli physiotherapists. Their mother or another female relative usually stayed with them, for several months, rehabilitating and recuperating. Israeli-Arab social workers helped keep morale up and entertained the children.
Syria’s formal hostility towards Israel was ignored. The Syrian victims were treated as human beings, with compassion and respect.
I was so surprised by what I was seeing that I wrote an article about it in The Australian, concluding “Ziv Hospital is a profound example of humanity and decency at its most compelling. It is Israel at its very best, and a side of Israel that the world too rarely sees or acknowledges.”
Recent events in Ukraine have reminded me of this episode.
