Despicable Violence Condemnable, Period

 

An Arab Palestinian child, a one-and-a-half year-old baby, was killed and four other people were wounded as a result of an arson attack on a house in the village of Duma, northeast of Ramallah. To the best of our knowledge the perpetrator of this horrific crime has yet to be named or arrested. Whoever committed this crime should pay dearly for their crime whether Jew or Arab and that is the truth. The international outcry and the hand wringing within the Knesset, the President’s residence and from the Prime Minister is righteous anger and is completely and honestly expressed, or at least we pray their concern is as they have acted. The strange thing is that this is what it took to get them to condemn violence against people simply out of what we have thus far assumed was interracial violence out of pure hate. It is refreshing to have them demonstrate such human emotion and abhorrence to such violence but it begs a question, why all of a sudden and only now when their public outcry had been muted by comparison when the perceived violence has been in the other direction. Before waiting for the answer, allow me to try and see if I can venture a guess. It is due to the apparent first instinct that this was committed by a Jew against the family whose house was incinerated and whose infant died as a result of this criminal and hateful act and that is an aberration and completely unacceptable by Jewish laws and we are shocked beyond words so instead we issue an avalanche of condemnations even before we know who committed this crime.

 

Arab Palestinian child died as the result of terror attack was only one-and-a-half year-old baby, while four other people were wounded and were initially treated at a Palestinian Hospital but have been transferred to an Israeli hospital where a more intensive level of burn care is available as specializes in burn care which is needed as the wounded suffered burns as a result of the arson attack on this house in the village of Duma, northeast of Ramallah

 

 

May the wounded be given speedy and total recovery from their wounds by the tender mercies of Hashem as any human suffering is to be eased wherever and whenever possible. May the perpetrator of this heinous crime be caught and brought to trial for this crime. Beyond that there is little we can honestly assume or conclude in order to condemn this act with any more or less severity than we could have any other such horrific act where the life of one so young was snuffed out so early that they barely were able to get beyond the innocent amazement moment to moment as the wonders of the world were unfolding beyond their curious eyes and experiencing new sounds at every bird chirp or leaves rustling in a breeze. Such a senseless loss of one so innocent is always seemingly more horrific a loss but a life taken is a life taken and when it occurs accidently it is a tragedy and when done as a result of an act with malicious intent it crosses into abhorrence and our shock is doubled. This should be true no matter whose infant is so cruelly taken and the mourning should be just as heartfelt whether the loss is a Jewish child or a Arab child as a child so young has no hatred within them and only wonder. Much of the reaction to this loss by the Jewish leadership is due to the shock at the possibility that this act of spite and hatred may have been committed by a Jew making this a truly shocking act in an additional manner. I understand that should this have been an act resulting from an act of a Jew they are to be spit out of our community and ostracized for committing an act unacceptable no matter the reason motivating the individual.

 

That is the difference and why the reactions appear to be so out of place and amplified beyond our normal reaction to violence taking the life of an infant, an innocent from amongst the families of all mankind. We as Jews suffer the end of the life of an innocent whenever such occurs in our neighborhood for we love life and abhor senseless death of any kind. When it becomes apparent that such taking of a life of an innocent may have been committed by another Jew our abhorrence for the act is increased astronomically as we all feel we are guilty by association. We are reacting to the possibility that the stain of this act may fall on our heads as we are all to some extent feeling the extra pain of responsibility. There is the truth behind the reactions we are witnessing within our community. If the perpetrator of this horrific act does indeed turn out to be a fellow Jew there will be no candies handed out in our streets, no street named for this shameful person, no celebratory parades honoring this act, no praise for a victory in some perceived struggle, and no excuses made as we will meter out justice probably with just that extra amount of force and severity in the punishment and all because we, each and every Jew, feel the abhorrence and pain that such an act could emanate from amongst our community. This is what is behind the gnashing of teeth and the heads hung in shame.

