By Martin Sherman
One cannot but think that if another country treated Jews, wearing “kippot” and “peyote”, the way Jewish minors, accused of “terror” are treated in Israel, it would surely be engulfed in a wave of outrage and condemned for blatant anti-Semitism
This was a week, in which there was much for the citizens of Israel to be concerned about.
The bulk of the headlines was taken up by reports of the appalling behavior of the nation’s elected politicians, proving beyond doubt that few—if any—are deserving of the public’s confidence in their ability to lead the country—and probably raising once heretical doubts in the minds of more than a few young Israelis, on the eve of their induction into the IDF.
But that was not the only thing that should have perturbed the public.
Detained without access to counsel
On Sunday, three Jewish minors were arrested on unspecified charges of terror and detained without access to counsel. The initial court proceedings were not open to the public and a gag order was imposed on the investigation. Accordingly, we do not know what transgressions the detainees are alleged to have perpetrated—other than, according to incessant media reports, they are purportedly “grave”.
However, one thing we do know. There has been no largescale attack by Jewish “terrorists” that has caused any multiple loss of life or wide-scale damage to property. So that cannot be the reason for their incarceration. Most of the rumored misdeeds seem to range from scrawling offensive graffiti, through damaging property of non-Jews, to the puncturing tyres of Arab vehicles. However deplorable such acts might be, even if motivated by ideological fervor, none of these seem to rise above the level of vandalism.
There is of course one tragic case of loss of life, in which Aisha al-Rawbi, a 47 year old Palestinian-Arab women, was killed when her car was hit by stones, thrown—according to reports, as yet unsubstantiated— by “settlers”. But if there was credible evidence that the detainees were complicit in this admittedly grave misdeed, why were they not charged with homicide, and allowed access to defense counsel?
“Terror is terror. Whether…from Arabs or Jews”
So perhaps the detainees are being held in “preventative detention” in order to preempt some future planned offenses—rather than on suspicion of those already committed. But accepted legal practice does not usually allow incarceration for yet-to-be-committed crimes.
After all, there are many malignant phenomena that might threaten the fabric of Israeli society, most of them far more prevalent and tangible than any alleged menace supposedly posed by Jewish ideological extremists—for example: organized crime, drug trafficking, high-level corruption, to name a few. But, as a general rule, one cannot be arrested for contemplating the commission of a crime.
Accordingly, if extra-judicial measures are considered acceptable for dealing with teenage Jewish zealots to prevent the commission of a possible offense, why not for suspected crime bosses, drug traffickers or senior officials suspected of being prone to corruption? Or potential rapists? Or known pedophiles? Or abusive husbands?
In Israel, the use of such detention without trial is almost universally limited to security-related offenses—particularly, terrorism.
Indeed, that this was the rationale for the incarceration of the minors this week was confirmed by State Prosecutor, Shai Nitzan, just after an Israeli district court extended the remand of the three Jewish minors on suspicion of involvement in a Jewish terror plot. Addressing a conference following the court decision, Nitzan proclaimed: “Terror is terror. Whether it comes from Arabs or Jews”.
Misplaced evenhandedness: Stray tabbies are not Bengal tigers
In his misplaced endeavor at evenhandedness, Nitzan—together with most of the Israeli political Establishment, including much of the “Right-wing”—has apparently fallen prey to the mendacious mantra of political correctness that Jewish hate crimes, vandalism and hooliganism are the equivalent of Arab terrorism—and hence equivalent extrajudicial measures must be used to combat them.
Indeed, even if one accepts the loosely framed definition of “terror” as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”, any attempt to draw a semblance of equivalence between the two—and the appropriate measures to deal with them—is wildly misguided and misconceived.
Moreover, to attempt to lump together the actions of scrawny, ideologically-driven Jewish teenagers, on the one hand, and the activities of Arab/Muslim terrorist organizations on the other, under the same undifferentiated heading is no less misleading than claiming that because stray tabby cats and man-eating Bengal tigers are both undomesticated, striped feline carnivores, they pose similar threats and must be dealt with in the same manner.
