We need to establish a small matter for defining what makes a civilized human being. Does a civil human being assist people in distress? How about if it is a group of women? A group of women in their eighties out for a stroll when they are assaulted and two or three are hurt, even bleeding? Do you agree with me that any normal human being with an ounce of human emotions and compassions would jump in and at the very least call for an ambulance if not apply basic first aid? I would hope we are in agreement on at least this much as a true test of humanity and moral humanity. Now we can proceed with the article. We can examine a morning in Jerusalem and a string of events which scream a reality which, until the world wraps their arms around this, are faced in Israel almost daily.
The news I read the other day in this article about a group of five octogenarians, grandmothers or potentially great-grandmothers, but that is simply some additional information which makes these ladies potentially even more deserving of civility, was shocking in its inhumanity. Unfortunately that was quite the case this past week as they set out as they had many times before for their stroll around the Promenade near their assisted care residence. These lively ladies, well, lively for octogenarians of either gender and may we be capable of such a stroll when we reach that fine age, faced a horror purely shocking in its remifications. There was something these ladies had not prepared for, as how does one prepare to be violated walking right next to their residence. That was when they heard one of their company scream out, not in pain but in warning. Marina Fuchs, 86, shouted to her friends: “Girls, run, run!” Further information on this cowardly attack can be read here. The attack was as horrific as it was disgusting, completely disgusting and carried out by some really depraved excuses for human beings as no normal human would ever commit such an assault against women for starters and octogenarian women at that.
So we have an assault of five octogenarian women by a pair of bold, brave, stout, masked terrorists and also unbelievably vicious risk adverse terrorists who had been obviously seeking the easiest prey they could find and who have more to be ashamed over than they have to their credit for drawing blood from a couple of eighty year old plus women. Such boldness should never go unpunished, even by their fellow jihadists. These women who ended up as the targets for these brave soldiers of Allah were walking by the Haas Promenade as has been their habit. Perhaps having their promenade on the promenade take place around the same time day after day made them targets. Who chooses a group of eighty plus year old ladies as their target, we do not care how regular and dependable these ladies walking the promenade happened to be. Eighty year old ladies are far from appropriate targets unless the aim is to murder every last Israeli. That may not be all that far from their target, but that we will reach later. The immediate problem is entirely separate for now. These assailants, terrorists, set upon two of the women, eighty year old women, stabbing them multiple times, one stabbed from behind, and then fled before the remaining three actually knew what had struck their friends. As noted above, one of the stabbed victims shouted out her warning, not necessarily that concerned for her own welfare but thinking of the welfare of her friends. She immediately warned the others with her yelling of, “Girls, run, run!” The rest were taken aback by their friend’s scream but turned and saw their friends fallen onto the pavement with one obviously bleeding from her chest. The attackers had run off probably scared defenseless that the remaining three eighty year old women might turn on them and disarm them beating them senseless with their purses. These two brave attackers had seen how vicious old women with purses are capable of becoming when seeing Monty Python.
Seriously, the other women did not flee but instead returned to assist their friends as best as they were able. This was where the story became really sickening. They turned to some construction workers who were taking a break near to the scene for assistance. They did not expect these men to be physicians; they simply requested that they call for an ambulance. The workmen refused to assist initially pretending not to understand Hebrew and then feigning to be having important discussions on their phones making them unable to disconnect and phone for help, or possibly place their all-important call on hold pausing it to call for help. Marina Fuchs revealed that Arab laborers at the scene of the attack refused to help the Jewish victims, even as they bled from their stab wounds. She reported that, “We walked and next to the bathrooms stood Arabs who were cleaning there. We asked them to call an ambulance. They wouldn’t agree to do so, and acted as if they were talking on the phone.” The assailants were an evil enough representation but this was even a worse representation of the depth of the Arab hatred for the Jews residing amongst them as they desire the Jews not just gone but dead, and that was what this refusal indicates and is what everyone in the world needs to understand. There are far too many who would instead of criticizing the Arabs would claim that if this is so bothersome, then maybe the Jews should heed this hatred and simply leave and return from whence they came. The question then has to be where does the half of the Israeli population, Jewish population, who were spat out by their former Arab nations go? These Jews had never resided in Europe or elsewhere and their families had resided in their Arab homes through thick and thin for, in many cases, over a thousand years. Where do these Jews go, suggestions?