 

What is also apparent are the reactions from outside Israel which came and each one felt as if the target was each and every Jew in Israel. The truth is that many of the accusatory fingers were pointed in just that accusatory manner blaming the entirety of Israel for this crime. That is what was different in the outside world’s reaction to this murder, an extra seeming feeling that this lost life was somehow worth just a little more of a loss than the deaths of previous infants. There were true expressions of pain and somehow no call for restraint as they expected and desired no restrain, just a wholly vindication as this one potential criminal act if perpetrated by a Jew now vindicated every crime committed against the Jews as they are now deserved. This outcry from the rest of the world was the equal of the outcry for the death of Mohammed al Dura and the special editing performed by some French media to the taping of the event in order to make it appear to fit the scripted tragedy which never occurred. When the investigation eventually revealed the hoax the reaction by much of the world was a big sigh and the comment that well, it could have been real. There is a continuing outcry heard in Europe and the United States at rallies against Israel where the cry goes out demanding remember ‘al Dura’ and the appropriate yells abound.

 

Now there will be an echoing outcry for this loss and all the more so should the evil person who committed this crime prove to be a Jew and even continued if not committed by a Jew because a Jew was suspected of committing this criminal act. This additional outcry is the result of the need to blame the Jews so that the next fifty such crimes against Jewish children will be excused because of the incrimination abounding now, simply because this may have been an act of Jewish terrorism and thus so much more of an abhorrence. Remember why it is such a greater abhorrence if a Jew committed this horrific act, it is a greater abhorrence because it flies against everything that is expected of Jews to never take an innocent’s life. The difference in the outcry against this act as it stands as potentially an act of Jewish hate is decried by both the outside world condemning this act and the equally loud condemnations from the Jews who doubly are outraged by this possible act by one of our own. When the victim has been a Jewish child the outcry usually comes only from inside the Jewish community while the outside community denounces the act couched within a demand for diminished action and for understanding of the motivations of the perceived act of vengeance more so than an act of hate.

 

There is the difference as the Jewish community is in a search of our communitive soul seeking where the cancer of hate may have invaded and we seek to excise this hate before its vileness has the chance to spread. Jews react with horror at even the possibility that such an act could have come from within our societal body and we seek it out in order to remove it from the body of our community and fulfil the act of punishment of the perpetrator and punishment we will mete out to ourselves as if a Jew committed this barbarism then we all have a small part in this act of animalistic hate. As Jews we feel the responsibility of our community when such hatred appears to have emanated from one of our own and we seek to find and denounce the perpetrator of this crime. We refuse to accept any excuse from within our community as such barbarity is never to be accepted from a Jew, and this is the additional outcry from every corner. The sorrow is that similar calls for communal purging are seldom made when the act is in the opposite direction. We are witnessing the long held belief that ‘Arab Palestinian Lives Matter’ and they apparently matter more if a Jew is to blame for their death. On the other hand we seldom see the opposite that ‘Jewish Lives Matter’ being expressed anywhere outside the Jewish community as a reaction to equivalent acts against Jews as there is always some mitigating reason which makes the act against a Jewish life somehow partly the fault of the Jews, even if it is only for being the victim.

 

How many people remember an act of equal if not superior barbarism in Itamar? How about the overturned car resulting from a rock attack on a vehicle on Route 60 near Hevron which took two lives, one not quite two years in age? Does anyone remember the tragic last year of the life of Adelle Biton who was struck in the head by a rock crashing through the family car window in an ambush where we eventually were to learn that the infant barely two years old was actually targeted when the gang of youths saw a child in an infant seat in the back of the car. The young Adelle Biton hung on to life for a little over a year succumbing to her wounds just after her third birthday. The list of Jewish children murdered are never listed as reasons to mitigate the criminal act such as this case because their deaths are irrelevant except as a metric to understand the difference in the reactions both within and outside the Jewish community and within the Arab community. The contrast that needs be made is the official reaction over time between the criminal, vicious and murderous act against an Arab child will be echoed on by those choosing to exploit those rare, though not rare enough, acts of hatred potentially by a Jew compared to an apparently similarly motivated criminal act brought against a Jewish child where immediately upon it being committed by somebody from outside the Jewish community the uproar consists more towards the demand that the Jews just suck it up and take it as just another act of senseless violence.

