Channels

Photo: Motti Kimchi
Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon. 'Netanyahu government should have vomited him'
Photo: Motti Kimchi
Nahum Barnea

Denouncing Arab youth's murder is not enough

Op-ed: Rightist politicians rushed to condemn Shuafat murder, but incitement is still considered a legitimate, patriotic act.

On Sunday, after it was cleared for publication that six suspects had been arrested in the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the youth from Shuafat, harsh condemnation statements were issued by the ministers of Bayit Yehudi party and other right-wing politicians.

 

 

Bayit Yehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett took one step further than his friends and promised that his party would demand that the new law banning amnesty for terrorists would apply to the murderers. They should sit in jail till their very last day, Bennett suggested.

 

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the statements. The murder shocked any moral person in the right, in the left or in the center. The right-wing ministers had another, less heroic reason, to be angry: The murder pushed their demands off the agenda. It's hard to run an effective campaign for the occupation of Gaza, the annexation of parts of the West Bank, a revenge campaign without distinction against Arab communities or the authorization of illegal outposts, while the sooty body of an innocent youth lies in front of our eyes.

 

From the very beginning, their demands has no security-related or political justification. The murder stripped them of their moral cover.

 

It's time to say to all of the denouncers: Don't condemn, vomit. Don’t compete against each other in the curses you shower the murderers with. Deal with the instigators among you, those who are in charge of the reckless, irresponsible expressions which blossomed after the kidnapping and murder of the three Jewish teens in Gush Etzion. Vomit them. Because this murder was not born in a void.

 

Like the Rabin murder and Emil Grunzweig murder, like the acts of murder and sabotage of the Jewish underground and the Goldstein massacre in Hebron, like the "price tag" gangs' acts of terror and the murders committed by Jack Teitel and the Bat Ayin underground and more, this murder has a father and a mother, an aunt and an uncle.

 

Yigal Amir, the prime minister's murderer, was a student of the most prominent rabbis in the settlement sector. So were the murderers from the Jewish underground. Yona Avrushmi, who murdered Peace Now activist Emil Grunzweig, was a small criminal from Jerusalem who testified that he had drawn his inspiration from incitement speeches he heard from politicians.

 

Even if the suspects in the murder of the Shuafat youth are more similar in their background to Yona Avrushmi than to Yigal Amir, the incitement is in the heart of their motive.

 

The murderers will be handled by the arms of the law. the people there don't need statements of condemnation to put the murderers on trial. The instigators can only be handled by the political system.

 

Danny Danon is the deputy defense minister. On the eve of the discovery of the bodies of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frenkel and Gil-Ad Shaer, he recommended that we imitate Russia's president. "If a Russian youth had been kidnapped, Putin would have flattened village after village," he wrote on his Facebook page.

 

I didn't follow Danon's Facebook page after the Arab youth's murder, whether he had any criticism about the murder or was pleased about it, but that makes no difference. The important thing about incitement is what one writes before. Danny Danon could perhaps serve as deputy defense minister in the Putin government. The Netanyahu government should have vomited him.

 

Or Noam Pearl, the general secretary of the World Bnei Akiva movement, who got caught in a messianic statement: "An entire nation and thousands of years of history demand revenge" (I'll spare the reader the rest). Bnei Akiva is a youth movement, the apple of the eye of the party which was once called Mafdal (National Religious Party). One would expect the party chairman to suggest that the distinguished avenger vacate his seat or, at least, keep his enthusiasm to himself. Bennett settled for condemning the murderers.

 

Orit Strock is a Knesset member on behalf of the Bayit Yehudi faction. She also has a Facebook page. She had nothing to say about the murder of the Shuafat youth, but she had a lot to say about the murder of the three teens. The government, she wrote, will be tested according to the heavy price it claims from the terrorists and their surroundings. She didn't write what she means by "their surroundings." She left that detail to the readers' imagination.

 

That same Strock thanked God for putting former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to death. That's her religious faith. That's the style. The rabbi she and her friends admire, Dov Lior, found the blame for the three teens' murder: A number of secular bills presented in the Knesset. His god kills three religious teens because of Yair Lapid, and not a single Bayit Yehudi member dares renounce him. And that was, of course, one of Rabbi Lior's more moderate declarations.

 

The lesson is that no lesson has been learned, not from the Grunzweig murder and not from the Rabin murder, not from the Jewish underground's crimes and not from the Goldstein massacre. The murders are condemned, but the incitement leading to them is considered a legitimate, patriotic, faithful act. Some say it even generates votes.

 

On the margins of this story, another crime should be mentioned: After the Jerusalem murder, some people made sure to spread two false stories on social media. The first was that the murder was the result of a brawl between clans, and the other, that it happened on the background of forbidden homosexual relations. Libel was added to the murder. Look how despicable people can be, how malicious, all in the name of Jewish morals.

 


פרסום ראשון: 07.08.14, 00:20
 new comment
Warning:
This will delete your current comment