After all, unlike Arab terrorist organizations, alleged Jewish “extremists” have no equivalent of Iran to equip them or Qatar to finance them; they have no international offices with communications and supply infrastructures spanning the globe. Accordingly, the security forces need to be provided with powers to deal with Arab/Muslim terrorist organizations that they do not (or at least, should not) require to contend with Jewish radicals.
Tabbies and tigers (cont.)
Indeed, to adopt this “even-handed” approach is both a dangerous and detrimental distortion—for the issue is one that goes beyond mere semantic sophistry.
It blurs what should be a crucial qualitative distinction between two very different manifestations of “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”:
– The one, blatantly conducted by the Arab and Muslim world against Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people; the other, purportedly conducted by a handful of Jewish fringe elements, against a hostile Arab population, largely supportive of the violence conducted against Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
– The one, overtly conducted by non-state actors with quasi-state capabilities, supported, equipped and funded by sovereign governments, with communications, supply and financial infrastructures deployed across international borders; the other, allegedly conducted without any backing from foreign states, with no international infrastructure to provide it with ordnance or finance;
– The one, conducted with the virtually unanimous endorsement of the society within which it operates, the other, with virtually unanimous condemnation.
To suggest that any two phenomena, so starkly different, should be considered even vaguely similar, let alone identical, that they both constitute a similar danger to Israel, and that they should therefore be combated by means that are commensurately similar, is wildly disingenuous by any objective criterion.
Counterproductive “evenhandedness”
But there is another caveat which those hand-wringing, moralistic mea culpa circles should heed. For although they may think that mindlessly reciting “terror is terror is…” somehow affords them the moral high ground and that their “even-handed” outrage enhances Israel’s standing abroad—quite the opposite is true.
Indeed, those who strive to equate Arab terrorism, and the terrorist organizations that perpetrate and propagate it, on the one hand, and the ideologically motivated crimes of renegade radical Jews, on the other, do a massive disservice to the country and its international standing.
By blurring the qualitative difference between the two, they gravely undermine Israel’s ability to accurately convey to the world the nature, scale and scope of the threat it faces and the danger the Arab terrorist organizations pose. By so doing, they severely sabotage Israel’s efforts to generate international understanding for the policies it needs to adopt to contend with them – precisely because of the nature, scope and scale of the peril one poses and the other does not.
So, whether motivated by genuine, but misguided, concern for Israel’s international image; or by visceral opprobrium for strange-looking fellow Jews, the attempt to equate Arab terrorism against Jews with Jewish “terror” against Arabs is playing right into the hands of Israel’s most vehement detractors.
Cause for concern
But there is an additional, and possibly sinister, cause for concern.
Since the 2015 arson in the Palestinian-Arab village of Duma, in which three members of the Dawabshe family were burnt to death, there has been a series of extra-judicial incarceration of Jews, including minors. These have raised considerable doubts as to the integrity of the investigative process and the conduct of the security services and police.
The arson was attributed to “Jewish terrorists”—despite the fact that there have been numerous other (previous and subsequent) cases of arson in the same village, attributed to inter-clan feuding. After about six months, it was announced that arrests of several Jews had been made—including the alleged adult perpetrator, Aviram Ben-Uliel, and several minors, as alleged accomplices. A gag order was placed on the investigation. Subsequently, it was reported that Ben-Uliel had confessed to the arson. However, not only was his confession highly improbable, it was totally incompatible with all the eye-witness accounts given at the scene of crime.
Unsurprisingly, Ben-Uliel later retracted the confession, claiming it was extracted under physical duress—a claim the court partially accepted.
Moreover, the court also nullified confessions from the minor, accused of being Ben-Uliel’s accomplice in planning the Duma attack.
Concern (cont.)
Significantly, two and a half years after the defendant’s arrest and an extended period of “enhanced interrogation”, the Supreme Court ordered him to be released to house arrest—despite an appeal by the prosecution, which claimed that he was still dangerous and should not be released before the end of the trial.
Indeed, adding to the sense of unease is the fact that several other youths detained without trial and access to counsel were also later released without charge—see here, here, here, and here—raising grave questions as to why they were incarcerated for months in the first place.
And just this week, a district court threw out a confession given by an Israeli minor, detained as part of a far-reaching investigation into Jewish terrorism, on the grounds that it was extracted by unlawful means and under duress. In dismissing the confession, the judge described the behavior of the police as “unfair, to say the least, as well as offensive and threatening”.