 

In a different look, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, also known as Joseph Stalin, has been credited with making the callous statement that, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths merely a statistic.” While a slightly differently quote attributed only as coming from a Frenchman in a review written by Charles J. Rolo writing in “The Atlantic Bookshelf” section of the magazine claimed the quote was, “Scourges as immense as fascism and war present the novelist with a knotty problem of ways and means. A Frenchman has aptly remarked that ‘a single man killed is a misfortune, a million is a statistic.’” Giving credit once again to Stalin when as Commissar of Munitions during a meeting of what was described as some of the highest ranking Commissars discussing the continued deaths from hunger in the Ukraine, as the figures were being listed Stalin interrupted exclaiming vociferously, “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” In another instance during an interview where Stalin was questioned by Lady Astor presumably with George Bernard Shaw present according to the article in the Christian Science Monitor dated 1932, as she queried, “Mr. Stalin, how long are you going to continue killing people?” to which Stalin calmly and sternly replied, “As long as it is necessary.” The original quote of “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths merely a statistic,” can be said to apply as an explanation of the uproar largely due to the suspicions that this heinous crime was perpetrated by a Jew places it in the “single death being a tragedy,” while the murdering of Jewish infants or children fall under, thanks to a long history of such events being merely recorded rather than denounced and protested, fall into the category of “a million deaths merely a statistic.

 

My last commentary will be on the reported quotes of the graffiti found at the scene of the arson attack where the scrawling were in Hebrew, not necessarily damning by itself, but still the main lead putting the sleuths to seek a Jewish perpetrator, as only Jews are capable of writing on walls of crime scenes in Hebrew. The graffiti, which according to Walla! News read “יחי מלך המשי” which translates to, “long live King Messiah” as well as the word “revenge” while next to each phrase was the Jewish star. Revenge is a universal concept and is more often than not insufficient an excuse for taking matters into one’s own hands. Revenge can be the motivation for any arsonist though arson is rather peculiar method for extracting revenge though such has been the case. The other quote, “יחי מלך המשי”which translates to, “long live King Messiah” strikes me as somewhat odd as in Judaism the Mashiach has yet to come, though we are to live our lives as if he will appear in the next moment such as we have no way of determining the arrival of the Mashiach and thus must always be in a state of holiness just in case the improbable occurs and the Mashiach were to appear. Since the Mashiach, the Messiah, has yet to arrive one really cannot wish them long life and anyways, the Mashiach is an eternal entity and thus has infinite life, or at least life for as long as there is existence which we all pray is infinite despite the mutterings of physicists and astronomers or, dare we say, astrophysicists. I may be out on a limb all by myself on this one but it just struck me as rather a strange thing to write, especially at the scene of a horrific act of arson and murder. Hopefully the perpetrator of this unspeakable horror which caused the death of a one-and-a-half year-old baby be brought to justice and through the ordeal learn that revenge lies not in our hands but only in the hands of the state and ultimately in the care by Hashem.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Coddling Barbarians While Condemning the Civilized

 

Let it be understood that our nerves are still raw and our restraint in wording may suffer a tendency towards the extreme but we will attempt to keep it civil as the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov has insisted in his statement that, “On this second day of Ramadan and at the start of the Shabbat, I call on all sides to exercise the utmost restraint, to maintain calm and promptly bring the perpetrators to justice.” We will attempt to exercise the ‘utmost restraint’ but that will be difficult. Still, odds are you will never hear about Danny Gonen who at the tender age of twenty-five was gunned down along with a friend who remains hospitalized in moderate but stable condition simply for the crime of being Jews passing a barbarian with blood in his eyes seeking his sacrifice to his gods or martyrdom in their service. The one thing I can be assured of is he must not have worshiped as a member of the religion of peace as if he was, how such a barbarous act could have happened? This is a familiar story and Danny Gonen will be labeled a settler because Jews should know their place and not stray beyond the Green Line. There are those in the world demanding that Israel accept as many as five-million Arab refugees within the Green Line in order to make Israel the twenty-fourth Arab State behind the twenty-third Arab state of Palestine but Jews must know their place in the world. We must obey our masters at the United Nations, the European Union, countless western Capital Cities and whomever else demands our restraint, a restrain which is never truly demanded should in response to rioting and attacks on Israeli police or other security personnel result in an Arab Palestinian accidentally or in response to imminent threat to the life of said Israeli law enforcement personnel but always almost simultaneously with the viscous and unprovoked attack upon Jews, usually Israeli Jews but the victim can be a Jew visiting from outside Israel or even a Christian visiting or residing in Israel.

