Disgracing Israel

"It is a disgrace to Israeli society, and those that carried out this lynching need to be found and brought to justice."
"Even if it was the terrorist himself, by the way, after he was shot, after he was neutralized and lying on the floor, you need to be an animal to torment him."
Yaakov Amidror, former national security adviser

"What we are seeing here is a combination of the radical Islam and the Internet. Osama bin Laden meets Mark Zuckerberg. The incitement in the social networks is moving the murders. We are seeing this clearly."
"We are a law-abiding country. No one should take the law into their own hands."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

"The death of an asylum seeker at the hands of security guards and an angry mob is a tragic but foreseeable outgrowth of a climate in which some Israeli politicians encourage citizens to take the law into their own hands."
Sari Bashi, director for Israel and Palestinian areas, Human Rights Watch

"They are creating a mentality of lynch mobs and of course feeding the culture of hate and racism."
Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian official

"I saw people coming and crowding around him, I understood from them that this was the terrorist."
"If I had known that this wasn't the terrorist I would have protected him like I protect myself."
"In a moment of fear and pressure, you do things you're not conscious of whatsoever."
Israeli man self-identifying as one of the attackers of the young Eritrean

A Eritrean who was shot by an Israeli security guard and then attacked by bystanders who mistook him for an assailant in a deadly attack is evacuated at the main bus station in Beersheba, Israel, on Oct. 18. The man later died of his wounds.
(Dudu Grinshpan / AFP/Getty Images)

From Ms. Ashrawi, that declaration would be amusing if it were not so lethally sanctimonious, coming from a member of the Palestinian Authority which has been actively and venomously agitating to criminal violence from among disgruntled Palestinians, to relieve the tension of their hatred for Israel and for Jews by committing to a course of deadly violence. But counter-accusations are a specialty of the Palestinians, forever denying their deadly enmity, accusing others of what they themselves feel and do.

The death of an asylum seeker is indeed a tragedy, and far worse a travesty of human indignity and misery imposed on a helpless man who had been seriously injured, then re-injured repeatedly, morbidly by a rabid crowd drowning in violent fear and hatred of the 'other'. An Eritrean seeking haven from war in his own country by living in Israel and hoping for status eventually, the man happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One of the many attacks by Palestinians against Israeli Jews, this time the killing of a soldier by a knife-and-gun-wielding Arab, set the stage for a dreadful tragedy, one which is causing Israelis to rethink their trembling spirit of humanity. A security guard, seeing Mulu Habtom Zerhom run into the bus station where the assault wounding ten, killing one, had just occurred, thought he was another would-be assassin and shot him.

As the young man lay wounded and helpless on the floor of the station others in the station approached him and perceiving him to be an attacker, themselves attacked him. He had panicked hearing all the commotion, and had run into the bus shelter for haven, only to find himself attacked, not by the attacker he feared, but by Jewish Israelis taking him for a terrorist.

As he lay on the floor, he was cursed, kicked and bludgeoned with objects and finally rammed with a bench and kicked in the head by passersby. An Israeli police officer and a few bystanders attempted to protect him from the mob but didn't succeed, and he died later at a hospital from his many injuries. Fear and trepidation surrounding the potential of an attack occurring anywhere, involving anyone, has turned people into monsters of vengeance.

The situation will not be helped by the fact that Islamic State, which has many supporters in Gaza, has called upon Palestinians to step up their lethal violence against Israel and its citizens Aside from the hard-core militants who seek to emulate a terrorist group whose exploits they admire, there are thousands of others supporting the ideology of ISIL.