In light of the harsh treatment and long periods of detention without trial or access to counsel, this series of judicial censure cannot but arouse a sense of acute apprehension as to the impartiality and equity meted out to certain sectors of the population.
Indeed, one cannot but think that if another country treated Jews, wearing “kippot” and “peyote”, the way the Jewish minors, accused of “terror” are treated in Israel, it would surely be engulfed in a wave of outrage and condemned for blatant anti-Semitism.
Full disclosure: My personal bias
I confess that I have a strong personal bias in favor of Israel’s security forces and little empathy for the “hilltop” youth, neither for their theocratic political doctrine, nor their purported modus operandi for its implementation.
I would like nothing better than to feel I could place blind faith in the Shin Bet’s determination of guilt and the authenticity of the case brought against Jewish detainees.
Sadly this is not the case.
Martin Sherman is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
@ yamit82:
15 Israelis Convicted for Terrorism
There are 2 Shin Bets. One for protecting internal National Security including Arab yerrorism and the second is persecuting religious Jews especially those comprising settlers in Y&S…. This is not new. It all began HERE
@ Edgar G.:
Haaaaa
An important follow-up on this story in today’s Jerusalem Post. Raises further doubts about the guilt of the supposed “Jewish terrorists” and the “methods” employed against them by the Shabak.
@ yamit82:
SShh….Don’t say a word about British Gas. my chaverim. I still have some of their initial offering shares, now divided into several companies, of which one is National Grid.
@ yamit82:
Nobody Knows how much PM Barak received from British Gas for the rights to oil and gas fields off the Gaza coast. British Gas paid Arafat $ 50 million for the rights. Problem is that all mineral rights at the time belonged to Israel as Palestine was and still is a non-country and Israel was the legal owner of those rights until Palestine became a recognized sovereign nation. British Gas had no buyers except Israel for the gas and when Sharon became PM he gave our supply contracts to his friend who had the contract for gas from Egypt years later British Gas gave up its rights.
The CA has always been anti-Jewish, anti Settlers and Settlements. They are staffed with the most virulent leftist Jew Haters in Israel and are 100% pro Palestinian. It is no secret that many of the CA and Shabak are in business with PLO and PA leaders and clan heads involving Billions of $ is monopolistic deals. Senior Shabak and IDF oficers secure monopolies of certain products like cement steel and all other commodities and products and sell to Palis who hold monopolies on their side. Most are close to and including first Arafat and now Abbas and his sons but also heads of PA/PLO security heads…..
How a Former Official of Israeli Intelligence,Yossi Ginosar, Managed a Secret Account for Arafat
PM Vows Probe Into Claim Ginossar Ran Arafat’s Bank Account
Problem is that Sharon’s son Omri was part of the deal and so was Ariel Sharon (family business).
Nothing has changed since nothing happened to Ginossar or any of the others in the deals with the Palis then. Today the actors may be different but the deals go on and they all protect each other and eliminate anyone who may spoil their nefarious businesses.
Where are Arafat’s stolen billions? – WND
Arafat’s secret financial affairs
This in today’s Jerusalem Post.
This latest allegation from the Shabak is so ludicrous and implausible (why would ‘anti-Zionists” murder an Arab woman?) That it makes their allegation, made public yesterday, that they had murdered an Arab woman passenger in a car driven by herbund also extremely suspect. If the Shabak really believed that the youths had murdered this Arab woman, why would they “supplement” that charge with crude and irrelevant inventions the very next day? After all, the detained youths were all students at a fervently Zionist yeshiva, and all had reputations as fervent Zionists.
My impression (and Dr. Sherman, and any of our readers, please correct me if I am wrong), is that there were no eye witnesses, other than the driver, who confirmed that such a roadside attack even happened. The Arab driver, who is the woman’s husband, kept on driving to their village after the attack supposedly occurred. He never reported the incident to the Israeli police, only to the PA police.
The woman is undoubtedly deceased. But I don’t think that any Israeli pathologist examined her body and determined the cause of death or the time of death. The only evidence, at least as far as has been publicly revealed so far, that Jews killed her comes from the PA police.