 

While this barbarity was being understood and calm was the response as it would have been even had nobody said a word, as Jews tend not to take vengeance as much as we try to understand, but to put some emphasis on this need for Jews to sacrifice more than our young but also risk sacrificing our entire nation, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is jetting his way for meetings with the Arab League and then on to meet with Mahmoud Abbas and then complete his mission meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu where the demand of the combined Arab world will be delivered and the message will be to give them everything they demand before they murder more Jews, more Israeli youth. What all the caring souls such as French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon who just finished his dressing-down of Israel for the use during the defensive response to terrorist assaults sending thousands of rockets into Israel last summer named Protective Edge consider is that it is all Israel’s responsibility all the time. Maybe you have heard about it in the recent report by Willy Stern of Vanderbilt Law School which complained of the IDF actions in the preliminary cautionary steps leading up to strikes on positions stating, “It was abundantly clear that IDF commanders had gone beyond any mandates that international law requires to avoid civilian casualties,” also made the point, “The IDF’s warnings certainly go beyond what the law requires, but they also sometimes go beyond what would be operational good sense elsewhere,” concluding in a cautionary tome with an actual complaint, something we and the IDF are used to, but this one was different claiming that, “People are going to start thinking that the United States and other Western democracies should follow the same examples in different types of conflict. That’s a real risk.” Yet Moon demanded Israel respond to the use by Hamas of children as shields for their rocket stores, rocket manufacturing facilities, and rocket launching locations while firing rockets statin, “I urge Israel to take concrete and immediate steps, including by reviewing existing policies and practices, to protect and prevent the killing and maiming of children, and to respect the special protections afforded to schools and hospitals.”

 

Ban Ki-Moon’s admonitions came right on the heels of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl who managed to make an admission buried between a litany of complaints, accusations, admonitions and spurious excuses, reasons and explanations that there indeed were rockets and other stores, but left out any comments on the UNRWA clinic built with explosives within the walls so as to be used at a later date as a trap to kill IDF soldiers, were indeed found in UNRWA schools and other structures. He also had to include such tales of his noble and brave actions stating, and we fear this will be another long quote as he was long winded in his self-congratulatory-orations stating, “We were the ones who found the weapons caches in our facilities during inspections,” not entirely true as the IDF found and reported the first two of the finds, not Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl and friends. Continuing, “The reason that the whole world knew about it is that we told them,” after initially denying the reports then feigning surprise, shock and complete protestations of innocence and having no prior knowledge of such transgressions. But wait, there’s more, “We knew the revelation would lead to harsh responses against us in Israel, but try to imagine what would happen if we weren’t the ones who published it. The act of publishing proves we aren’t ready to allow it and show restraint,” such restraint such as calling Hamas rocket removal services to remove the rockets from the first location and having a collapse of memory on who they called to remove the rockets from the subsequent locations but we have our suspicions, we know, so cynical of us. Additionally we have the self-aggrandizement phase of his response, “I was the only senior international official who condemned the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip at Israel. And I didn’t do that from a place where it was easy and convenient to talk like Jerusalem or Geneva, but rather from within the Gaza Strip itself. I can say of myself that I take international law very seriously, and if I know that rockets are fired intentionally at regions where there is a population that can be harmed by it – I condemn.” Now comes more self-involvement and self-congratulatory rhetoric while condemning Israel and the IDF along the same venue as Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, “The day after the strike I visited the wounded children at the hospital, and I saw with my own eyes their parents who stood by them; what does that mean when you don’t have the ability to protect your children. When I see whole neighborhoods in Gaza that were destroyed by the IDF, or that there are UNRWA schools that were harmed after we gave the IDF their locations a dozen times and clarified that there are citizens there, then certainly we will put out condemnations. The price of the last operation was very high: 540 killed children and 3,000 wounded children. That doesn’t match with the Israeli statement that all steps were taken to reduce to a minimum the number of wounded.” Noticeably missing from his diatribe was any mention about his dear friends and combatant-in-arms Hamas and their usage of locations such as schools, hospitals, refugee centers and clinics to store, fire and place positions all in efforts to maximize civilian casualties with a special effort to include as many children as possible by such means as asking young children in an excited and playful tone if they would like to come and ‘help’ the brave Jihadist warriors as they fire rockets at those demonic Israelis, what youth could resist? Perhaps a recount of the report from Professor Stern of Vanderbilt Law School’s content.

