Call these murderous wreckers what they are: Jewish terrorists

This posting has two Op-eds from Ynet, plus Notes and Links.

1) Ynet: Hatred is killing the foundation of Israel’s existence, a very angry Nahum Barnea on those Israeli institutions who have given cover to the hateful right;
2) New Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich , an inset on the right-winger, Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich, head of Regavim;
3) Ynet: We’re no better than our enemies, by Sima Kadmon, one of several OpEds published by Ynet on Israel’s terrorist week;
4) Notes and Links on Regavim, Komemiyut, another child killed by settlers;

They are called ‘Hilltop youth’ (from the hilltop settlements). Amos Oz prefers the term ‘neo-Nazis – and Sima Kadmon, 2nd item, calls them ‘terrorists’ and ‘murderers’. Arutz Sheva contributor Giulio Meotti says ‘They are Israel’s most outstanding individuals, instilled with ideals that their government ministers can only envy. They are Israel’s last heroes.’ Well thank the Lord, there’s an end in sight. Photo by Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images.

Hatred is killing the foundation of Israel’s existence

Freedom of expression is a noble value, the air democracy breathes; but the court has failed to equip democracy with tools to defend itself against those who are using freedom of expression to recruit hate criminals.

By Nahum Barnea, Op-ed, Ynet news
Agustt 04, 2015

Since Friday morning I have been asking myself why I am so angry: After all, hate crimes are a global epidemic. They are directed at foreigners, at immigrants and at ethnic, racial, religious and gender minorities.

We often cover antisemitic outbursts, but attacks on Jews are just one link in the chain. The United States has been dealing in recent years with white hate criminals who murder black people and with Muslim hate criminals who murder soldiers. Europe is dealing with Muslims who murder Jews and Christians and with Christians who murder Muslims.

The law authorities are doing the best they can to prevent such acts or at least to jail the culprits. Nonetheless, they are failing time and again.

So why get angry? It’s the way of the world. Our forefathers believed that only when we have a Jewish prostitute and a Jewish thief here, we will become a normal state. Miraculously, we outdid their expectations: We have Jewish prostitutes and thieves, murderers and rapists of all kinds, and we have hate criminals.

Two people were murdered in hate crimes over the weekend: Two-year-old Ali Dawabsheh of the village of Duma and 16-year-old Shira Banki of Jerusalem. The prime minister offered his condolences.

Shira Banki, 16, who was one of six young people stabbed by a religious zealot at the Jerusalem Pride Parade and later died of her wounds. Photo tweeted by Adam Salandra

I am angry because Israel is not a state like all other states. It’s an idea, a project, an initiative. There is a hotel chain in the country which advertises itself on the radio as “a hotel with an idea.” I never understood what that means when it comes to hotels, but I can understand why the ideological plan which led to the Jewish state’s establishment is still part of it, 67 years after it was established. That’s how we are judged by others; that’s how we should judge ourselves. The villains who burn babies or stab teenage girls because of their hatred towards the other are sabotaging the foundation of our existence.

Looking back, Israel’s governments should have treated the settler public differently. They shouldn’t have given in to the lawbreakers in Sebastia, they shouldn’t have pardoned the Jewish Underground terrorists prematurely, they shouldn’t have – acting on an order from above – skipped the rabbis who inflamed Yigal Amir, funded their whims, winked at them and flattered them.

Palestinians inspect their destroyed olive saplings at the village of Qaryout near Nablus, October 19, 2013. Photo by Issam Rimawi/Flash90

Governments are not the only ones who sinned deeply here. The Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Meir Shamgar and mainly under the leadership of Chief Justice Aharon Barak, gave full, remarkably liberal protection to the freedom of expression on the one hand, while on the other hand legitimizing the settlement enterprise in the territories in different ways.

An 80-year-old Palestinian woman shows the dress, now blood-stained, she was wearing when stoned by a group of settlers as she was picking her olives, October 31, 2011. Photo by Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images

In the issue we are discussing, it was a lethal combination. It opened the door to weeds like Kahane Chai, the Lehava organization and the price tag gang. It conveyed a message to the judges in the lower courts, to the State Prosecutor’s Office, to the police, that political delinquency can be forgiven as part of the freedom of expression. There is no wonder that slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s widow, Leah, refused to shake Justice Barak’s hand over her husband’s grave. She knew exactly why.