My gut feeling is that this was an “honor killing” by the husband, and that he invented the alleged roadside attack by Jews to shift blame to the Arabs’ usual scapegoat. And the Shabak have bought into his story for their own very dubious police purposes.
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This in today’s Arutz Sheva:
@ ms:
This incisive post s far better than the article. We can read between the broad lines easily, and are all cognizant of the matters you mention ……and agree with you totally.
@ Michael S: Michael, the NT is not sacred scripture for me as it is for you. But I find in it much folk wisdom, and many memorable sayings and observations about human nature that make good quotations. The Israeli ‘left” are vipers, and I have written this many times. But so are the Arab terrorists. They strike without warning from hidden places, and as far as I can see, they have no capacity for love, as even tigers have.
This from Moshe Dann in today’s Jerusalem Post:
Moshe Dann’s article reveals what is really behind the
Shabak’s arrest and detention of young settler activists over the last few days. It is probably aimed at halting protests against the IDF and Shabak’s massive destruction of thousands of Jewish homes, such as the recent attempt by youthful Jewish settlement activists to repopulate the Amona settlement destroyed earlier by the IDF (the youthful would-be resettlers were forcibly removed, along with their two trailers, by the IDF a few days ago). A desire to halt these protests. not genuine concern about purported “Jewish terrorism” or even “Jewish hate crimes ,” is probably the motive for the recent spate of arrests and detentions without charge of Jewish youth. The authorities probably fabricate most of these alleged crimes themselves, or at least are aware that Arabs have fabricated them.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Adam,
I’m sure Edgar, for one, will notice that you’ve quoted the NT. I think I need to qualify what you quoted: Jesus was not talking to Israel’s neighboring enemies. He was addressing a bunch of stiff-necked, hypocritical religious leaders. Their “bite” is more deadly than that of the Arabs. When they inject their venom, the victim is anaesthetised from reality, thinking he is righteous and safe from eternal judgment. Then he continues on his wicked way, and heads straight into perdition.
The Arabs certainly have such a venom working among themselves, leading them to sacrifice their children so they can get their 72 virgins. The Left, however, especially the Israeli Left, is much more of a threat to the Jews of Israel: When the Leftist viper bites, the victim imagines himself to be righteous, a veritable righter of wrongs and savior of humanity. Then his end comes quickly.
I am also uncomfortable with describing the Arab terrorists as “tigers.” Tigers, after all, are in their own way noble beasts of the forest, like lions. They only kill other animals to provide meat needed by themselves, their mates or their offspring. Malicious attacks on other creatures by tigers are very rare. If captured or found when young, tigers can be tamed and made into pets. Such tame tigers will smooch the faces of their owners and play with them with their claws retracted, just like domesticated pussycats. Comparing them to Arab terrorists is grossly unfair to tigers.
The accurate animal comparison with Arab terrorists are the vipers. There is nothing noble or majestic about them. Unlike tigers, they are native to Israel/Palestine. They attack without warning, and their sting is venomous. As the New Testament says, “Oh, ye vipers brood!”
@ ms: While I agree wholeheartedly with your condemnation of the Shabak’s behavior towards these young people, describing them as “stray tabbies” strikes me as patronizing and unfair. They are human beings, not animals. Unlike stray cats, they have been “socialized,” and are on good terms with human relatives, friends and neighbors. Most are decent young men who are probably either completely innocent of wrongdoing, or guilty only of minor acts of vandalism that did not cause phyiscal injury to anyone (such as slashing tires). Whatever minor crimes that may have committed are easily “corrected” by enlightened, humane law enforcement. Few are likely to repeat such offenses after receiving fines, probation, or at most brief prison sentences, and/or being required to apologize to the victims. Some of them may have gone slightly astray and are in need of correction and future guidance. but they are not animals. Subjecting them to imprisonment without trial, interrogation without access to legal counsel or even close relatives, and having their cases ‘handled” by counter-terrorist police rather than local regular police, is outrageous. As far as we can tell from any information that has been made public, none of them has committed serious violent acts in which people have been killed or seriously injured. As you point out, that is true even of the Duma suspects, the only evidence against whom is confessions extorted by outright torture
@ yamit82: I don’t think it is that the settlers are too smart to be caught by the “dumb” Shabak, who are very clever and experienced counter-terrorist policemen. It is just that they are innocent of wrong-doing, which requires the Shabak to fabricate accusations against them in order to repress settler political activists.
