Officer's car on fire in Jenin
צילום: רויטרס
Lynching bad for Islam
Palestinian officers who prevented lynching of IDF soldier performed a patriotic act
Minister Tzipi Livni did a strange thing this week: She phoned her Palestinian counterparts and thanked them warmly for a humane and noble gesture.
This is how the story goes: An IDF officer who took the wrong turn en route to his base ended up in the Palestinian town of Jenin by mistake. From that point, the story progressed as can be expected, more or less: Passersby noticed the Israeli, didn't ask any questions, and in line with the customary and magnificent tradition of hospitality pertaining to people of the Middle East and the sons of Abraham, pulled him out of the vehicle.
The mob was starting to go wild. Screaming masses gathered around. The weaker ones, mostly the children, made do with the car. They quickly torched it and later trampled all over the burned down roof as if trying to desecrate a body.
The officer was passed around from one person to another. But then, Palestinian security officers arrived at the scene. They intervened quickly, picked him up, protected him, and offered him a drink. A short while later he was already sitting in an IDF vehicle.
We can summarize this story by saying that the wonderful thing that happened in Jenin is that we didn't see a lynching. The pre-conditions seemed to guarantee the materialization of the nightmare of each and every one of us: An Israeli, in uniform no less, takes the wrong turn. A Palestinian mob approaches, and suddenly a U-turn is out of the question. He certainly can't roll down the window and ask: "excuse me, how do I get out of here?"
Yet this time around, in a rare and almost unique manner, it's now possible for us to talk with the man and ask him how it really looked like and felt in the driver's seat. An Israeli entered a Palestinian street and came out of it alive. For us, this is no less than coming out, safe and sound, of the mouth of an erupting volcano or from under the wheels of a train.
Palestinians are not piranhas
Minister Tzipi Livni apparently made the right diplomatic move when she called to thank those who should be thanked. Yet we must never, even for a moment, treat a lynching as natural law and the safe emergence out of a Palestinian street as something that is automatically followed by going to synagogue and reciting Hagomel (the blessing recited upon deliverance from great danger.)The Palestinians are neither piranhas nor grizzly bears. For a long time now, the Muslim world in general, and Palestinian leaders in particular, attempted to nurture what is referred to as the "mob" or the "street" as a strategic Arab asset. Every time a lynching took place, as was the case in Shfaram for example, Arab politicians considered moderate and even liberal stood up and praised the act. According to them, lynching is a beautiful thing.
If I'm not mistaken, it was Knesset Member Barakeh who poetically praised the lynching as a popular and spontaneous expression of natural justice, a sort of community festival for the entire family and a deeply-rooted traditional activity that contributes to a child's education.
Today, it appears, they too realize that a lynching is not an Arab asset, but rather, a lousy thing. The sword of Islam is a boomerang and constitutes the existential threat on Islam itself.
A street that has a tendency to carry out a lynching is a dead-end with no hope. A community that is able to bring itself within seconds to express foolish cannibalistic zeal in the form of bloodthirsty chants may scare those around it a little, but nothing good will come out of such people.
In Europe too, beyond all the hypocrisy and flattery, it's clear this game can no longer be played. Every time somebody plans to build a large mosque in Cologne, Paris, or Amsterdam, we can hear the objecting voices, and they are becoming increasingly decisive. Today, when a Palestinian prevents a lynching, he is first and foremost performing a patriotic act.