Khaled Azmi Odeh, 18 years old, was shot in the chest by an Israeli settler and killed on July 25, 2014 in the West Bank city of Huwara, outside the city of Nablus. He was shot with his friend Tayeb Mohammed Abu Shehada, 22 years old [below], who also died on July 25, 2014. He was part of the hacker group Anonymous.

Freedom of expression is a noble value, the air democracy breathes. But the court has failed to equip democracy with the tools it needs to defend itself against those who are turning freedom of expression into a basis for recruiting hate criminals. This applies both to extreme right-wing organizations and to the haredim. Hate crimes are usually not committed in an empty space: There is an atmosphere, there are instigators, there is a supportive community.

17-year-old Muhammad Yusuf Burqan shot by a settler in the Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan on Monday February 2nd, 2015. Photo by ActiveStills.

The recurring waves of terror and the failure of the peace process, and perhaps the demographic changes as well, have made the Israeli street more rightist. That’s natural and understandable. The voters wanted a government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Little did they know they would be getting a government which depends on the finger of one Bezalel Smotrich, a Knesset member on behalf of the Bayit Yehudi faction, who combines both haredi for Arabs and hatred for the LGBT community. He is the supreme authority.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the head of Smotrich’s party, asked if he could speak at the LGBT protest on Saturday evening. He was offended when his request was turned down. “I wanted to tell them I love them,” Bennett said. “I disagree with them and I love them.”

Bennett is a legitimate representative of his voters, a worthy politician from several aspects. But his expressions of love are unrestrained. “I love you,” he told the stone and bottle throwers in Beit El. A sea of love. If you want, love will cover every crime.

Bezalel Smotrich, who is ninth on Habayit Hayehudi’s Knesset list, in 2006 was involved in organizing the anti-gay Beast Parade in Jerusalem as an answer to the annual Pride Parade.
As Channel 2 News reported Sunday night, the Beast Parade was designed to illustrate the acts of homosexuals.

New Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich has become the face of homophobia in Israel (and complains of the hostile comments he gets on his Facebook page). Despite his pretty face his words are ugly, calling gay people ‘beasts’ and ‘unnatural’. Born and bred in a settlement he thinks Jews should have the right not to sell land to Arabs. He is the head of Regavim (*see Note below).

In his capacity as head of Komemiyut**, he organised The Beast Parade as a protest against the 2006 Pride Parade, which was scheduled in the city for the same day.

As part of the march, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews and right-wing activists, mainly adherents of the ideology of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, marched with goats and donkeys in the Rose Garden in Jerusalem, holding signs with slogans such as “Be shocked, Jerusalem” and “Stop the impurity.”

The members of the LGBT community don’t need his patronizing love. They need security. The education system Bennett is in charge of is afflicted with racism and homophobia. He should start with the state-religious education and the ultra-Orthodox streams.

P.S. The LGBT community asked every speaker to sign a document summarizing its demands. Bennett and MK Yinon Magal, both from the Bayit Yehudi party, refused to sign. No one forbade them to come and express their solidarity with the victims, just like thousands of people did in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv. Magal, who used to be a journalist, arrived at the protest, but the moment he realized he wouldn’t be allowed to speak, he broke off contact. Either he speaks, or he goes home.

We’re no better than our enemies

Jewish terrorists are just the messengers; there is a well-oiled system of incitement behind them which starts with the person who says the High Court should be razed with bulldozers, with those who stand on balconies and encourage lawbreakers and with those who reward violence.

By Sima Kadmon, Op-Ed, Ynet news
August 03, 2015

It’s over. If we thought it couldn’t happen among us, that we’re not like that, that Jews don’t do such things, that only they can murder children, go into houses and shoot a baby point blank, burn families, execute murderous terror – that’s it, it’s over. We are, we can and we do. Burn children alive, execute murderous, inhuman, incomprehensible terror. And no, we’re no better than them.

And let no one say that this is a lone incident. That we are talking about an insane person (when it’s about us, it’s always an insane person; when it’s about them, it’s murderous terrorists) – because it’s not. It’s not a lone incident either. The brutal murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir has now been joined by the murder of an 18-month-old baby, Ali Dawabsheh of the village of Duma, and his brother and parents are still fighting for their lives.