All organisms, social ones included, have lifespans; ideas are born and ideas die.
Israeli society appears to be on the verge of such transformation. For two decades, the majority of Jews accepted the ultra-left peace process scam while all the polls showed near-universal hatred of Arabs; Israeli Arabs reciprocated. Jewish masses gave Arabs every imaginable benefit of the doubt. Israel negotiated peace with Syria while Syria sponsored Hamas and Hezbollah, and with Palestinians while their terrorist attacks didn’t cease even for a week. Jews submitted to Gaza evacuation—only to see Katyusha rockets pounding Ashkelon. The incessant fighting between Palestinian factions leaves little hope that they will honor a peace treaty. In light of the continued misery of Gaza evacuees, the mainstream public doubts the practicality of resettling much larger numbers of West Bank settlers. A generation used to viewing the Golan Heights as core Israeli territory is highly suspicious of any concessions to Syria. Economic troubles during the crisis make people unwilling to take additional security risks.
The left have overextended themselves: with draft-dodging among the left approaching the haredi level, the failure of disengagement from Gaza, and society’s shift toward capitalism, political leftism has become unfashionable. The Left becomes the Ultra-Left as the Labor Party constituency embraces the communist Meretz.
The knitted-kipa right-wingers increasingly become the army’s backbone. From odd settlers they have become a familiar—and accepted—part of the Israeli social landscape. A lot of atheists embrace traditionalist values and take yeshiva courses.
There are many good Jews around, and their numbers seem to be increasing. The government tries to slam their voices shut with repressions, media distortions, and lies. Conservative politicians cannot voice their right-wing opinions, lest they be branded racists and legally excluded from the Knesset; so self-censorship reins in political speech, creating the impression of universal centrism. Not really: even the leftists push for a Palestinian state for a single reason—as an alternative to the West Bank Arabs claiming Israeli citizenship and outnumbering Jews. In any other country, that would be deemed a racist objective. The state-controlled media promulgates only leftist views, creating the erroneous impression of popular support for the capitulation; but you cannot fool everyone forever.
The army command and the Shabak have also classified as “Jewish terrorism” incidents in which Jewish shepherds allegedly assaulted Arab shepherds who grazed their sheep in areas that the Jewish shepherds considered “their turf.” As anyone who has read the Bible knows, this kind of “terrorism” has been in endemic to the sheep-raising middle East for millennia, and is not political. (Reference the stories of Moses and Zipporah, and of Eliezar and Rachel).
The Israeli authorities also labelled as “Jewish terrorism” incidents in which Jewish farmers have burned olive trees newly planted by Arabs on or near their land (planting such trees, under Israeli “laws” invented by Israel’s Supreme Court, allows Arabs to claim land in Judea-Samaria, even if there is absolutely no evidence that thaey had ever owned it ). Most of these olive-tree burnings or uprootings were retaliations for the burning or uprooting of the Jewish farmers own orchards or vineyards a few days earlier. Classifying such actions by farmers trying to protect their farms from malicious, nationalistically motivated assaults as “terrorism” or “price tag attacks” is absurd. is absurd.
@ yamit82:
After the Jewish underground attacked and seriously injured Arab mayors and plans for blowing up The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mt. the Shabak instituted a separate dept. Just for combatting internal Jewish terrorism…( THE JEWISH DEPT.) They have in every settlement spies and informers keeping tabs on any potential organized or individual threats from the Jews in those settlements. THE JEWS IN THOSE SETTLEMENTS ARE USUALLY TOO SMART FOR THE DUMB SHABAK COPS AND HAVE MOSTLY AVOIDED BEING FINGERED AND CAUGHT SO THE SHABAK IN ORDER TO JUSTIFY THEMSELVES AND HIGH BUDGETS AND INTERNAL PROMOTIONS FROM TIME TO TIME MUST PRODUCE SOME RESULTS. WHAT PISSES ME OFF MORE THAN THE SHABAK IS THE RUBBER STAMP JUDGES WHO SIGN OFF ON THE MERE DECLARATION OF THE SHABAK WITH NO PROOF. THEY ARREST AND DENY CIVIL RIGHTS TO THOSE THEY CLAIM ARE ONLY UNDER SUSPICION> Nothing new here these tactics and laws date to the British mandate pre-state period and Israel incorporated them into our law code to fight Arab terrorism but for over 25 years they have been turned against Jews most those on the West Bank and most Jews of very strong patriotic Zionist and religious worldviews……
@ adamdalgliesh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ_t5JhzBTo&t=48s
There was a whole slew of arson attacks in Arab mosques in which suspiciously little damage was done. in each case, a handful of books were burned, and perhaps a prayer rug was slightly singed, but no structural damage was done to the mosques. Anti-arab slogans in Hebrew were discovered on the outer wall of these mosques as well.
