That Blinkered Vision

Days ago the funeral for Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16, abducted by what is assumed to be far-right Jewish avengers of Arab atrocities against Jews, and brutally burned alive, as a symbol of "resistance" to Israel's oppressors, lent impetus to the rage of Palestinians, furious at their victimhood at the iron-clad hand of Israel.

Just as Hamas right now insists that Israel must stop its aerial bombardment begun in reaction to Hamas rocket attacks, Palestinians have problems in recognizing that Israel's 'occupation' of the West Bank represents a self-protective move against constant Palestinian attacks against Israelis.

The funeral acted as a spur to violent demonstrations in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Shuafat. Men wearing kefiyehs covering their faces, knives tucked into belts, carrying Palestinian flags, flags of Fatah's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, flags of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the black flags that al-Qaeda has made famous, led the crowd in shouting threats against the "enemy".

While praising the murdered young Palestinian as a martyr, they threatened to "explode the skull of the Zionist".

Shuafat presents as an Israeli Palestinian village. It has all the benefits of civic infrastructure. There is no more poverty there than among Israeli Jews of modest provenance and hopes to advance in the future. The home of the family of Mohammed Abu Khdeir is large and architecturally pleasant, constructed of stone. There is a mosque nearby and genteel shops, and an orthodontist's office. It looks like a middle-class neighbourhood specific to the Middle East.

But its streets are littered now with rocks, tear gas canisters, broken glass and garbage and to complement the aura, the stink of burning tires. The State of Israel fends off complaints constantly that its Palestinian component is less well looked after than its Jewish neighbourhoods. It built a light-rail line down Shuafat's main street at a cost of millions, to link Palestinian East Jerusalem  with other areas of the city where residents of Shuafat work or shop.

It has been destroyed, a victim of Palestinian-Israeli rage. A symbol among them, within their neighbourhood, of the work of the State on their behalf, they have rejected it. And now will once again complain that they are ill served as Palestinians by the Jewish State. Israeli security, aware of the sensitivities of raw rage, stayed well away from the funeral and the general area; that six suspects have been arrested on suspicion of the murder of the Palestinian boy does not assuage their rage.

In the absence of living targets some of the demonstrators went out of their way to find Israeli soldiers and police whom they could cast Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs and rocks at. Their targets responded predictably with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets. There were injuries resulting but nothing too dreadful to report. It's a rough neighbourhood that Israel is installed within, surrounded by hostile elements resenting its presence in a geography that speaks of its heritage.

Israeli Jews celebrate life, and live it in a joyous and robust manner as befits people who see as much good as they recognize evil. Their Islamist neighbours celebrate death, as a commodity that they can manage very nicely, an acclaimed state, one they aspire to, as proof that there is nothing that is more precious than religiously fervent honour of God; no, not that god, their god.

Israel will not honour the criminals among themselves, holding them to a standard of just decency that demands they be tried and legally held responsible for criminal acts.

Hamas is inspired, along with Fatah, to reward criminal acts. Unreasonably of course, Israeli Jews consider murder to be a criminal act, one that cannot be too strenuously censured for the evil it represents. Hamas and Fatah on the other hand, reward those criminal acts as long as they target Jews, for as Jews and Zionists death seems to them to be a reasonable kind of award granted them by those who claim to be oppressed by the Zionist zeal to live on the land of their ancestors.

The unity government that Fatah and Hamas have agreed upon a common front.  Consolidating the Palestinians in one movement that conspires to destroy the State of Israel. It will never agree to living as a state separate from Israel and to ensure in the process that that Palestinian state recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

Hamas's charter is devoted to the destruction of Israel and Hamas pursues that goal with Islamist zeal to commit to the jihad of the shaheeds. So it was hardly surprising that the Fatah of the Palestinian Authority has now declared its support for the rocket attacks that Hamas is bombarding Israel with, resulting in Israel's responsive aerial attacks.

Fatah's official Facebook page declares that Fatah and Hamas's military wing and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are all "brothers in arms" sharing "One God, one homeland, one enemy, one goal."