“It was abundantly clear that IDF commanders had gone beyond any mandates that international law requires to avoid civilian casualties. The IDF’s warnings certainly go beyond what the law requires, but they also sometimes go beyond what would be operational good sense elsewhere. People are going to start thinking that the United States and other Western democracies should follow the same examples in different types of conflict. That’s a real risk.” A further conclusion from the report added that the IDF, “is setting an unreasonable precedent for other democratic countries of the world who may also be fighting in asymmetric wars against brutal non-state actors who abuse these laws.” Pnina Sharvit Baruch, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) concurred with the report adding her assessment stating legal advisers from other militaries around the world confront her with “recurring claims” that the IDF “is going too far in its self-imposed restrictions intended to protect civilians, and that this may cause trouble down the line for other democratic nations fighting organized armed groups.”

 

Still, the violence which added the name of a blessed young adult, Danny Gonen, barely beyond his childhood, and actually would be considered a child in any report which lists the children killed in any IDF action as child seems to go as far in life as a few years past thirty if the cause is righteous and favored by those purveyors of Human Rights. Meanwhile Israeli and Jews who are murdered are often cast-off as deserving of such as they are “settlers” or were taking unadvisable and dangerous, life-threatening risks hiking in the wrong location, that location is anywhere in Israel according to the growing numbers of extremist reporters and commentators. Recent reports have introduced one more the concept that all of Jerusalem should be made the capital of and Arab nation formed out of the hide of the Jewish State as Israel already has a city worthy of the title as their capital, Tel Aviv, after all, is that not where the European and American embassies are located. I wonder if the Israelis moved their capitals from Paris to Marseilles, Berlin to Frankfurt, Moscow to St. Petersburg, London to Manchester, Rome to Milano, Warsaw to Krakow; would the world accept the Israeli media using these replacement capital cities in their news reports or would there be a holy stink and caseloads of indignation showered onto such acts of perceived disrespect for national pride and the self-determining right of nations to choose their own capital city, at least in the rest of the world. The same also applies to the Israeli citizens living or visiting the contested areas which were legally repatriated through a defensive war which liberated them from Jordanian internationally declared illegal occupation even by the Arab League and the Arab nations individually. Since Jordan was occupying Judea and Samaria which she illegally renamed the West Bank, a name that has become so popular it has all but erased the lands real names, and Egypt was occupying Gaza, and the Golan Heights by Syria, from whom were they occupying these lands? The answer can be found in numerous places and historic treaties, conferences and documents; they were occupied Israeli lands and were liberated, not conquered during that fateful week in June of 1967. Israel has returned the lands she has occupied over her short history where she has responded to attacks and gained legal right to those lands, but she has exited them and returned them. Israel has returned the Sinai Peninsula and returned after the 1973 defensive war, one where Israel was almost overrun and would have been if not still possessing the Sinai, the lands west of the Suez Canal and the control over the Suez Canal as Israel was well on her way to Cairo in the south and withdrew back to the Golan Heights from her advance almost to Damascus in the north, responding to simultaneous assaults by Syria and Egypt. The remaining lands, with possible discussions as to where exactly in the Golan Heights region the border needs to be drawn, are all rightfully belonging to Israel by treaties reaching back to the 1920s. That is the simple truth nobody cares to mention in polite conversation.

