Finding fault with the Jews – postscript

I have something to get off my chest in connection with Meryl’s post a few days ago on Jewish anti-Semites. There’s this thing, this distinction, going around about terrorist attacks that happen “in Israel” versus attacks that happen “in the territories.” Or between attacks on “civilians” versus attacks on soldiers or “settlers.”

It seems that if you live in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights or the Gaza Strip, you’re fair game anywhere, according to this philosophy. And if you happen to be in any of those places at any given time, regardless of where you live, you’re also fair game. It’s this philosophy that led some to suggest that the attack on Kibbutz Metzer last week was somehow more repulsive than a similar attack would have been in, say, Kiryat Arba.

According to the folks who espouse this particular philosophy, it would seem, terrorist attacks “in the territories” don’t count. And the article to which Meryl linked, which aserts that Baruch Goldstein is responsible for the onset of suicide bombings "in Israel," demonstrates this point quite well.

The Oslo accords were announced publicly on August 31, 1993. The first Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel occurred in Afula on April 6, 1994. In the period from the announcement of the accords to the Afula bombing, the Hamas organisation carried out attacks, mainly using knives, on Israeli soldiers and settlers in the Occupied Territories.

On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein shot at dozens of Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriachs [in Hebron] killing 29 of them.

On April 16, 1993, months before the Oslo accords were announced and many months before Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Arabs praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a 22–year-old suicide bomber exploded himself at a roadside café, killing one person and injuring several. It doesn’t matter and it doesn’t count. Because this particular café happened to be on the wrong side of the Green Line. The side where there are no Jewish civilians and every Arab, no matter how many guns, grenades and explosives he’s carrying, is always a “civilian.”

The dozens of people murdered in the weeks after the Oslo accords were signed also don’t matter, because they were “soldiers and settlers in the Occupied Territories.” Except that some of them weren’t. And as for those who were, are they acceptable casualties? Are their deaths somehow less important because they were carved up with knives by thugs who got away and had a chance to kill again? Or is it just that they had the wrong attitude?

In 1989, before the Oslo accords were even a gleam in the eyes of the negotiators, a woman named Etaf Elayan, a member of Islamic Jihad, came close to perpetrating a suicide attack, according to this article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. “I was about to become the first suicide bomber in Palestine,” she says, “but I was caught before I could ignite a car bomb that would have blown up an Israeli government office in East Jerusalem.” In East Jerusalem. “Occupied” East Jerusalem. Doesn’t count.

We saw more of this “philosophy” this weekend, as Israelis of a leftist bent insisted on reminding us that the massacre of the Jewish worshippers at Hebron didn’t happen “in Israel.” And we’re seeing more of it today, as Peace Now announces a demonstration designed to blame the deaths of the Jews at Kibbutz Metzer on the “occupation.” With the supportive participation of the surviving Jews of Kibbutz Metzer!!

Hello Friends of Peace Now in Jerusalem,

Another week of mourning and we ask ourselves:

HOW MANY DEATHS WILL IT TAKE TILL WE KNOW THAT WE MUST END THE OCCUPATION?

How many soldiers must die in defense of racist settlements?

How many citizens must die for a messianic nightmare?

How many innocent people must die in the circle of revenge?

You and Me can make a change!!!!!
This Shabbat - 23.11.02 at 20:00 - we will protest opposite the PM residence under the slogan:

The occupation kills!!!!

We will be honored to host a delegation from Kibbutz Metzer and hear their message!!!

We will Salute Kibbutz Metzer's Determined Faith in Peace!!!!

It’s convenient to blame terrorist attacks “in Israel” on Baruch Goldstein. He was, after all, our worst nightmare. A rampaging, murdering Jew, acting out of pure rage, without regard to any principle of morality or decency or rationality, taking his cue from his enemies and giving them a club with which to beat his friends. Those who glorify or excuse his act share in his guilt. But no organization recruited him to perpetrate that atrocity. No authority winked at it, no government applauded him as a hero or a martyr. He acted alone, with the support of a lunatic fringe. And they know it. He’s an excuse, a pretext, a pathetic attempt to fix the blame where it doesn’t belong. And those who appropriate his crime to push their own political agenda share in his guilt no less than those who build him shrines and speak of him with praise.

Yes, that’s right. I’m talking about you, Gush Shalom. And you, Peace Now. And I’m talking to all of you “supporters” of Israel who claim that murders in Hebron aren’t terrorism, too. Live with it.