Days of Rage

"I feel a sense of shame, and moreover a sense of pain. Pain over the murder of a small baby. Pain that from my people, there are those who have chosen the path of terrorism, and have lost their humanity."
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin

"To our brothers in Fatah in the West Bank your circumstances allow you to carry out a quality act of resistance. The crimes of the occupation exclude no one. Will any of your noble men make us proud?"
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman, Palestinian Authority

A house fire in the Palestinian village of Duma, West Bank, suspected to have been set by Jewish

 extremists, killed an 18-month-old Palestinian child, injuring both the parents and four year old son. 

(Oren Ziv/Getty Images)

No single ethnic or religious group has a monopoly on lurid fanaticism. The lunacy of psychosis seems to emanate through unstable minds captured by the rigid formalism of religious extremism.
Israel most certainly has its share of citizens of ultraorthodox Judaism whose faith is driven single-mindedly to hatred of those whose vision of the divine is not as devoted as their own.

These are people whose faith is beyond notional, a faith that directs their minds and their actions toward acts of ferocious brutality.

It is why an ultrareligious man who had once before violently attacked peaceful marchers at a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem, repeated that performance with a vengeance, stabbing six people innocent of any intention to do him harm. It is why young religion-addled Israelis abducted a Palestinian boy and murdered him in revenge for Hamas having done the same to three young Israeli boys.

It is why some suspected Israeli settlers from the West Bank set fire to several homes of Palestinians, killing a year-and-a-half-old child, causing burns to 60 percent of his four-year-old brother's body, and sending the parents as well to hospital to recover from their burns.

An Israeli soldier stands near a house in the Palestinian village of Duma, near Nablus, where a Palestinian infant was killed July 31, 2015, in an arson attack, apparently by Jewish extremists. (Photo by FLASH90)

And it is why the general Israeli public is in a renewed sense of shock that among them live arsonists and murderers whose religious devotion has irremediably tainted their humanity. It is why the Israeli papers are replete with one article after another condemning such people and bemoaning their having besmirched the entire Jewish Israeli community.

And it why the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas seeks to stir condemnation once again within the United Nations with a picture of Israel as a state planning genocide of Palestinians.

Above all, it is why Hamas has issued a call to all Palestinians to express their rage by planning and carrying out "lone-wolf" attacks to protest yet another "unforgivable Israeli atrocity" clearly requiring an "exceptional response from our people and their resistance" according to Hamas spokesman Husam Badran. "This crime renders occupation soldiers and settlers a legitimate target for the resistance everywhere and in all conditions", he urged.


Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for President Abbas's office, accuses the Israeli government in its support for settlements for having driven the attack. "This is a heinous crime that wouldn’t have happened if the government didn’t defend the settlers, and didn’t insist on building in the settlements."  And of course corollary logic would have it that if the Palestinian Authority truly represented the interests of Palestinians it would long since have agreed to living in peace with Israel, recognizing its Jewish character and exhorting Palestinians to live side by side in a state of their own.

It's early days yet, but so far, since the funeral of the Palestinian baby several riots and attacks have eventuated. A riot took place near the Temple Mount, according to Army Radio. But then riots by Palestinians, livid with rage that Jews dare to worship at the site of the holiest place in Judaism, are a common enough phenomena. In another incident, someone opened fire on an Israeli vehicle in the West Bank; the car hit by bullets, the people within fortunately unscathed.

Then again, cars in the West Bank driven by Jewish settlers are often stoned or fired upon; sometimes there are casualties, sometimes not.  Rioters in the Jerusalem-area Palestinian village of Isawiya tossed firebombs and rocks at police officers with no injuries as yet reported. So, in other words, normal life in Israel and the West Bank continues.

The news of more serious attacks, successful in their intent, which also represents 'normal' occurrences in Israel and the West Bank, have yet to surface.

And, of course, the European Union has responded to the situation in its inimitable way. Calling upon the Government of Israel to "...take resolute measures to protect the local population. We call for full accountability, effective law enforcement and zero tolerance for settler violence", in a demand by a spokesperson for EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogeherini.

It takes no genius to parse that demand that the 'local population' referred to means the Palestinians, not inclusive of the Jews.

It is as though without the thoughtful reminder of the European Union, in its concern for part of the population, government authorities in Israel, reeling from yet another dreadful incident implicating fanatical Jews, is not intent on fully committing to ensuring that justice is done.