 

Also left from polite conversations is the fact that from May 15, 1948 through June 8, 1967 the lands of Gaza, Judea and Samaria were held by Egypt and Jordan respectively and during that nineteen year and three weeks interval the Arab citizens within these areas, they had yet decided that they were Palestinians as they still identified as Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Turkish, Saudi, Yemenis, and Balkans; anything but Palestinian as that was still the reference for the Jews who had resided in these lands returning in numbers and joining the Jewish communities which could be found largely in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, on Kibbutzim, working farms, in Shechem (Nablus), in Hevron, Beersheba, Eilat, Jaffa, Haifa, Jericho and numerous other cities, towns, villages and such where many of the families had resided for as long as close to three-thousand-years and many could trace their heritage in these lands which are Israel back to before the Greek invasions having resided in these lands since returning from the Babylonian exile and some since the Exodus itself. These so-called ‘Palestinian’ Arabs never once during those nineteen years of Egyptian and Jordanian occupation muttered a peep about their ancient and holy land of Palestine as they were as content as an unkosher animal in a mud-puddle. There were no riots even after the Israelis liberated the lands and were well on the path to patronizing these Arab populations to potentially Israeli citizenship while offering them opportunities they had never even dreamed of before Israel arrived on their scene, as Israel opened new schools, a university, hospitals, paved many roads, new sewage treatment facilities, new water mains and pipes to virtually every town and farm and electricity from the Israeli grid and phone service which reached out to the world. It was not until KGB agent and provocateur Yasser Arafat and his second in command Mahmoud Abbas arrived and stirred up racial strife and began the first Intifada, invented a new meaning for Naqba Day which originally referred to the partitioning of the area into French and British Mandated lands thus separating those Arabs living mostly east for the Jordan River but in British Mandate lands from their holy city of Damascus where they were required to make regular pilgrimages since the Mecca was denied them during much of the Ottoman Empire which preferred the Damascus location of the Hajj as it meant more money for their empire. These Arabs who cast their allegiances as being citizens of the southern region of greater Syrian Province with Damascus as its capital city and thus considered a place of importance that any perception of difficulties preventing travel to Damascus as being life-altering and thus given the name Naqba meaning catastrophe. This all started after World War I and the setting of the Mandate Lands and the division of their governance during the 1920s.

 

The recent report which came from the United Nations decrying the unnecessary and needless deaths of children would not have included any reference to Danny Gonen just as it did not mention anything about Yaakov Naftali Fraenkel age 16, Gilad Michael Shaer age 16 and Eyal Yifrah age 19, who were kidnapped, possibly tortured and then brutally murdered and hastily buried in a shallow grave on June 12, 2014, which prompted a weeks’ long search before the bodies were recovered. Let us pass on some more names not covered by the United Nations report of violence against children where Israel received far more coverage for her ‘crimes’ than were ISIS, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, North Korea or elsewhere, surprised? We weren’t. There is Adele Biton who was three-years-old when injured and received serious head wounds and brain damage in early 2013 and has subsequently died under two years later succumbing to her horrific wounds. Yonatan Palmer died on September 23, 2011 on a roadside in the family van striking a tree at speed as his father, Asher Palmer, slumped over the steering wheel dead with his face smashed partially through his skull with a rock which bore a striking resemblance to the horrific wound; Yonatan Palmer was barely one-year-old. There was the Friday, March 11, 2011 attack on the Fogel family where both parents were murdered with the father having his throat cut while he slept and his wife murdered after a brief struggle with her attacker who slit her throat as well just to make sure she was dead. The children murdered were Hadas age three months, Yoav age eleven years and Elad age four years all except little Hadas from having their throats slit while sleeping on a Friday night Shabbat evening. Tiny little Hadas had initially escaped notice as had two of her older brothers sleeping in the living room rather than their beds and the families’ oldest, their daughter who was still attending a Shabbat late prayer session and young adults’ Torah session who returned to find the family slaughtered. Little three month old Hadas was not in a crib but was mostly concealed by the covers as she slept next to her father who had his arm holding her even in his death. Something woke the little, nay, infant girl as the two Arab teen cousins from the Arab town bordering the Jewish community of Itamar, a place unfortunately all too familiar with such terror attacks, were making their escape and when she started crying they heard her. One of the cousins returned to silence the infant, a mere three-month-old barely out of the womb tiny girl, helpless, innocent, no real cares in the world as we adults know it, everything was a new and fascinating experience until that Shabbat night. She lie there next to her father probably aware that something was amiss, little children have a built in alarm system which warns them when there is a tear in their world and she likely sensed there was quite a bit wrong with her world. The Arab teen returned and murdered little Hadas quite measurably more brutally as she had her little neck slit like the other members of the family murdered that night but before slitting her throat this barbarian had plunged his knife violently and viscously into her chest piercing her heart multiple times during that four or so stabs into her little torso in such a brutal and hateful way.

