Outburst of racist hate following settlement murders


March 13, 2011
Richard Kuper

Five members of the Fogel family were stabbed to death in their home in the Itamar settlement, on the northern West Bank and home to some of the most fervent settlers, in a suspected terrorist attack. Netanyahu immediately rounded on the Palestinian Authority and blamed it for the attack; the government then approved the building of a further 500 new homes in the settlements – as a direct response. Anshel Pfeffer and Yaniv Kubovich tell what is known so far; and Richard Silverstein looks at the way the Israeli government and the right-wing are exploiting what he condemns as a “heinous, savage crime”, to fan the flames of hatred further. The Magnes Zionist is unequivocal: “The murders at Itamar are just that — murders. All decent people condemn them, or should condemn them. They are not to be condemned because Jews were murdered, or because settlers were murdered, but because human beings were murdered. ”



haaretz.com

Five family members killed in suspected terrorist attack at their home in Itamar settlement

According to police the suspect broke into a home in Itamar armed with a knife and killed the family of five people including parents and three children.

Anshel Pfeffer and Yaniv Kubovich, 12 March 2011

Five members of an Israeli  family were killed Friday night when a suspected terrorist broke into their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed them all to death.

According to police, the suspect broke into the house armed with a knife and stabbed the mother, father and three children, aged 11, three and an approximately one-month-old baby. Magen David Adom rescue services arrived at the scene and found them all dead.

It is believed that there were two other children in the house at the time of the attack, aged 4 and 2, who were not injured in the attack.

Extensive police forces and Israel Defense Forces are scanning the area for the suspect.

The family’s 12-year-old daughter, who was at a youth group activity, returned to her home at approximately midnight and her calls for the door to be opened for her went unanswered. With the help of a neighbor, they managed to open the door and came upon the horrible murder scene.

The military blocked the entrance to the northern West Bank settlement of Itamar, as soldiers poured inside and a pair of ambulances departed.

The overnight attack is the first attack against settlers in months and the first of its kind and scope in years. It marks a rare outburst of violence during a relatively calm period.

Itamar is home to some of the West Bank’s most fervent settlers.

In 2002 a terrorist broke into the home of the Shabo family in Itamar and shot the mother, Rachel, in the back. Then he shot Zvi, 13, and Avishai, 5, also in the back. After that, Neria, 16, was also shot dead.

The terrorist climbed up from the valley and without even cutting it, simply trampled down the fence. First he approached the neighbors’ house but the dog began barking and he turned instead to the Shabo family’s home. They were among the settlement’s founders. Boaz, the father, a printer by profession, was not at home. The older children – Yariv, 17, and Atara, 15 – were also out, visiting friends.

Thirteen-year-old Aviah, who was wounded, told the doctor who attended her in the hospital that she had heard her mother shout out in pain and then all was quiet.


tikun-olam

Death in Itamar

Richard Silverstein, 12 March 2011

Today, the specter of death stalks the settlement of Itamar. A Palestinian militant penetrated the security barriers intended to protect the residents and broke into a home of the sleeping Fogel family and stabbed to death the parents and three of their children, leaving behind three young orphans. It is a heinous, savage crime. The crime of a Palestinian terrorist bent on avenging blood. The kind of crime for which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become known, notoriously so.

This is a crime that takes us back to the bloody civil wars and genocidal tribal conflict of the Bible.  It is a crime perpetrated by someone who doesn’t believe a grievance can be expressed any other way, doesn’t believe there is any hope of resolving the conflict.  The killer not only hates all settlers, he probably hates his own leadership and blames them as much for being unable to deliver a victory for the Palestinian people.

This is a crime that reinforces the worst hatreds on both sides.  Some Palestinians, hopefully only a few, will feel pride that a blow has been struck to avenge the innocent Palestinian blood spilt by Israel’s armed forces, and even settlers like those of Itamar and the more radical extremist settlements like Tapuach and Yitzhar.  Some Israelis and Diaspora Jews will, in their pain bray for the blood of the killers: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  No one in such circumstances will have the presence of mind to remember Martin Luther King’s warning that such cycles of violence leave us all toothless and blind.

