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A mother’s true thoughts

In the midst of conflict an event unfolds in which a terrorist and a counterterrorism dog are both killed.

One people grieves the tragic loss of the counterterrorism dog. The other people rejoices at the death of human life, of the terrorist.

Zili, the IDF counterterrorism dog, was killed in Nablus, while fighting to overpower a terrorist and in this process sacrificed its life in order save the lives of IDF soldiers.

The nation mourned her loss. An innocent dog, who by nature knows nothing about war and peace, yet fights to preserve life, and in the process loses its own — after executing many such lifesaving missions in the past.

It’s so sad, really. An outpouring of emotion for the innocence, loss and heroism of Zili, this four legged fighter, was palpable.

The death of the terrorist killed in the very same event, Ibrahim Nabulsi, elicited a strong response too.

A video of his mother was circulating.

Regardless of what side one might find oneself on, the anguish of the loss of a child to a mother is a universal grief.

To my shock, instead of viewing a mother in mourning, upon clicking on the video, before me was a woman expressing unbridled joy. Praising the loss of her son. In public. To the cheers of an audience. A composed and articulate voice.

How could this be?

One of the most basic primal and deep bonds in nature is that of mother and child, or even of animal and her cub.

Today we know it’s not just humans who mourn their dead, but animals too grieve the loss of their loved ones. It’s a basic primal instinct.

While animals or mammals’ way of grieving might be different from humans, the emotion and marking of this loss and ripping away of one’s offspring is expressed.

Elephants, monkeys, dolphins, dogs, whales, deer and others, all grieve.

As a way of bearing the loss, whales for example, express their feeling of loss by carrying around their deceased calves after they die, while some primate mothers who also carry their dead babies as a way of expressing their loss will let out alarm calls of stress if they lose the corpse of their offspring, or if their dead child is taken from them; so wired are mothers to grieve the loss of their young.

Yet here was this Palestinian woman, unnaturally rejoicing at the death of her terrorist son, uttering his praise in public.

Who is this woman? Who is the woman who doesn’t flinch at the news of her son’s death and instead breaks out in smiles and literal ululations of joy?

Is this the same woman who distributes candies after the news of the death of Jewish children makes the rounds?

Who is this inhuman Palestinian mother?

The gulf between Israelis and Palestinians indeed seems unbridgeable, condensed into the ever brief video of this woman’s heartless response to the news of her son’s death.

But is she really so heartless and inhumane? Could it really be that a mother’s casual and cold response at the news of her flesh- of-her-flesh’s death, a response so unnatural it screams the opposite of the very nature of motherhood, even as it is built and manifested in the animal kingdom, is genuine?

Or is it her Palestinian culture of terrorism and Palestinian leadership that is dictating, molding, muting, controlling and suppressing her true emotions? Her humanity? Her maternal instinct?

After all, the Palestinian culture and leadership incentivizes terrorism against Jewish Israelis by paying the convicted terrorists and their families. “Pay for slay.” Is this woman only putting on a show for the camera in public, so as to secure the well being of her still living family, with an impending check from the Palestinian Authority, only to return home and weep into her pillow the bitter tears of a broken mother who knows in her heart of hearts that her son’s young life was cynically used for the purpose of hate and killing Jews?

Is, perhaps, this woman’s life under threat by the Palestinian terrorist regime, were she not to publicly tow the Palestinian line of hate toward the Israeli Jews by celebrating her son’s involvement in wanting to kill Israeli Jews and become a “shaheed,” a martyr?

Is this woman trying to convince herself that the death of her terrorist son has meaning?

Or, is this Palestinian mother so warped, so far gone from even primitive maternal nature, to the point of being unable to access the normative maternal instinct, and instead freely celebrating the loss of her own child?

None of us will ever know her truth for sure.

I watched the video numerous times, in order to try to understand. In order to try and find a clue as to her true grief, humanity and motherhood.

One would think it’s too difficult to conceal so deep a grief, that as talented an actress as one might be, it would be impossible not to reveal at least a hint of one’s true inner pain at the news of losing one’s own child.

Yet, it was difficult to see anything other than joy expressed by this mother. There was a micro second that I wondered about, a brief pause before the woman continues with: “Praise G-d praise G-d.”

If this joyous video of Ibrahim’s mother were solely for optics’ sake, if in fact Ibrahim’s mother were crying inside as she unnaturally rejoiced externally at her terrorist son’s state of martyrdom, then even with judging this mother favorably that her video was a lie and she is not heartless, this is a Palestinian culture for you.

A culture that weaponizes a mother’s vulnerability to its cause. A culture where a mother’s tears at the loss of her child can only be grieved in hiding. A culture in which terrorism is glorified to the point of holding a mother’s grief hostage. A culture that robs mothers of their basic emotions of loss and grief. A culture that traps and coerces women, mothers, into going against the very nature of their emotional DNA and of who they are meant to be. A culture that thwarts nature’s most basic bond of mother and child.

Clearly, the heart of the matter is that of children being raised and infused with hate justifying wanton murder of Jews.

In this video it was the mother’s joy and unnatural absence of public pain that struck me.

Seeing a video such as this almost feels like Golda Meir’s famous words that “peace with the Arabs will come when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate us” was a prophecy written for this very moment.

This sharp juxtaposition: A nation mourning the life and death of a counterterrorist dog whose training and mission was to save lives, and a nation rejoicing in and glorifying the death of a murdering terrorist human being. Golda Meir’s words — in ever sharper relief.

Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News



Tehilla Goldberg

IJN columnist | View from Central Park


One thought on “A mother’s true thoughts

  1. Yaakov G Watkins

    I agree with you completely regarding the Palestinian mother. My emotion of repulsion about the Palestinian culture was solidified by the report of a Palestinian woman living in Gaza who wrote an article condemning male IDF soldiers for declining to rape Palestinian women. She called it racism.

    There is something wrong with that culture.

    Reply

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