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discovery
of the bodies of the three kidnapped teens
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Muhammad Abu Kdheir, flashing the three the fingers victory sign |
Last
month's kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers did the impossible - it united a
nation wracked by painful divisions both political and cultural. For 18 days Israel held its breath - that is, at least the Jewish population of
Israel. For weeks, thousands of
Palestinian and Israeli Arabs went out of their way to twist the knife in the
midst of universal Jewish anguish, mocking the three kidnapped teens, flashing
three fingers in a proud victory sign, flooding social media outlets with
smiling selfies relishing in the barbarity of Hamas and the anguish it had
caused Israelis everywhere. A ray of
hope remained, however, that the boys were still alive. Israelis, secular and religious alike, joined
in mass prayer rallies and solemn vigils, hoping that the army forces combing
the southern West Bank would successfully locate and retrieve the teens - alive. The tension was palpable throughout the
country as people waited with baited breath, glued to the internet news outlets
with a dedication that in any other circumstance would be diagnosed as
OCD.
So
when the bodies of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frenkel, and Gilad Shaer were
discovered on June 30th, the blow was especially hard. Shock turned to mourning as the nation came
together in grieving. Hamas sent its
condolences with rocket fire on Israeli cities.
Thousands of Arabs on both sides of the Green Line reveled in the news
of the horrible discovery, including a 16 year old Arab boy from Jerusalem, Muhammad
Abu Kdheir. Two days later, Israel was
greeted with another grisly discovery - Abu Kdheir's charred body found in a
Jerusalem-area forest.
While
the nature of the killing remained shrouded in mystery for days - it was
initially suspected to have been an honor killing by family members over the
boy's alleged homosexuality - it instantly set off an explosion of rioting in
the Arab sector. Another predictable
reaction, both inside and outside of Israel, are the calls for Israeli
"soul-searching" after the murder, condemnation of various sectors of
Israeli society, and the rancid accusations of moral equivalency between
Palestinian and Israeli extremism.
The
habitual sadism of Palestinian terror, whether by Hamas or the PLO, is utterly
different both quantitatively and qualitatively from this apparent act of
revenge. Palestinian society, with
woefully few exceptions, has from the outset endorsed a culture of animalistic
brutality. It was not in a cultural
vacuum that thousands upon thousands of rockets and missiles have been fired at
Israel from the Gaza Strip, even after Israel's self-emasculating withdrawal,
or hundreds of terrorists have snuck into the Jewish state to kill civilians
with suicide bombs, assault rifles, or even butcher knives. While the much maligned rise of Hamas was
seen in the West as a sign of growing Palestinian radicalism, the reality is
that while the PLO formally renounced terrorism, in practice it remained a
certified practitioner of it.
The
inconvenient truth is that the Palestinians have never had a true peace party,
no mass-movement for rapprochement, no significant effort to build
bridges. For the Palestinians, the peace
process was never about forging peace, it was about hustling the Jewish state
for as much land as possible, gaining international aid, and hobbling Israeli
self-defense with the threat of foreign intervention. The arrogance of Western negotiators was
matched only by that of the Israeli left, both of whom imagined they were
capable of imposing via a final status agreement the kind social engineering
the United States sought to achieve in Iraq and Afghanistan through
state-building.
But
Palestinian society is a society where the masses flooded the streets cheering
on 9/11, rejoicing in the deaths of 3,000 Americans; where revilers handed out
candy to smiling passersby after two Palestinians broke into a Jewish home in
the dead of night and butchered a family in their beds, nearly decapitating the
family's three month old infant; and where villages across the West Bank
blasted fireworks after hearing that the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers were
dead.
That's
not to say that all Palestinians endorse savagery - they don't. But it most definitely is socially accepted
in huge swaths of Palestinian society.