In order to understand just how horrific this is, imagine what we would say if it were the other way around: If Palestinians had thrown Molotov cocktails at a house and burned a Jewish family; if a Jewish baby had been burned alive. We would have been shocked by the cruelty, by the murderousness. Some of us would have said: Only the Arabs are capable of committing such a horrific act. After all, murderousness flows in their blood. We? Now way. We’re not like that.

Well, we are. At least the writings on the wall leave no room for doubt. “Long live the Messiah” and “Revenge.” That was the graffiti left on the walls near the scene of the terror attack (yes, a terror attack. A terror attack is not only when we are murdered). And who is this Messiah in the name of whom babies are murdered? And revenge for what?

So it may be true that we can count despicable murderers of this kind on the fingers of two hands, perhaps a bit more. No, not on fingers of one hand. We are way beyond that – from members of the Jewish Underground, through Ami Popper, Baruch Goldstein, Eden Natan-Zada, Jack Teitel – and that’s just a partial list. And what about the torched and destroyed mosques, and the daily harassment and damage to property and people which the masters of the land, the Hilltop Youth, the price tag members, carry out on a daily basis?

So let’s stop calling them by that soft name, Hilltop Youth, as if they were children in a youth movement. Or the name they have chosen for themselves – “price tag.” We are talking about terrorists. And it’s not enough to say “terror is terror,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend. You must also treat these terrorists like you treat non-Jewish terror organizations.

But let’s not only go to the hands contaminated with blood, to the hand which threw the Molotov cocktail, to the hand which lit the match, or to the hand that pulled the trigger. Those are just the messengers. There is a well-oiled system of incitement behind these murderers.

And it doesn’t start in the social networks. It starts with the person who suggests razing the High Court with bulldozers, with those who stand on balconies and encourage lawbreakers, with those who reward violence – 300 housing units in exchange for leaving illegal buildings, with those who show forgiveness towards thugs who hit police officers, who throw stones at IDF officers and hurl feces and urine at soldiers.

And don’t talk to us about errant weeds. We are talking about entire flowerbeds. Don’t condemn the criminal acts after they happen. Prevent them. But first of all, catch them. And punish them the exact way they should be punished: Like members of a terror organization.

The massacre of the family from the village of Duma must be a turning point in our attitude towards the murderers among us, as well as towards those who legitimize them through their words. Because it’s time to tell the truth, the heartbreaking but inevitable one: After a generation of right-wing rule, we have developed a race, as Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote. Not proud, not generous, but definitely cruel.

Notes and Links
* Regavim

About, from their website

“Setting a Zionist agenda for the State of Israel, with an emphasis on the land and its management and preservation. Based on the belief that the government holds the key to implementing this key value, Regavim is operating through legislative and judicial channels to recruit officials and state resources to act on the principles of Zionism – to protect national lands and properties and prevent foreign elements from taking over the countries territorial resources.”

Oddly, given the hyper-activity of NGO Monitor in tracking activities by and demanding transparency from NGOs, it has no entry for Regavim! In fact it appears only once on its website, as the body wanting to prosecute Oxfam for providing a water-siphoning system for a Palestinian village. OXFAM INTERNATIONAL ACCUSED OF ILLEGAL CONSTRUCTION IN WEST BANK, December 2009.

Regavim was the primary mover to get Susya demolished as ‘unJewish’.
Regavim v. Susya villagers

Court bulldozes villagers’ petition

An Israeli Jew speaks out against settlers and the theft of land from Susya

Shoot, smash and grab – clearing Jordan valley of Arabs, Amira Hass, May 2014

Shameless racism in Israeli broadcasting

** Komemiyut is an ultra-orthodox-Hasidic moshav in south-central Israel. Located in the southern Shephelah near Kiryat Gat, it falls under the jurisdiction of Shafir Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 248.

In 2010 Channel 10 TV revealed that dozens of boys, aged 5 upwards, had been sexually abused at the moshav but the leaders had covered it up.

The village was established in 1950 by “demobilized soldiers from a religious company that fought in the area during the War of Independence.

Other settler killings

Jewish settlers ‘kill Palestinian girl’

Jewish settlers shot dead a Palestinian girl while attacking homes in the West Bank city of Hebron today after the funeral of an Israeli soldier killed in a roadside ambush, Palestinian witnesses said.
Eight-year-old Neveen Jamjoum was shot while sitting just inside the doorway of her house, her mother said. Palestinian medical sources said nine Palestinians were wounded by gunfire. Mail Online, July 22nd, 2012.