The Shabak and the army command happily confirmed Arab claims that these were “price tag” attacks by Jewish “settlers.” But how settlers could have gone inside these mosques, in which Muslim prayer meeting are more or less continuous over a 24-hour period, without being discovered and detained (or worse) by Arab worshippers, was never explained. Also why the supposed “price-taggers” would have inflicted only token, easily repaired damage to the mosques after having taken such great risks to invade them, was never explained.
As for the graffiti in Hebrew, the Shabak ignored the fact that numerous Arab residents of Judea-Samaria can read and write Hebrew, some even fluently. Indeed, some Arab terrorists even earned Ph.Ds at Hebrew University while imprisoned in Israeli jails! Some of these terrorist “doctors” were later released and allowed to return to their homes in Judea-Samaria.
Hatred is not always the result of ignorance of the “enemy,” his language and culture.
Dueling representives of Fatah and Hamas from Judea and Samaria and Gaza, respectively, once even conducted a debate in Hebrew, broadcast on Israeli television!
Edgar G. Said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYP1OBZfFK0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KpsUlvzbkk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTnGpaY3VKY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U
One Jew who was apprehended after posting self-created flyers condemning homosexuals was eventually persuaded, after being held incommunicado for days without access to counsel or relatives, to numerous crimes going back to 1982, more than thirty years earlier. Some of the alleged crimes involved Arab victims, others Jewish victims and even Christian missionaries. Other than the confessions obtained under these dubious circumstances, no evidence or testimony connecting him with any of these crimes was ever introduced in court. It certainly appears as if the Shabak was eager to “clear the books” on a long series of unsolved crimes extending back thirty years, and found an emotionally unstable individual whom it was easy to pin them on. Yet the Shabak proclaimed him a “Jewish terrorist.”
A tiny handful of young Jews who were convicted of arson attacks on churches over the past ten years or so. But the only evidence of their guilt presented in court were their confessions, which were obtained only after they were imprisoned for some days or weeks without access to attorneys or their relatives. The confessions obtained under such dubious circumstances could well be false. There were Arabs who had possible motives for committing all of these crimes.
I don’t think most of Jewish “terrorists” rounded up by the Shabak and army are even “stray tabby cats.” Most have committed no serious crimes, and many no crimes at all. The army and Shabak have treated Jews who defended themselves from armed attack, who “neutralized” a wounded terrorist whom he thought might still be dangerous, killed an Arab rioter while attempting to quell an Arab violent riot, and similat such individuals as “terrorists,” and has sent them to prison. It is unlikely that even as many as five Jews over the past thirty years have murdered Arabs for what could be viewed as “nationalist” motives. And alll of these individuals acted alone, not as part of an organization, and all exhibited symptoms of mental illness. Jewish “terrorism,” at least over the past twenty years or so, may well be entirely a myth fabricated by leftist policemen and army officers.
I am interested to learn if ms agrees with this assessment
JEWISH HATE CRIMES AND VANDALISM ARE NOT TERRORISM
Public attention has been diverted from foiling the Iran nuclear deal in Congress by sanctimonious hand-wringing over crimes of individual perpetrators on outer fringes of Israeli society.
