The Terror Consuming Israel From Within

Aug 3, 2015 1:40 PM EDT
By Daniel Gordis

Israelis’ worry about the looming nuclear deal with Iran has suddenly taken a back seat to another series of news items that some suggest are no less consequential for the country’s survival. For the past several days, Israel has been a society in the grips of soul-searching after two horrific hate crimes, each of which involved the death of a child.

The first was an attack Thursday on Jerusalem’s annual gay pride parade. Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew released just three weeks ago after serving time for attacking participants at the 2005 pride parade, gave interviews stating explicitly that he would do the same thing again. The security apparatus, and particularly the police (a force now embroiled in scandal and regularly accused of being utterly incompetent) failed miserably once again. Schlissel made his way unimpeded to the parade, and stabbed six people. On Sunday, a teenager who had gone to the parade to show solidarity for a friend died in the hospital due to her wounds.

Friday brought more bad news as someone threw a firebomb into a Palestinian home in the West Bank village of Duma, not far from Nablus. An 18-month-old boy burned to death; his parents and brother are fighting for their lives in Israeli hospitals. Authorities haven't identified any suspects, but given that the Hebrew word nekamah (“revenge”) was spray-painted at the site, it is almost universally assumed that the attack was the work of right-wing Jewish nationalist extremists.

The horrific attack brought back memories of last summer’s assault on Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager also burned to death by Jewish religious extremists. That killing shocked the country; thousands of Israeli Jews joined protests and visited the family’s mourning tent, but once the assailants were caught, the case quickly disappeared from the headlines. Until this week, Israelis essentially forgot it.

That, Israelis are now recognizing, is precisely the problem. This time, with the exception of a small cadre of entirely unrepentant extremists, calls for national self-reckoning after the deaths of 16-year-old Shira Banki and 18-month-old Ali Dawabsha are coming from across the political and religious spectrum.

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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-03/the-terror-consuming-israel-from-within