The media are jumping all over the "settler riots" on Shabbos by a group of people from Yitzhar who went into an Arab village and attacked a bunch of people. The left wing activists have come out in defense of the poor afflicted palestinians and condemning the settlers from Yitzhar and calling for the security forces to take a heavier hand with them.
According to the articles, all they did was enter the village, break some windows, spray some graffiti, and flip a car. They did not personally attack the body of any specific Arab resident.
Why did they do this? While the residents of Yitzhar are known as being tough and do not take anything sitting down, it also seems out of place to just randomly riot one day. So why did they do this?
If you read the various articles in the mainstream media, you wil notice that they give attention to the cause by writing about 2 lines worth of information. A Palestinian came into their village, torched a home, which was thankfully empty, stabbed a 9 year old kid (thankfully he only sustained light injuries), and tried to torch another home. He then ran back into that Arab village that was later attacked by the residents of Yitzhar.
Are the left wing activists going out defending the poor settlers who were attacked by the Palestinians? Is the media blasting the PA and the Arab residents for starting the mess, or only the Yitzhar residents for retaliating?
It is not a matter of condoning their behavior, but when they have been attacked, they simply retaliated. This is what we call in Israel "Ko-ach Harta'a".
"Ko-ach Harta'a" was a big word arounf the time of the Lebanon War. Do we have it or do we not? Have we lost it and have we re-achieved it?
Ko-ach Harta'a is the power of deterrence. The current political leadership, along with the governments of the recent past, has done nothing but destroy our power of deterrence. Our Arab neighbors are no longer afraid to attack us, because they know we will not, we cannot retaliate. Our government and our activists will prosecute anybody who lifts a hand against the Arabs, while nothing will be done to the Arabs who started the incident.
This is a small scale example. The larger scale example is the situation of Israel visa vie its neighbors and whether or not they are scared to start with us or do they know that we will always make goodwill gestures and refrain from retaliating?
It is reprehensible that our people and our media are out there defending the Palestinians who start the incidents against the jews. Stop defending them and defend our own people once in a while. Especially when the Palestinians started the violence.
(and note the lack of "left wing Palestinians" blasting the act of a violent Palestinian attacking the poor Jews in a nearby village)
i know i've mentioned this before, but i went to yitzhar once for shabbat when i was in yeshivah.
ReplyDeleteanyway, i have no problem with what they did in the village. but i have a big problem with what they did on friday at the IDF outpost.
On any other day I wouldn't have a problem with the reaction from the people in Yitzhar. But, on Shabbos I can't think of a heter for spraying graffiti, flipping cars, breaking windows,etc. If they were hunting down the attacker (pikuach nefesh) that would be fine - but the rest seems to be chilul shabbos.
ReplyDeletegil - I agree, but maybe they were looking for perps, maybe details are inaccurate, who knows. The details are kind of sketchy, with different people in the different articles claiming different forms of assault...
ReplyDeleteThey were talking about this situation on the radio all morning. I heard a couple of interviews (while I was in the car) on the subject. The talk show hosts/newsperson kept asking the people she was interviewing about how bad the settlers were and why were they not arrested and taken care of. She kept asking and no matter what the interviewee would answer about the procedure and investigations, she would ask again in another way how they can let these wild people go like that.
ReplyDeleteNot once did she ask why the Palestinians who perpetrated the initial attack of terrorism were not arrested or ask why the community has not condemned the terrorist or if they are looking for him. Continuously asking about the settlers and not the Arabs.