TRIVIALIZING ‘TERROR’
Hysterical attempts to equate ideological driven crimes by fringe Jewish extremists with Arab Muslim terrorism is substantively wrong and strategically detrimental
PRESUMPTION OF GUILT
The attempt to equate Arab terrorism against Jews with Jewish “terror” against Arabs is playing right into the hands of Israel’s most vehement detractors
DUMA, ‘DIRTY DANCING’ & DEEPLY DISTURBING DETENTION
To draw any equivalence between Arab, Jewish “terror” is like claiming that a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and a rubber dinghy are equivalent because they can both be classed “sailing vessels.”
JEWISH ‘TERROR’ – A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
A tart retort to some misguided critics and misleading critiques of my two recent columns
DUMA-ONE YEAR (AND THREE ARSON ATTACKS) LATER
With continuing unsolved arson attacks in Duma, seven months after a coerced confession & an indictment wildly at odds with eyewitness accounts, troubling questions must be raised.
THE FORGOTTEN FIRE?
Last week’s fires did little to illuminate much of the unknown still shrouding another conflagration that flared up, almost a year and a half ago.
“TERROR”, TIGERS AND TABBY CATS…
One cannot but think that if another country treated Jews, wearing kippot and peyot, the way Jewish minors accused of “terror” are treated in Israel, it would surely be engulfed in a wave of outrage and condemned for blatant antisemitism
Assuming that the events described in the article are true, and there is no cause to assume differently, then these scrawny juveniles need an NGO to address their problem to the Israeli Supreme Court. Palestinians get their access to counsel by getting their NGOs to act for them.
Quite apart from that, the so called democracy in Israel is currently getting a significantly black eye from affairs of this type. It’s time that the perpetrators who imprison anyone without due process get their wings clipped.
Frankly I got tired reading it…A typical Dr. M Sherman essay….reminding me of the old Music Hall skit “Slowly I turned”…. as he turns this serious Jewish outrage around slowly in circles, taking a bite here a nip there… Like an old timer chewing tobacco, with the occasional expectoration.
For a time -too short -he was writing sharply incisive articles which came to the point in cutting language and then immediately, without any semantic flourishes, discussed a solution…they were good to read. In my university days, the old life-tenured profs used to flesh out their 55 min lecture the way Dr. Sherman does, 10 minutes of real content and 45 mns of “decorating the corpse”…….Many succumbed to a good snooze.
I believe the term “semantic sophistry is used…well…it’s an accurate description of this slowly progressing article.
Some day he’ll get the point that we are adult and intelligent, not 16 yr. old, not-too-bright students….and tell us in PLAIN TERMS, unembellished by a jostling queue. floridly enhanced, all “circling around the same wagon”…. (mixed metaphors ..but just right.)
Perhaps one -or more- of the youth will sue Dr. Sherman for libel in describing him/them as “scrawny”. That would provide far more movement-even through the sluggish Israeli courts- than this article.
Slowly I turned…Step..by..step….. Absolutely…….!!
Actually,the situation is far worse even than what Dr. Sherman describes. Over the past 35 years, iinstances in which Jews have been proven in even reasonably fair trials to have assaulted Arabs for political or nationalist reasons are nearly nonexistent. I doubt if there are even 5 such cases in which terrorist acts by Jews have been proven in open court.
Some of these cases have involved Jews who discharged firearms in self-defense while they were assaulted by stone-throwing Arab mobs. Several others have involved policemen or soldiers convicted of crimes when the used force to quell Arab riots, or subdue Arabs forcibly resisting arrest. One notorious case involved a Jewish soldier convicted of manslaughter after he attempted to protect his fellow soldiers from an an Arab terrorist who had been wounded, but whom his comrades feared might still be armed and dangerous. Then there are several Jewish defendants who were convicted of crimes against Arabs on the sole basis of confessions made while they were being held incommunicado, interrogated without access to a lawyer or even having been permitted to communicate with relatives. In most civilized countries, confessions obtained by these methods would have been thrown out of court. And of course there are the cases in which Jewish suspectshave been held for months and even years without trial and systematically tortured wit h the approval of the Attorney Genera, without have been convicted of anything.
Actual “Jewish terrorism” against Arabs is so rare that it cannot be said positively to exist at all. The real Jewish terrorism is that committed by Jewish prosecutors and military officers against suspected Jewish political dissidents. Mosts of these incarcerated individuals are not “stray tabbies,” but innocent human beings who oppose the policies of Israel’s self-appointed, unelected ruling clique.