MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Today’s issues: Deepening the divide, Netanyahu’s racist discourse, enlightened and benighted, and defeating Jewish terrorism.
The Jerusalem Post criticizes PM Netanyahu’s speech at the site of the attack on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street, and asserts: “Instead of expressing negative generalizations about more than 20 percent of the Israeli population, Netanyahu could have focused on more positive themes.” The editor points out that Arab Israelis are full-fledged citizens of Israel and the vast majority are law-abiding, and states that the abominable act, which is hardly representative of the Arab population, “could have been an opportunity for the prime minister to emphasis what Jewish and Arab Israelis have in common. Unfortunately, Netanya hu used it as an opportunity to deepen the divide.”
Haaretz slams PM Netanyahu’s “racist mudslinging against Arabs,” and states: “Netanyahu is outraged when people cast collective blame on settlers, but has no problem drawing racist lines of separation when it comes to Israel’s Arabs.” The editor laments that it is no longer possible to dam the polluted spring from which Netanyahu draws the insults with which he fills the Israeli discourse, but argues that “it is possible and necessary to create a parallel dialogue, an alternative to the prime minister’s racist one. A discussion that will make it unequivocally clear that being ‘Israeli all the way’ is the natural and undisputed position of every citizen, Jew and Arab alike.”
Yediot Aharonot examines the statement, recently aired on various media channels, that ‘Jewish terrorism encourages Arab terrorism,’ which he finds interesting because “support for Jewish terrorism is next to nonexistent.” The author notes that when a Jew is murdered in a terror attack, candy is handed out on the Palestinian street; in the rare instance when a Palestinian child is murdered by a Jew, 99 percent of Israelis are shocked, condemn the act and feel remorse and declares: “saying Jewish terrorism encourages Arab terrorism is like saying an ant can carry an elephant.”
Israel Hayom states: “Decisive action must be taken, on all levels, against Jewish extremists and their supporters, before the unthinkable happens again.” The author asserts that the phenomenon of Jewish terror has ethical, educational and financial aspects as well criminal aspects ones, and agrees with the security services who maintain that “the state has to set a clear red line and enforce it,” and warns: “Otherwise, the dozens of extremists who are still roaming free may strike again.”
[Ben-Dror Yemini and Yoav Limor wrote today’s articles in Yediot Aharonot and Israel Hayom, respectively.]
“Our Muslim brethren yearn to murder each and every one of us, but they wish to do so because they sincerely believe that we are subhuman scum. While we might mildly disagree with their desire to annihilate the Jewish People, who among us can question their devotion to their dearly-held cause of exterminating the Hebrews they regard as being insufferable vermin? So let us refrain from being obnoxiously judgmental about the Arab intention to slaughter our children, and find within ourselves the grace to congratulate them on the remarkably intense commitment they continually display to stab us all.”