We
enter this Shabbat with heads bowed.
On
Thursday night, a criminally insane ultra-Orthodox man stabbed six people at the annual gay
pride parade in Jerusalem. Two of the victims sustained serious injuries.
The
perpetrator— we can dispense with "alleged" since there are pictures
of him about to plunge a large hunting knife into the back of a marcher— is Yishai
Schlissel. He'd been convicted of stabbing three people at a gay pride parade 10
years ago.
The
police intelligence division has a lot of explaining to do.
This
was also the week that we got a good look at the two smirking arsonists who
torched the Church of the Loaves and Fishes near the Lake of Galilee.
Then
things got even worse.
Jewish
terrorists murdered a Palestinian toddler, Ali Saad Dawabsheh, and critically
injured his 4-year-old brother very early this morning (Friday) by setting
their home aflame. Their mother and father were also injured in the fire.
The
crime took place in the hamlet of Duma which is in gush Shilo.
In
all three cases, the last thing we want is to "place them in
context."
The "price tag" is fundamentally an anti-Zionist act. It discounts the fact that we have a state. It eats away at the fabric of Israeli society. It is a desecration of God.
Last
summer saw the murder of a Jerusalem youth, Mohammed Abu Khdeir at the hands of Jewish terrorists.
There
is no "revenge" in setting out to murder innocents.
The
killers may be driven by apocalyptic fantasies in which unleashing an all-out Muslim-Jewish
war will force the hand of God and hasten the coming of the "Messiah
king!"
They may well yet get a frenzy of bloodletting they so crave.
There
is a need for context in understanding the Arab-Israel conflict.
There is a need
to expose Western double-standards and hypocrisy.
I
have no doubt in the justice of the Zionist cause.
But
now is not a time for context or excuses.
Most every leader of the settlement
community— and everyone across the Zionist political spectrum—has condemned the
attack in Duma.
If
we behave like Amelek, the Cossacks, the Crusaders -- if we adopt anti-civilian warfare in the
mold of the PLO or Hamas – what has become of us?
What a shameful, sad, and depressing week.
