Something is terribly wrong when Jewish teenagers in Jerusalem attack innocent people — and hundreds watch, and do nothing.
Just like hundreds watched and did nothing when an innocent woman, Kitty Genovese, was attacked and murdered in New York City 48 years ago.
In Jerusalem, the attacks on the innocent were not fatal — great comfort to the victims, but small comfort to those worried about the moral fabric of Israel.
We are used to Palestinians attacking Jews for no reason, and even celebrating the violence. We are not used to Jews attacking others (Palestinian or otherwise) for no reason. We would like to stay unaccustomed to such things. But who knows? When hundreds watch the innocent being attacked and do nothing, it is hard to argue that the violence is just an oddity, the work of a few — and not even such a few. Reportedly, some 20 Jewish teens were involved in the attack.
Not to mention, the attack in Jerusalem was not the only such incident last week. Apparently, unidentified Jews threw a firebomb at a taxi near Bat Ayin in the Gush Etzion bloc that wounded six Palestinians from one family. Is not the Jewish claim against terrorism that it targets innocents? That it targets people indiscriminately?
Is it any less a terrorist act if it is Jews who target Palestinians?
Israel condemned the attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Palestinian leaders that Israel was making extensive efforts to locate the perpetrators, and to bring them to justice. Netanyahu also said he was monitoring the medical care the victims were receiving.
These attacks call for soul-searching. Jews and Israelis are supposed to be qualitatively better than that. It is entirely irrelevant to Israel’s need for soul-searching that Palestinians and other Arabs attack innocent Jews all the time, and do not apologize or regret the attacks. It is entirely irrelevant that the Palestinian Authority celebrates its terrorist murderers.
Clearly, the unending violence against Israel by terrorists — be they Saudi, Jordanian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Palestinian, Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, Sunni, Shiite, Alawite or Christian — has taken its toll, desensitizing some Israelis to violence. That may be an explanation for these recent attacks, but not a justification.
Even more alarming, perhaps a certain nihilism, disconnected from the Arab-Israel conflict, has infected some Israeli youth. Perhaps a radical disconnect from Jewish values has infected even Hebrew-speakers native to the Land of Israel.
There may be other explanations. Our concern now is not to identify the cause, or causes, of these attacks. Our concern is to stress the need to search for the causes, to take these attacks seriously, to make certain they remain aberrations, not to dismiss them as isolated incidents.
Vice PM Moshe Ya’alon, while rightly condemning the attacks, called them “hate crimes.” That’s a little too easy, as if to put such attacks in a box — “hate crimes” — is to understand both their cause and solution. We fear that the arrival of Kitty Genovese in Israel is more complex, more troubling and more repercussive than that.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