 

What makes a person so dead inside as to be capable of such an act? How does one desensitize someone to be capable of such brutality to a three month old baby girl, and mere infant whose life has barely begun and who is the most helpless and innocent amongst us. It is beyond reason and understanding and even human nature to take such action or is it. This was an act carried out in these lands four or five thousand years ago. Nobody knows when it was finally ended, or was it when we see what was perpetrated against little Hadas. The practice in prehistory and even into the age of written history was to sacrifice young children to the pagan gods, but not to all or any random of these false gods often represented by a stone idol. One of the chief gods to which children were sacrificed was Baal. Priests would hold a great ceremony of which was the culmination where a child or even many children were sacrificed depending on the whims of the priests. The Priests used the threat of granting you the honor of presenting your young child for the sacrifice as a way of governing and assuring that nobody opposed their will, or at least not for long. The method of sacrifice varied as some were thrown into pits of fire while another popularly used was to slit the child’s throat and then plunge the dagger into their heart several times, almost the same manner in which little Hadas was murdered. If this can be looked upon as a ritual sacrifice then we truly are dealing with barbarians and they are inside our gates. This is not to claim that all people who share racial, religious, societal or any other convictions as these two teens and the other perpetrators given to list of their victims above are all barbarians as there are monsters amongst all societies, just some more than others, but that alone does not make their actions the nourishment upon which it suckles. But should a society find that more and more of their youth have taken to such violent acts, then it is up to the adults and influential people to make an effort to end such barbarisms, and if they miss the opportunity to make such changes as required to end barbarous behavior, then their society may gain the label of barbarians and that should result in their being shunned and ostracized for the good of the society as well as for its own survival. When people exhibit such violent tendencies and show no remorse, or as the perpetrators of the acts above, show pride and the feelings that such acts are an accomplishment, then there is a serious problem which must be addresses with the utmost urgency and not necessarily taking steps to assure the exercise of the utmost restraint.

 

With our sincerest apologies to United States President Obama, European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov. Another note for Mr. Mladenov, the (so-called) Honorable Ban Ki-Moon, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Krahenbuhl and all the other holier-than-thou human rights experts and other busybodies; the truth be told the Israeli public is getting good and fed-up with having to take the high road and always turn our rage aside and simply quietly and politely bury our dead and try and believe it is all over till the next time, which comes a lot more frequently the further we go down this road. When we look back down the road to see from where we have come there are too many bouquets lining the road on both sides and too close together to even try and pretend there is nothing wrong. There is something wrong and it is wrong here, in Europe, in the United States, it’s permeating the Western World and to a lesser extent, the entire planet. You ask us to “exercise the utmost restraint” or to “practice restraint” or as Ban Ki-Moon demanded when commenting on the commission report on the suffering of children from violence where he appeared to instruct Israel to, “take concrete and immediate steps, including by reviewing existing policies and practices, to protect and prevent the killing and maiming of children,” with no mention of Hamas practices or the report that Israel has set the bar too high for the rest of the Western nations to be capable of meeting those standards implemented and utilized by the IDF with the intent of decreasing, if not eliminating, not only children’s casualties but all noncombatant casualties. The day may come and come sooner rather than later when Israelis go out of their minds and show the world what the ethnic cleansing and genocide would look like if the political leadership decided to actually let loose the maximum capabilities of Israel to sew the whirlwind. Do not get all frantic as Israel would never actually commit such acts, but we could perform an operation by displaying in an exercised war scenario in conjunction with another nation providing the necessary opposing forces using the laser tagging vest system to depict what could happen if we were to actually commit the crimes which so many are so fond of accusing us of committing or intending to commit. If we intended to commit such acts, the world would know about it really quickly, but let us hope things never come to such a state as, oh, say Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and having used them on another nation, not necessarily Israel as though they have promised to destroy Israel, they never reserved the first slot for Israel, that is likely either for the United States or Saudi Arabia, and we might desire to strike back in their names. That would provide a definitive display of Israel letting loose the dogs of war and doing so with every dog we can muster.

 

Beyond the Cusp