City streets and government buildings are named after mass-murderers
while public television inculcates even the youngest viewers in anti-Semitic
hatred and the legitimacy of violence. It's
a difficult concept for Americans to wrap their minds around. Without a doubt, Americans would be outraged
if a foreign country - especially one in the midst of negotiations with the US
- would name a city square in its capital city after Osama Bin Laden. In Palestinian society there is an unrelenting
effort to delegitimize the so-called "Israeli occupations" - in
plural since they view the creation of Israel in 1948 as the first - and worst
- occupation. From state television to
pop culture, hatred of "the Zionists" is inculcated and violence
legitimized and glorified.
Only
such a society could produce the kind of terrorist factories where countless
young men and women offer their bodies up
for martyrdom hoping to kill and maim as many Jews as possible. Only such a society would produce popular
approval of such actions, where even middle class Arab families - people who
ostensibly appear so similar to their Western counterparts - could relish in
even the most debauched act of violence.
On the Palestinian side, nationalistic violence is a compulsion and the
next brutality is just a matter of time. On the Israeli side, it's a bizarre aberration.
The
ugly murder of Muhammad Abu Kdheir, if indeed perpetrated by Jews in an act of
revenge as is widely suspected, draws some stupendously superficial
comparisons. Unlike the habitual
violence of Palestinian anti-Semitism,
nationalistic Israeli acts are not only far fewer, they are essentially
different in nature. Palestinians are
obsessed with the existence of Israel and their hatred of it and are consumed
by an unending need to avenge themselves for the foundation of Israel. Their violence is, to them, inherently
justified, and is meant to dash Israeli hopes at establishing a normal,
peaceful existence.
Since
the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the transfer of the region out of
Turkish hands, Palestinian violence has wrought a horrible toll on a Jewish
community who's natural response has almost always been one of havlaga -
restraint. Not answering attacks tit for
tat. Not taking an eye for an eye. But there has also always been a breaking
point for Israelis where after absorbing one too many massacres, bombings, or
other outrages, something inevitably snaps.
At times the response is official, by the army or, in the pre-state
days, by the Hagannah para-military force.
At other times, however, when there has been no governmental action, the
response is the unsanctioned violence of either small cells or even single
individuals, often ones pushed over the edge.
In the 1930s and 1940s it was the underground groups the Lehi and the
Irgun; in the 1980s it was the Jewish underground; in the 1990s it was Baruch
Goldstein; in the 2000s it was the second Jewish underground, Eden-Natan Zada,
and Asher Weisgan.
The
critical difference between the sparse Israeli acts of violence and the almost
unending Palestinian waves of terrorism is the former truly does not reflect
Israeli society. Even the Israeli right
does not espouse the kind of violence supported across the Palestinian
political spectrum. The far-left
imagines the phenomenon of so-called "price tag" vandalism - which
has emerged amongst the hard-line Israeli nationalist crowd over the past
decade as a way of responding to daily Arab stone-throwing - as some sort of
Israeli equivalent to Palestinian terrorism.
Of
course this charge is ludicrous. No one
can argue with a straight face that spray-painting graffiti or puncturing tires
is even vaguely similar to blowing up buses or decapitating babies. But this is not merely an exercise in
hysteric hyperbole, it again misses the point entirely. However wrong-headed the price tag vandalism
is, it too is a venting of pent up frustration from years of abuse at the hands
of Palestinians and neglect from the state.
Palestinian villagers across the West Bank - not to mention their
city-dwelling brethren in east Jerusalem and the Old City - have integrated
stone throwing into their daily routine, with no reprimand or consequences from
within Palestinian society. Jews living
in the biblical Israelite cities of the West Bank like Hebron, Shilo, and Beit
El, are constantly subjected to stone attacks on the roads.
For
anyone who lives in such areas, the attacks are inevitable; for someone
traveling regularly on roads like Route 60, it is unthinkable that they would
never be subjected to a brick smashing through their windshield or a stone
hurtling through a window, injuring those inside. Aside from the sometimes fatal crashes these
stonings can cause, the real fear is the roadblock, to be driving on one's way
to work or back home, possibly with children in the car, only to suddenly find
the road blocked with boulders as masked men spring up from the sides of the
road, hurling throwing stones, Molotov cocktails or perhaps dragging drivers
and passengers out for a far more ghastly fate. The fear of the lynch mob is hardly imaginary:
dozens of Israelis have run into that terror.
