The world press is hot on a story it wants to cover -- a Palestinian teenager is forced into a car, and is found murdered hours later. A verdict has been rendered -- the murderer had to have been an Israeli settler, seeking vengeance after the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers two weeks earlier. It may well be that this murder went down exactly as it is described. In any sense, it is ghastly, and Israeli officials have been quick to condemn it, however it happened. The bigger story is the wave of relief this latest murder has created for the international press, since it has enabled them and the rest of the "international community" to turn the page from the horrific slaughter of the three young Israelis for which there is little doubt about responsibility, to one that better fits their biases and beliefs. The latest murder, if in fact a tit-for-tat killing, is one that will get the storyline back to where it needs to be and where the international community is in its comfort zone -- that settlers, and the occupation are at the bottom of all the troubles in the area. The reporting in American newspapers on the kidnapping, and then the discovery of the bodies of the three Israeli teens, almost never failed to mention that the boys were settlers, despite the fact that only one of them lived in the West Bank, and the boys were not the decision-makers in their families as to where to live or study in any case. Presumably from the media coverage, it is problematic for Jews to even study at a yeshiva in the area. Of course the area in which they were abducted (Gush Etzion) contained Jewish villages before the partition plan passed by the United Nations in 1947, and that plan allowed Jews to continue to live there in the new Arab majority state that was created, as Arabs were allowed to live in the Jewish majority state that was created. It was Jordan's occupation and then annexation of the West Bank after that war (in which they and other Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state to destroy it), a seizure and colonialist expansion never recognized by anyone except Britain and Pakistan, that led to the area becoming Judenrein. But Jews never lost their right to live or work or study in the area, despite the media's ignorance of history, and international law. Israeli officials believe they know the identity of the murderers of the three Israeli teenagers -- two Hamas members from the Hebron area, who went missing the night of the abduction. The kidnapping was likely planned and executed to force Israel into another disproportionate prisoner exchange, as occurred after five years with the captive solider Gilad Schalit, exchanged for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom have since returned to terror activities soon after their release. The participation by Hamas members in such an operation, was embarrassing to the Palestinian Authority which had recently achieved the latest in a series of unity deals with Hamas, this one sold as creating a new government filled with technocrats, rather than say murderers of, or apologists for and planners for the murder of Jews in Israel or the territories. The technocrat malarkey was enough for President Barack Obama, who pledged continued U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority despite legislation that seemed on its face to bar aid to a Palestinian government which included Hamas. Then again, why should compliance with established law be more important for the president in this circumstance when the administration had so cavalierly and consistently ignored other laws on immigration, health care, recess appointments, and the operation of federal agencies (e.g., the Internal Revenue Service) when it suited him? The PA, perhaps sensing a new financial risk to the international aid dollars that make it the world's greatest welfare dependency, criticized the abduction, and allowed some PA security forces to assist Israel in its search for the missing teens (who apparently were killed within minutes of their abduction). Hamas applauded the abduction, and its members and supporters carried on as they normally do when these things occur -- celebrating and ululating, and passing out sweets, to share in the joy of Israeli families' misery. Of course, these Palestinian mothers include some who had willingly sent their children out to carry out mass murder with suicide vests attached to them, and then pledged their devotion to providing future jihadists to the noble cause of murdering Jews. Bret Stephens described the pride and joy he heard from some Palestinian mothers of earlier terrorist suicide bombers and concluded: "As for the Palestinians and their inveterate sympathizers in the West, perhaps they should note that a culture that too often openly celebrates martyrdom and murder is not fit for statehood, and that making excuses for that culture only makes it more unfit. Postwar Germany put itself through a process of moral rehabilitation that began with a recognition of what it had done. Palestinians who want a state should do the same, starting with the mothers." This rebuke to the culture of martyrdom flies in the face of the conventional wisdom on what is really perpetuating the Arab-Israeli conflict. The font of established international wisdom on these matters, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, had the answer for Stephens -- that in the Middle East, there are "arsonists and firefighters." Arsonists include the kidnappers of the three Israelis (to be fair, Friedman was unaware the boys had been murdered at the time he wrote the column), and Israeli cabinet members who back new housing for Israel's growing population (the highest birth rate in the world among developed countries): "The Palestinian extremists who recently kidnapped three Israeli youths were arsonists, aiming to blow up any hope of restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to embarrass Palestinian moderates. But they had help. Radical Jewish settler supporters in the Israeli cabinet, like Naftali Bennett and Housing Minister Uri Ariel, are arsonists. Ariel deliberately announced plans to build 700 new housing units for Jews in Arab East Jerusalem -- timed to torpedo Secretary of State John Kerry's shuttle diplomacy. And they did." Kidnappers and murderers are extremist. Cabinet members who support new housing in communities that would almost certainly remain as part of Israel, if Friedman's beloved two-state solution were realized, are radicals. There is not much moral difference for Friedman between kidnapping teenagers and brutally murdering them, and building more apartments in areas that are now and will almost certainly remain part of one's country. As for the argument that the two Hamas kidnappers/murderers were merely trying to blow up the nonexistent peace process, Friedman assumes that other parties are as obsessed with the "process" as he is -- some working to move it along (firefighters), others trying to destroy it (arsonists). When you believe that this process is critical to everything that goes on between the Muslim world and the West, it makes sense to make such an argument, even if there is little or no evidence to support it. Neither Friedman nor his paper would ever even consider that Islamists' hatred of Jews might be an explanation for the recent murders of Jews in Belgium, France, and Israel. For him, it is always the occupation and settlements. The murder of Jews around the world by Arabs is collateral damage for the real crime, the original sin of building new housing units in Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, The New York Times, which has become the most reliable path to understanding the thinking of the current U.S. administration, published another article attempting to equate the mothers of the Israeli kidnap victims with the mother of a Palestinian boy who was killed while harassing and confronting Israelis searching for the three teenagers. There is always moral equivalence, and the suffering on the two sides will go on until the new housing stops getting built. Obama condemned the murder of the three Israelis, and also called for Israel to avoid any destabilizing responses. Those apparently include striking back at Hamas, continuing the search for the killers, and building new housing. Secretary of State John Kerry wasted no time condemning the murder of the Palestinian teenager, seemingly certain of the perpetrator and the cause: "The U.S. denounces in the strongest possible terms the sickening and despicable and senseless abduction and killing of Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir. ... Those who undertake acts of vengeance only destabilize an already explosive and emotional situation." We will find out more in the days ahead about both of the abductions/murders. But the guilty parties will be seen as different kind of villains for much of the world. Some murders are different.
Some murders are different
מערכת ישראל היום
מערכת "ישראל היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
