Israel, Murder Central : Free-for-all Martyrdom

"The horrifying murder of a young girl in her bed underscores the blood lust and inhumanity of the incitement-driven terrorists that we are facing."
"The entire world needs to condemn this murder, just as it condemned the terrorist attacks in Orlando and Brussels."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Medics wheeling Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13, into Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center on June 30, 2016, after a West Bank stabbing attack. Inset: Hallel Yaffa Ariel, in an undated photo. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 and courtesy)

But they do not. This is Israel's sorrow alone to bear. And bear it the nation does in an atmosphere of desolation and resignation that what they suffer will not be recognized by the world at large. Israelis 'must have done something' to account for the constant attacks they face. And that 'something' is the failure to settle with the Palestinians. As though any other country but Israel would agree to demands which once accepted only continue until it becomes obvious that the final demand is for the nation of Jews to self-destruct.

Until that time, Palestinians are taught from the cradle to seek the grave by martyring themselves for the cause of destroying the Jewish state and replacing it with a Palestinian state. And, little by little -- each death a victory celebrated by the Palestinian Authority with the congratulations that emanate from the political elite to the families of the martyred, rewarding them with pensions and honouring the martyr with street-naming -- a gradual spread of death of Jews occurs.


One dead and three wounded after Palestinian opens fire on car, causing it to crash and flip over near Hebron. July 1, 2016.    Judea and Samaria Rescue Services

This morning another death, this time by terrorists spraying a vehicle leaving the settlement of Otniel with gunfire. The targeted vehicle carrying a family of four, saw the death of the 48-year-old father of the two children, the head of a local seminary; his wife grievously wounded, one child less seriously wounded, the other even less so. There are ten children in that family, now fatherless. And yesterday again, two Israelis were wounded in yet another stabbing attack.

Israeli security forces respond to the scene of a stabbing in Netanya on June 30, 2016. (United Hatzalah)

Israel is in deep mourning for Hallel Yaffa Ariel, the youngest yet to die in the nine-month viral assault on Israeli Jews by Palestinians groomed to believe that when they kill Jews they earn their place in Paradise. A seventeen-year-old Palestinian deciding to take the life of a 13-year-old girl asleep in her bed, in her home in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. The intruder made his way past a separation fence.

He was quick, swiftly entering the home where the girl was sleeping and upon entering locked the front door from the inside. He had been seen by the security guards of the settlement who immediately tracked him but not quickly enough. In the brief time he was inside the home, he repeatedly knifed the sleeping girl to death. Her father was among the security guards on patrol and with his key unlocked the door, too late for his daughter.

The Palestinian teen lunged at one of the security guards to stab and wound him, guaranteeing himself the martyrdom he had sought. The Jewish settlement is located close to the West Bank city of Hebron where 170,000 Palestinians live. It is well to remember that Palestinians live as citizens of the State of Israel, while at the same time Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has made it clear that in a future Palestinian state, no Jews will be permitted to make their residence.

Carving out areas in Israel which are majority Arab, and exchanging them for areas where settlements exist in the West Bank is one of the conditions for Israel and the PA to discuss at any time that the Palestinian Authority agrees to return to the bargaining table with Israel. "Come to say that our Kiryat Arba and our place is still a place where it is possible to live and not die", the anguished mother, Rina Ariel said, appealing to Israelis.

When Israel was once again confronted with a massive assault by a combined Arab-state military and once again prevailed to defeat that assault, it captured the West Bank area from Jordan during the 1967 war. Anywhere else in the world a country that is militarily assaulted by its neighbours and manages to restore to its possession a geography that was once its own, would absorb it lawfully into its stewardship for posterity.

But the Palestinians have laid claim to all of the West Bank and the international community has agreed to treat Israel differently than any other country in the world, content to consider the settlements to be 'illegitimate'. The Palestinians, like the rest of the Muslim world, deny that Jews ever had a heritage right to Jerusalem, the ancient capital of the Israelites, much less that the Temples of Solomon ever stood on the Temple Mount where a later Muslim invasion built the al-Aqsa mosque over the ruins of the Temple.

And it is the occasional visit by Jews to the Temple Mount where they are not permitted to pray in the most sacred Judaic place on Earth, that elicits violence from Palestinians, supported by the wider Muslim world, in rage at their presence on what Islam calls the Noble Sanctuary, where the Prophet Mohammad is said by legend to be ascended on his horse to the heavens above. The constant stabbings, car rammings and shootings of Israelis represent the latest wave of attacks to 'defend' the al-Aqsa mosque.

Mohammed Tarayreh, 17, from Bani Naim village close by the settlement he had invaded, is now a martyr whose selfless 'courage' in stabbing a sleeping child will now be celebrated. He is not the only member of his family to be so distinguished. Israel is now prepared to take steps representing a penalty imposed in such instances; the destruction of the family home.

Mohammed Tarayreh, it appears, had been inspired when one of his cousins was killed in the act of ramming his vehicle into Israelis in Kiryat Arba several months earlier.