Friday, March 29, 2024 -
Print Edition

Throat slittings, pools of blood

At the IJN, we strive mightily to avoid editorializing in the news stories and headlines. That the headline of this editorial also appears on our front page this week might appear to violate this stricture. But how else could one describe the five murders in Itamar last Friday night? The throats of five people, unsuspecting, were slit by terrorists and their bodies were left to drain out the blood. We struggled whether to print the pictures of this gruesome, inhumane, mass murder. They are available — and tell the story of absolutely pure hatred. Of human beings reduced to animals for the slaughter. How else could one describe this?


The point, of course, is not to find the right metaphor but to call attention to the sheer hatred that so many Palestinians bear toward Israelis, including three-month old Israelis. Lest that seems to be an unfair generalization, keep in mind that news of the slaughter was greeted with glee in Gaza. Palestinians handed out candy upon learning the news of the slaughter.

As for the condemnation of the violence by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, it rings hollow, given that a couple of weeks ago Abbas’ PA named a Palestinian town square after the woman who committed the worst Palestinian terrorist attack against Israel, in 1978; given that last February Abbas (and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad) named a soccer tournament in honor of a suicide bomber; given that last October Abbas’ official TV channel praised the Palestinian terrorists who murdered six Israeli civilians in 1975 and 1980; given that . . . the list goes on and on.

This racism, endemic among significant segments of Palestinians, rears its head in assumptions that appear in much more mainstream places. Take, for example, this paragraph in The New York Times’ report on the massacre last Sunday, March 23:

“The killers appeared to have randomly picked the house, one of a neat row of identical one-story homes at the edge of the settlement [Itamar], on a rocky incline overlooking the nearby Palestinian village of Awarta — the proximity underlining the visceral nature of the contest in this area between Jewish settlers and Palestinians over the land.”

Notice: the proximity of an Israeli village and a Palestinian village is a “contest.” Jews are not allowed to live on Palestinian land, or, Palestinians are not allowed to live on Jewish land. Take your pick, take your perspective; either way, there is only a “contest.” A zero sum game. Either the land goes to the Jews, or to the Palestinians. The two may not live together. This is racist.

As the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin put it to former President Jimmy Carter (to this effect): “Would you support a policy that excluded Jews from living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania?” “No!” said Carter. “That would be racist!” Said Begin: “Then what is it if Jews are excluded from living in the original Bethlehem?”

Jews are slaughtered by Palestinian terrorists not because the Jews live on settlements, but because the settlements are convenient. Remember, during the height of the second intifada, suicide bombs went off in the heart of Tel Aviv, too, not just in settlements. The Palestinians who commit terrorist acts and who support them do not want Jews living anywhere in Israel.

This point is worth making as Israel faces international isolation for . . . existing. Israel made a “sacrifice for peace” by withdrawing from Gaza in 2005, which, against Israeli and Jewish expectations (naivete?) only increased the attacks on Israel’s legitimacy around the world. Meaning: the more Israel gives in and gives away, the more the true nature of the Palestinian opposition becomes clear: not to settlements, but to the existence of Israel on any territory.

Hamas makes this point by writing it in its charter. The Palestinian Authority makes this point by naming town squares after terrorists, and by terrorism — by animal-like slaughter.

Israel’s response, articulated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is: We exist, and shall  continue to exist. We are here to stay. We shall build 500 new houses in the area of the slaughter. We shall not be intimated by the slaughter into folding our cards.

You kill, we build. You engage in barbarism, we engage in civilization. We shall overcome.

Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News




Leave a Reply