Eventually help was called and the Magen David Adom (MDA) paramedics treated the victims and evacuated them to Sha’arei Tzedek Hospital. The MDA senior paramedic spokesperson Shlomi Tedgi reported, “We saw two elderly women, about 80 years old, lying on the dust by the promenade. They were fully conscious and suffered from stab wounds, one in her limbs and her upper body and the other in her upper body. They talked and interacted with us. We gave them field medical treatment an evacuated them to the hospital. They were in moderate but stable condition.” Sha’arei Tzedek Hospital reported that the elderly ladies they treated are both in moderate condition with wounds to their backs and limbs.
Octogenarian Women Haas Promenade Terror Scene
Were this refusal be the Arab worker an isolated instance, then perhaps the argument could be made that it was an outlier, an isolated incident and dismissed as a boorish response to fellow human beings in distress. Unfortunately it is simply reminiscent of a more tragic incident just this past October in the Old City sections of Jerusalem. This incident was in many ways even worse scenario as in this attack Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, age forty-one, and Aharon Banita Bennett, age twenty-one, lost their lives while Bennett’s wife was seriously wounded and his two-year-old son was lightly wounded. The deadly attack took place on Hagai Street immediately adjacent to a medical clinic. This Arab health clinic was open and fully staffed at the time of the incident yet not a single staff member went to the aid of the injured and dying despite pleadings for assistance. This was not the end of the disgusting behavior as the residents of this Arab neighborhood mocked and laughed at Bennett’s wounded wife as she tried to escape the attacker and was seeking assistance, any assistance. This has not always been the response and to be fair there have been Arab families who have taken in Jews in distress hiding them from mobs which would have easily murdered them. These instances are instructive as the Arab families who decide to take such bold actions are often at the behest of the head of household who pleads to never be identified as they fear their governing Palestinian Authority, if not their neighbors, would murder them. Assisting a Jew is almost always punished as it is seen as supporting the Zionist enemy. The unfortunate thing is those willing to risk everything and act humanely are in the minority and often pay the price for their heroic deeds. Still, when physicians refuse to give aid, what may have been life-saving aid, that is a whole new area which can only leave one to wonder how any peace can be reached when the population holds such animosity.
This hatred has been cultivated through the Palestinian Authority and related media, schools, entertainment industry and enforced through laws making interactions such as selling an apartment or land to a Jew or Jewish institution punishable by death. The indoctrination has been instituted for over two generations and has taken such a poisonous affect that even if peace were reached tomorrow it would take numerous generations to undo the damages already inflicted. It is the deep-seated animosity and visceral hatreds which now prevent any peace from being initiated as Mahmoud Abbas, even if he desired peace, which his actions prove he does not, he would be murdered in the most horrific of manners imaginable by his own people for making such an agreement. It would not matter how he would plead that he had tricked the Jews, just the picture of him in a signing ceremony with an Israeli would be sufficient cause for his lynching. The reason Abbas demands ever more ludicrous concessions from the Israelis just to simply meet once, shake hands, and never meet again and end all even motions of negotiating a peace can be traced to the absolute poisoning of the waters separating the Arab Palestinian society from the Jews. The proof of which way the animosity and hatreds flow is easily represented as the above is indicative of Arab refusal to even call an ambulance for an eighty year old woman victim of a terrorist stabbing and the refusal by medical “professionals” to treat Jews stabbed right outside their clinic while the examples of Israeli hospitals treating Arab Palestinians are long and documented well. Here are just a few stand-out examples of Arabs treated by Israeli hospitals, Ismail Haniyeh’s daughter’s week-long admission to a hospital in Tel Aviv, Mahmoud Abbas’s wife treated in Israel, mother-in-law of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Gazan child with severe burns is being treated in an Israeli hospital after a devastating house fire in Gaza and we could continue this for hours as this search in Google proves but one would be beyond hard-pressed to find a single case of an Israeli, Arab, Jew or other, being treated in a Palestinian Hospital. This does not mean to overshadow this terror attack against these elderly women and the refusal to even lift a finger and call an ambulance by nearby Arab workers which itself speaks volumes.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 