A perfect example is Rabbi Yishaya Rotter, owner of Rotter, Israel’s most popular internet gossip forum (a combination of Gawker, TMZ and Drudge Report), who calls implicitly in a forum editorial for mass pogroms against West Bank Palestinians, calling them “children of death, every one of whom wishes to kill us.”  He excuses himself from legal culpability by saying he’s not taking action himself, only expressing an opinion.  Which of course will constitute “wild incitement” for his settler followers to extract many pounds of flesh and pints of blood from their Palestinian enemy.  Rotter further spouts such inflammatory nonsense as the claim that settlers must take matters into their own hands because the current Israeli government (that is, the one run by Bibi Netanyahu and the far-right Likud) is “under the thumb of the far-left” and their media hacks who “justify such murders;” along with “obtuse courts of justice who mistakenly believe this country is Holland or Belgium.”  What is truly needed, Rotter claims, is “all out war.”

Terror attacks like this allow the worst of each side to sit back smugly and say: I told you so.  Another example: Bibi Netanyahu’s ignorant, hateful laying of blame on the Palestinian Authority for the crime instead of on his own security forces (who control and patrol the territory surrounding the settlement):

Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed a finger at the Palestinian Authority, blaming it for what he described as incitement in the mosques and by the Palestinian Authority-controlled news media. According to a statement by his office, Mr. Netanyahu said, “A society that permits such wild incitement is one that eventually brings about the murder of children.”

The PA does not have any responsibility for this area as it is outside Area C, the only territory the PA does control  and patrol.  In fact, Haaretz today makes clear that a major ISRAELI security breach and communications snafu allowed this grisly series of murders.

This killer did not kill because anyone on his side told him to.  He didn’t kill because of wild incitement, unless you count the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed by the IDF as “wild incitement.”  He killed because he has seen his own people slaughtered over the course of decades of Occupation; because he felt himself and his people powerless to do anything about it.

Make no mistake, I do not justify cold-blooded murder as happened in Itamar.  But I don’t justify it either in Gaza or Lebanon or on the Mavi Marmara or in Bilin.  And I tell you that there will be such cold-blooded murder on both sides until Israel decides it must compromise in order to settle the conflict.  So Israel, if you want to elect leaders like Bibi Netanyahu or Ehud Barak or Avigdor Lieberman to lead you–they will lead you through the wasteland of Azazel.  You will never get out of it alive.  And there will be scores more Itamars along with scores more Cast Leads.

Not to mention scores more settler “payback” attacks on neighboring Palestinian population centers like Nablus.  No doubt Palestinians (aside from the actual killers and those who assisted them who will be hunted like dogs and killed without mercy) will die in the coming days.  For the settlers like the Palestinian terrorists believe the only answer to such murder is counter-murder.  Get ready for the death cycle, the tit for tat of blood for blood.

And lest the Israeli right think that tragedies like these will increase support for their nationalist cause, they are wrong.  Yes, there will be momentary upswell of sympathy and anger on behalf of the settlers and the victims.  But this will be followed by general revulsion by many moderate individuals including young Jews who will say: I’ve had enough of this.  Too much blood.  Too much hatred.  Let them fight to the death if they want.  But I refuse to allow it to have anything to do with me.  This is the type of deliberate turning away from Israel that will be the death knell of classical Zionist solidarity.



magneszionistCondemnation

Jeremiah Haber, 12 March 2011


The murders at Itamar are just that — murders. All decent people condemn them, or should condemn them. They are not to be condemned because Jews were murdered, or because settlers were murdered, but because human beings were murdered.

What does this say about the Palestinian struggle? After all, the al-Akseh brigade has taken responsibility. Well, my answer is simple – insofar as murder is murder is murder, it says nothing. If you are asking me, “What are the consequences in the bigger scheme of things,” my answer is, probably, none. There have been murders in the past, and there will be murders, I fear, in the future. Were a thousand Palestinians murdered or a thousand Israelis Jews murdered, I would say the same thing. When Whites were murdered in South Africa during the apartheid era – and after apartheid was over, I condemned those murders. Being part of a persecuted minority doesn’t give you the right to kill civilians

That those murdered were settlers means nothing to me. I believe that the settlement enterprise is criminal, and that the settlements have destroyed the lives of innocent people. Settlements are, in that sense, terrorism.. But nobody forfeits his right to life, even if he lives in a battle zone, and even if he is part of a criminal enterprise.

As for the method of the murder, stabbings, etc., I see no difference between wielding a knife to kill a baby and dropping a bomb to kill a baby. One is as inhuman as another.

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