RUTHFULLY YOURS

Much (and much junk!) has already been written about the most recent wave of terrorism that shook Israel. While random Israeli Jews were being stabbed and shot in the street, much of the Western media was busy, as usual, trying to put a ‘pro-Palestinian’ spin on the ‘story’. This tendency manifested itself, among other things, in a keen effort to discover ‘reasons’ for terrorism. That in itself may not be a bad idea; but for so many of today’s lazy, talent-less and politically regimented ‘journalists’, the term ‘discover’ does not mean ‘investigate’, but rather ‘speculate’. To Israeli ears, such attempts to present ‘reasons’ sound very much like finding justifications for terrorism.

That’s what Yair Lapid – a former Finance Minister who now leads one of Israel’s opposition parties – told BBC presenter Stephen Sackur, who was interviewing him for a programme entitled HARDTalk. Sackur had said:
“The Palestinians are quite clear, as Mahmoud Abbas has said, ‘we are living’, he says, ‘under unbearable conditions’. And when that is the case, you get the kind of desperation, particularly among nihilistic young people, who see no future, that results in violence on your streets.”After Lapid accused him of justifying terrorism, Sackur countered:
“You use the word ‘justification’; I never used that word. I’m trying to place what is happening in a context, trying to maybe explain it, not justify it.”Sounds logical, doesn’t it? He wasn’t justifying terrorism; just placing it in context, ‘explaining’ it. Nothing wrong with that, surely? Well, two things are very wrong with that, actually.
Firstly, such valiant attempts to use European logic in order to ‘explain’ Middle Eastern terrorism are only ever made when Israelis are its victims. Mr. Sackur would not use a similar ‘logic’ to ‘explain’ 9/11, or 7/7. When Muslim terrorists killed a random British soldier outside his barracks, no one at BBC ‘explained’ the act as “desperation, particularly among nihilistic young people, who see no future…”

For ten years, I’ve spent the Jewish holidays in Jerusalem, joining multitudes from all over Israel and abroad who flock here to celebrate. It is a period of festivity, with concerts and events throughout the city. From my apartment outside the Old City, I watch Jews streaming to the Western Wall as generations before them have done, and Christian tourists who come to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles.

This year, the holiday begins with the usual exuberance, but events take a dark turn as streets turn into murder scenes, and paranoia grips the city.

Exhorted by their leaders to defend Islam’s holy sites, Palestinians are fed lies about marauding Jews planning to take over the Al-Aqsa mosque. President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s purported peace partner, calls on Palestinians to prevent Jews from “defiling” the Temple Mount “with their filthy feet.” He promises that “every martyr will be placed in Paradise.” His call is repeated by political and religious leaders on TV and social media, illustrated with graphic images of bloody knives.

A letter-to-the-editor published in today’s (Friday’s) print edition of the influential British newspaper the Guardian by a group of renowned British figures, among them Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, denounces boycotts of Israel that other cultural figures in London have advocated.

The letter, signed by 151 members of the U.K.’s cultural and political elite, including 14 members of Parliament, reads as follows:

In February 2015 you published a letter from UK artists announcing their intention to culturally boycott Israel.

On Monday evening, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed an Israeli soldier at the central bus station in Beersheba, then stole his rifle and began shooting randomly at commuters.

The soldier died of his wounds in the hospital; the terrorist was killed on location by security forces. About a dozen other people were injured — some seriously, some lightly — and many more left traumatized for life.

In the chaos of the attack, a 29-year-old Eritrean who worked at a plant nursery was mistakenly fingered as a terrorist, and he was shot by a security guard.

As if this weren’t tragic enough, after Habtom Zarhum was shot and “neutralized,” an angry mob began to beat him with anything they could get their hands on.