Some manage to escape, while others, like two Israelis who were ripped
to pieces and disemboweled in 2000 after accidently taking the wrong exit, are
killed in displays of brutality that almost transcend the term
"lynch".
And
yet the Israeli government has often been exceedingly lax in responding to the seemingly
endless Palestinian crimes. After the
murder of the three kidnapped boys and under a barrage of rocket fire from
Hamas in the south, the Israeli response towards the terror group has been
almost invisible - a single terrorist leader killed in a targeted killing and a
some Hamas operatives arrested in the West Bank - arrested with the guarantee
of being freed in the near future, no matter what crimes they may have
committed. Even Aziz Salha, the
terrorist who proudly displayed his bloody hands after disemboweling the two
lynched Israelis in 2000, has been released by the Netanyahu government,
assuring future terrorists that no matter their crime, they will serve no more
than a few years.
As
far as guaranteeing safety on the roads, the situation has degenerated so badly
that even the army itself is subjected to firebombs and mass stonings with only
minimal efforts made for self-defense.
The army vehicles which retrieved the bodies of the three murdered
Israeli boys were subjected to a deluge of stones and firebombs as they sped up
Route 60, extricating themselves as quickly as possible from a road where
thousands of Israelis must travel daily, suffering from the same kind of
regular violence.
In
the absence of any governmental effort to crackdown on the violence and instill
order, is it any surprise that some would take the law into their own hands,
doing whatever they could, however feeble or ill-conceived, to fight back? Incessant abuse inevitably breeds
counter-violence, a response which is more emotional than anything else. That some blacks in the United States in the
1960s strike out blindly in frustration, as the Black Panthers did, over the
ongoing situation in the South, was an unavoidable byproduct of the terror
campaigns conducted by the KKK, the refusal of local governments to adequately
protect them, and the larger Jim Crow establishment which legitimized that hatred and abuse.
Again,
that is not to say that the crimes committed by black nationalists were justified,
any more than are the price tag acts of vandalism or the murder of Muhammad Abu
Kdheir. But it does shift the onus of collective
responsibility. Crimes are always the
responsibility of those who directly commit them. In some instances, however, they are also
- and not only - the responsibility of some collective, some larger group or
society which encouraged them or fostered the perquisite culture of hate.
This
concept of collective culpability is frequently abused, however, for political
witch hunts or to legitimize some ideological craving. Feminists picked up on the murderous actions
of an unbalanced young man, Elliot Rodger, in California to cast collective
guilt on masculinity and white males in particular. Never mind that Rodger's misogyny was a product
of his more general anti-social, psychotic tendencies or that he evinced a
hatred of sexually active men that was just as powerful as his bitterness
towards women.
In
Israel, however, the accusations of collective guilt are particularly offensive
not since there is no collective responsibility, but because they are directed
at the victim rather than the aggressor.
Again, that is not to remove the personal culpability of the actual
perpetrators - they are always responsible for their actions. The question here is, who is responsible for
creating the situation and the abominable cycle of violence. It is surely not an Israeli public which
endured years of terrorism and rocket fire, nor is it even a settler population
that has been subjected to decades of daily abuse.
One
of the remarkable ironies of the situation has been the almost obsessive need
for many - even outside of the Israeli left or international anti-Israel
movements - to remove the onus from Palestinian society. Even President Bush - and I'm referring to
Bush 43, the oft-touted close friend of Israel, not his father, whose
relationship with the Jewish state was somewhat less cordial - blamed
Palestinian radicalism on the frustration created by security checkpoints
established throughout the West Bank road system to prevent the movement of
terrorists into Israeli cities.
