Israel and the shock of the Jewish killers. But the criminals are just a few and isolated
mercoledì 5 agosto 2015 English 0 commenti
Il Giornale, August 5, 2015Many times, since its foundation, Israel has been mourning its victims. In this country the succession of joy and sorrow has taken a direct and violent form: a form being known only by those societies where history demands its toll often devouring young lives. But the mourning great deal of these days does not stem from the Palestinian terrorist attack, which is often faced with a sense of justice and calm, determination and fortitude. Today the Jewish people cries something that comes with something intolerable, a nail, a never ending persecution: it is the Jewish sense of guilt.
A frw days ago, the beautiful face of Shira Banki, only fifteen years old, stood out on the front-pages and all Israel rightly shed tears. She was killed during the Gay Pride pageant in Jerusalem by Yishai Shlissel, a crazy homophobe. The man had just been released from prison: he was an ultra-orthodox Jew, as the newspapers mostly defined him. He was labeled as an anti-a Zionist by those who knew him, a maniac in the grip of a mental illness linked to sexuality. He stabbed six people, the other five are out of danger. The second tragedy occurred last Friday in the Arab village of Duma, near Nablus, where the house of the Dawabsheh family was set ablaze, causing the death of a beautiful child, Ali, 18 months.
Three other members of the desperate family have been hospitalized, and unfortunately the father died yesterday. The shock of the two crimes committed by Jews has been rightly mourned comparably to that suffered by the Israeli society for the frequent, almost customary terrorist slaughter of Jewish children: the murderers of the little Shalhevet Pass, killed by a sniper, the Fogel family, Adele Biton, the teenagers Eyal, Gilad, Naftali... Israel was thrown into despair in the same way as for the assassination of Shira and Ali. The last two ended up being strangely tied to a destiny that would have crushed them by means of a different, but equally frantic, Jewish hatred.
The ruling class reacted calmly, it has to be noticed, much more than the newspapers and the public, and this should be cause of concern to all of us, as we are increasingly at the mercy of the media compared to any other political, intellectual, public expressions. All the political leaders firmly condemned Shira’s murder and the anti-gay aggression, regarding them as a breach to the sacrosanct democratic freedom to live as each of us wants in Israel.
Netanyahu said: "Shira was murdered for having courageously upheld the principle that every person has the right to live their lives in respect and safety... We will not allow this filthy murderer to undermine the fundamental values the Israeli society is based on. We condemn, in no uncertain terms... and we will act so that justice will be done”.
This is a reassertion of the traditional stance towards the legislative and social respect for gays that has made Israel a landmark for the world, and of course all over the Middle East. Episodes of escape to Israel of boys and girls from the Palestinian territories are routine. Israel is the mandatory refuge for the people that because of their sexual attitude risk their life every day. Thee attack took away the life of a flower that just wanted to join in a moment of struggle for freedom inside the Israeli political frame that just allows it fully..
The media, besides attacking the police and arguing that if it had found an Arab with an aggressive attitude would have certainly stopped him before the fatal act, do also insist on the homophobia of religious extremists. This is a realistic fact, but the conclusion being drawn, considering at the and all the Orthodox dangerous and hateful as such, goes much beyond the line of logical thinking.
The proof is that the idiot murderer is always the same attacker who, for attempting to commit the same crime ten years ago, stayed in jail until not long ago. One in ten years, always the same. Would he have to stay in jail longer? Probably yes. Did he received enough surveillance when outside? Certainly not. Still, he was not a member of a murderer homophobic gang, even though among the ultra-Orthodox there are certainly those who sanction the homosexuals aggressively and the reform dangerously.
As a matter of fact, the whole Israeli society criminalized itself in the newspaper debates, and does so even more for Ali’s death.
Again, the reaction of the government was harsh. Netanyahu condemned the crime and labeled it as terrorism, promising justice and apologizing. Then, he called Abbas to share words of grief and shame. Such a gesture was never done by a Palestinian leader after the crimes listed above. But President Reuven Rivlin went further: "Shame... Every society has its own extremist factions, but what is there in the public atmosphere allowing extremism and extremists to act with such arrogance?". This request to admit a collective guilt aroused a painful debate that has divided once again the public opinion between those (in the left, as it is logical) who blame Netanyahu’s era in the belief that it led Israel to distance itself in a creeping way from the principles of tolerance and rejection of racism, and they who don't not believe, conversely, that Israel suffers from a lack of morality.
It's always a pity when crime is not recognized as such, because it compromise the ability of a society to fight it, while it pushes it to fight itself or between political factions. Let the criminal be punished, and the society continue in its hard and even heroic democratic path, in a region infested by real enemies.