Uri Avnery
July
12, 2014
BOMBS ARE
raining on Gaza and rockets on Southern Israel, people are dying and homes are
being destroyed.
Again.
Again
without any purpose. Again with the certainty that after it’s all over,
everything will essentially be the same as it was before.
But I can
hardly hear the sirens which warn of rockets coming towards Tel Aviv. I cannot
take my mind off the awful thing that happened in Jerusalem.
IF A gang
of neo-Nazis had kidnapped a 16-year old boy in a London
Jewish neighborhood in the dark of the night, driven him to Hyde
Park, beaten him up, poured gasoline into his mouth, doused him
all over and set him on fire – what would have happened?
Wouldn't
the UK
have exploded in a storm of anger and disgust?
Wouldn't
the Queen have expressed her outrage?
Wouldn't
the Prime Minister have rushed to the home of the bereaved family to apologize
on behalf of the entire nation?
Wouldn't
the leadership of the neo-Nazis, their active supporters and brain-washers be
indicted and condemned?
Perhaps in
the UK.
Perhaps in Germany.
Not here.
THIS
ABOMINABLE atrocity took place in Jerusalem.
A Palestinian boy was abducted and burned alive. No racist crime in Israel ever
came close to it.
Burning
people alive is an abomination everywhere. In a state that claims to be
“Jewish”, it is even worse.
In Jewish
history, only one chapter comes close to the Holocaust: the Spanish
inquisition. This Catholic institution tortured Jews and burned them alive at
the stake. Later, this happened sometimes in the Russian pogroms. Even the most
fanatical enemy of Israel
could not imagine such an awful thing happening in Israel. Until now.
Under
Israeli law, East Jerusalem is not occupied
territory. It is a part of sovereign Israel.
THE CHAIN
of events was as follows:
Two
Palestinians, apparently acting alone, kidnapped three Israeli teenagers who
were trying to hitchhike at night from a settlement near Hebron. The objective was probably to use
them as hostages for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
The action
went awry when one of the three succeeded in calling the Israeli police
emergency number from his mobile phone. The kidnappers, assuming that the
police would soon be on their tracks, panicked and shot the three at once. They
dumped the bodies in a field and fled. (Actually the police bungled things and
only started their hunt the next morning.)
All of Israel was in
an uproar. Many thousands of soldiers were employed for three weeks in the
search for the three youngsters, combing thousands of buildings, caves and
fields.
The public
uproar was surely justified. But it soon degenerated into an orgy of racist
incitement, which intensified from day to day. Newspapers, radio stations and
TV networks competed with each other in unabashed racist diatribes, repeating
the official line ad nauseam and adding their own nauseous commentary – every
day, around the clock.
The
security services of the Palestinian Authority, which collaborated throughout
with the Israeli security services, played a major role in discovering early on
the identity of the two kidnappers (identified but not yet caught). Mahmoud
Abbas, the PA president, stood up in a meeting of the Arab countries and
condemned the kidnapping unequivocally and was branded by many of his own
people as an Arab Quisling. Israeli leaders, on the other hand, called him a
hypocrite.
Israel’s leading politicians let loose a
salvo of utterances which would be seen anywhere else as outright fascist. A
short selection:
Danny
Danon, deputy Minister of Defense: “If a Russian boy had been kidnapped, Putin
would have flattened village after village!”
“Jewish
Home” faction leader Ayala Shaked: “With a people whose heroes are child
murderers we must deal accordingly.” (“Jewish Home” is a part of the government
coalition.)
Noam Perl,
world chairman of Bnei Akiva, the youth movement of the settlers: “An entire
nation and thousands of years of history demand: Revenge!”
Uri Bank, former secretary of Uri Ariel, Housing
Minister and builder of the settlements: “This is the right moment . When our
children are hurt, we go berserk, no limits, dismantling of the Palestinian
Authority, annexation of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), execution of all
prisoners who have been condemned for murder, exile of family members of
terrorists!”
And
Binyamin Netanyahu himself, speaking about the entire Palestinian people: “They
are not like us. We sanctify life, they sanctify death!”
When the
bodies of the three were found by tourist guides, the chorus of hatred reached
a new crescendo. Soldiers posted tens of thousands of messages on the internet
calling for “revenge”, politicians egged them on, the media added fuel, lynch
mobs gathered in many places in Jerusalem
to hunt Arab workers and rough them up.
Except for
a few lonely voices, it seemed that all Israel had turned into a soccer
mob, shouting “Death to the Arabs!”
Can anyone
even imagine a present-day European or American crowd shouting “Death to the
Jews?”
THE SIX
arrested until now for the bestial murder of the Arab boy had come straight
from one of these “Death to the Arabs” demonstrations.
First they
had tried to kidnap a 9-year old boy in the same Arab neighborhood, Shuafat.
One of them caught the boy in the street and dragged him towards their car,
choking him at the same time. Luckily, the child succeeded in shouting “Mama!”
and his mother started hitting the kidnapper with her cell phone. He panicked
and ran off. The choking marks on the boy’s neck could be seen for several
days.
The next
day the group returned, caught Muhammad Abu-Khdeir, a cheerful 16-year old boy
with an engaging smile, poured gasoline in his mouth and burned him to death.
(As if
this was not enough, Border Policemen caught his cousin during a protest
demonstration, handcuffed him, threw him on the ground and started kicking his
head and face. His wounds look terrible. The disfigured boy was arrested, the
policemen were not.)
THE
ATROCIOUS way Muhammad was murdered was not mentioned at first. The fact was
disclosed by an Arab pathologist who was present at the official autopsy. Most
Israeli newspapers mentioned the fact in a few words on an inner page. Most TV
newscasts did not mention the fact at all.
In Israel proper,
Arab citizens rose up as they have not done in many years. Violent
demonstrations throughout the country lasted for several days. At the same
time, the Gaza
Strip frontline exploded in a new orgy of rockets and aerial bombings in a new
mini-war which already has a name: “Solid Cliff”. (The army's propaganda
section has invented another name in English.) The new Egyptian dictatorship is
collaborating with the Israeli army in choking the Strip.
THE NAMES
of the six suspects of the murder-by-fire – several of whom have already
confessed to the appalling deed – are still being withheld. But unofficial
reports say that they belong to the Orthodox community. Apparently this
community, traditionally anti-Zionist and moderate, has now spawned neo-Nazi
offspring, which surpass even their religious-Zionist competitors.
Yet
terrible as the deed itself is, to my mind the public reaction is even worse.
Because there isn’t any.
True, a
few sporadic voices have been heard. Many more ordinary people have voiced
their disgust in private conversations. But the deafening moral outrage one
could have expected did not materialize.
Everything
was done to minimize the “incident”, prevent its publication abroad and even
inside Israel.
Life went on as usual. A few government leaders and other politicians condemned
the deed in routine phrases, for consumption abroad. The soccer world cup
contest elicited far more interest. Even on the Left, the atrocity was treated
as just another item among the many misdeeds of the occupation.
Where is
the outcry, the moral uprising of the nation, the unanimous decision to stamp
out the racism that makes such atrocities possible?
THE NEW
flare-up in and around the Gaza
Strip has obliterated the atrocity altogether.
Sirens
sound in Jerusalem
and in towns north of Tel-Aviv. The missiles aimed at Israeli population
centers have successfully (up to now) been intercepted by counter-missiles. But
hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are running to the shelters.
On the other side, hundreds of daily sorties of the Israeli Air Force turn life
in the Gaza
Strip into hell.
WHEN THE
cannon roar, the muses fall silent.
Also the
pity for a boy burnt to death.
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