The
idea of Palestinian "humiliation" at these checkpoints has become a
virtual truism not only in the anti-Israel radical left but even amongst people
who would identify as supporters of the Jewish state. The claim itself is a bizarre one to make;
crossing these checkpoints is certainly far less humiliating or frustrating
than the post 9/11 TSA security checks all Americans suffer through when
flying. One should wonder, then, why the
TSA hasn't inspired a wave of suicide bombings by frustrated frequent
flyers. The dichotomy is a fascinating
one between Bush's recognition of checkpoints as an unbearable burden for
security even as he imposed far worse on his own nation.
Beyond
the general idiocy of the
checkpoints-cause-people-to-blow-themselves-up-on-buses theory, the more basic
idea that abuse and trauma suffered by the Palestinians lead to terrorism is a
complete fallacy, one which again sees a situation totally at odds with reality. Palestinian violence exists despite
Israelis treatment and despite the best efforts of Israel, since the Six Day War, to improve the conditions of
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
And if something as trivial as traffic delays caused by checkpoints can
be blamed for Palestinian terrorism, what about the daily violence and fear
Israeli settlers have been subjected to for decades?
Settler
violence - price tag or otherwise - and the other occasional outbursts of
Israeli nationalistic violence, on the other hand, are very much the result
Palestinian violence and abuse, and the unfortunate tendency of the government
to wait for tragedy before taking action.
Unlike the Palestinian mosques and universities, which have served as
veritable terror factories, which at the height of the Second Intifada pumped
out martyrs with alarming consistency, even the most supposedly
"radical" organizations and rabbinic schools in Israel have no record
for mass-producing Jewish jihadists.
Even
the vaunted Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in Yitzhar, arguably the most radicalized
settler educational institution, hasn't managed to produce a single
terrorist. In fact, the height of
radicalism and violence its alumni have managed to "achieve" is the
throwing of stones back at the Arab villagers who have made life on the
roads a living hell. It is likely that
some are also guilty of price tag graffiti.
Vandalism's never nice, but an institution whose greatest sin is having
a few errant spray painters in its ranks is not even within the same cultural
universe as those that serve as hotbeds for suicide terrorism.
Even
the few outbursts of actual Jewish violence - which generally seem to occur
only once or twice a decade, after sufficient frustration has built up until a
certain boiling point is reached by someone - occurs as a result of and as a
direct reaction to Palestinian violence.
Baruch Goldstein, the American-born doctor and army reservist who in
1994 opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians in Hebron, is the classic example. Hebron had been a flashpoint of Arab violence
for decades. During the Intifada and
subsequent negotiation process with the nascent Palestinian Authority, the
lives of Israelis living in nearby Kiryat Arba had been made hellish. And no one bore the brunt harder than
Goldstein, the local doctor, who was the first responder to the wave of terror
attacks in the area. The death of his
close friend in one such attack, it is suggested, pushed him over the edge and
at a time when the Israeli army was pulling out from much of the West Bank and
handing over control to the PLO.
As
noted above, we cannot relieve individuals of the responsibility of their
actions. That is hardly the intent of
this piece. What is crucial to
understand, however, are the differences between the quite frequent and
grotesque Palestinian violence and the extraordinarily rare Jewish responses to
it. Arab attempts to murder and maim are
daily; the Jewish responses, born out of the rage and frustration of living in
an impossible situation of habitual abuse, seem to boil over only about once or
so every decade. That appears to be the
pressure point, where someone, somewhere inevitably snaps, whether it's a
religious nationalist like Goldstein or a secular Israeli like Asher Weisgan. It's a remarkable level of restraint, a
testament to Israeli society, not an indictment of it or any segment within
it. The fact is that we must understand
- without condoning it - that, if the murder of Muhammad Abu Kdheir was indeed
committed by Jews, then the responsibility - on the Israeli side, at least -
rests with the murderers alone. It is
absolutely not a sign of some fault in Israeli society. The collective blame can and should be placed
solely on Hamas and the Palestinian society that sired it.
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