Earlier today, Shira Banki, a 16-year-old girl who was stabbed repeatedly by Yishai Shlissel at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride parade, died of her wounds. She attended one of Israel’s élite high schools affiliated with the Hebrew University. As such, her death strikes at the heart of Israel’s élite. The entire nation mourns with her family, except perhaps the Haredi community and the homophobes who run the country from some of the major ministries.
Take Naftali Bennett for example. His party, Bayit Yehudi, made homophobia a major part of its electoral platform. In fact, this helped it become the political flavor of the month, the second most popular party in the governing coalition. As I wrote this week in Mint Press News, one party Knesset candidate called homosexuality “suicide for society.” Another boasted of being a “proud homophobe.” This Pride of the Right also held an anti-gay rally on Pride Day in Jerusalem in 2006 (only a year after Shlissel’s first attack) and called it the “Parade of the Beasts.”
That’s why Mysh wrote this denunciation of Israel’s political élite to accompany his cartoon on Facebook:
Maybe you didn’t tell them to go and murder [anyone]. Maybe you never said anything that a court could find was incitement to murder (even though some of you have even done that). But one thing is certain: the past few days have proven without doubt that you aren’t prepared, don’t wish to, and perhaps don’t even know how to accept responsibility for what has crossed your lips. Your words are vacuous even from your own perspective. That’s why you can say something and then renounce it, then saying the exact opposite immediately afterward; even when your words are written-down black and white and your lies are transparent. Who cares?! They’re just words.
None of you have any real beliefs. Even Brother Bennett. You’re little more than a band of wretched opportunists who float on an endless stream of bubbles, consisting of empty words you sprinkle about. Without any accountability. Without any judgment.
But these aren’t soap bubbles. They have weight and meaning. Everything you said, when it would’ve been better if you’d shut your mouths; everything you didn’t say when you should’ve spoken up–this all has weight. Bibi, Bennett, Bouzi, Lapid–the whole gang–the blood of these two children, one girl and one baby, who were murdered in the past few days–are your fault.”
Something new is reflected in the Israeli response to this rampage and the arson attack on the Dawabsheh family, which killed an 18 month-old infant and left three other family members with serious injuries. Israelis, unlike the normal reaction, are calling this terror.
Even the prime minister, representing a political party known for its Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, paid his respects to the Palestinian family in the hospital. But his words were empty. They were the same words heard after numerous previous Jewish terror attacks.
If you listen to the video above note that he simply cannot express a genuine human emotion. The words convey this meaning, but just look at his face. It’s a conniving visage lacking in any humanity. Why do I say that? Because of what comes afterward. He notes he called the Palestinian leader, whom he graces with the honorific “President Abbas.” This is the same president he rails against and blames for incitement when there is a Palestinian terror attack. The same one who he insults as a dwarf and hopeless misfit whenever it’s convenient.
Then he follows this with an invocation of peace. Another empty gesture. Why would any Palestinian in their right mind believe Israel wants peace when terrorists supported directly and indirectly by the State itself run rampant? When State security forces are so incompetent as to allow a known homicidal maniac recently released from prison access to the same weapon he attacked the Gay Pride parade with ten years earlier? When they don’t monitor his whereabouts? Don’t even know he boasted on a public forum that he’d be bringing his knives to the parade and invited his pals to do so as well?
No, as Mysh says, this is a sham. This is government drowning in a cesspool of lies and self-deception. It fools no one except perhaps the voters who put it in office.
For those who dispute my claim above that the government itself supports the very terrorists it claims to abhor, note this article (Hebrew) about the Israeli pro-terror NGO, Honenu (it provides legal representation to accused Jewish terrorists and supports their families, among other activities). It states that the government subsidizes Honenu (through it’s NGO tax-exemption), which in turn financially supports Jewish terrorists and their families. They name Ami Popper as one example among many who receive this benefit. Popper is serving a life sentence for murdering seven Palestinians in a West Bank terror attack. His family is awarded grants worth tens of thousands of shekels. Honenu has directed a total of $60,000 directly to the convicted Jewish terrorists and another $10,000 to their families. The report notes that the Israeli taxpayer is, in effect, supporting Jewish terror.
More proof of official sanction for murder: An Israeli police officer, Avi Malka, wrote on Facebook that Shira Banki “had it coming” to her. He also said he hoped during Operation Protective Edge that, instead of killing 500 Palestinian children, Israel had killed a million. Despite the fact that Malka’s Facebook banner photo shows him in uniform, riding an official police motorcycle, the police replied that he was not on “active duty,” as if this absolved it of responsiblity. As if the rest of the police force doesn’t share such homicidal, racist views.
Mysh composed another brilliant cartoon about the arson attack in the West Bank village of Hebron, in which 18 month-old Ali Saad Dawabsheh was burned to death by settler terrorists. Palestinian eye-witnesses say they saw the attackers standing over the bodies as they burned. They did nothing to help them.
Mysh remembered (as I did in my Mint Press story) the Biblical-era pagan god, Moloch, who demanded the sacrifice of young children. Those familiar with the story of the sacrifice of Issac will remember the theory advanced by Bible critics that the ending of that story, in which the angel of God stays Abraham’s hand as he’s about to slit Issac’s hand, is a deliberate refutation of this pagan rite. Leonard Cohen’s song puts this view eloquently in his Song for Isaac:
You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
Mysh’s cartoon is brilliant because it employs the very graffiti the murderers scrawled on the Palestinian home (“Messiah, the King” in Hebrew). But he adds vocalization, daubed in blood-red paint, to the word “king” (melech in Hebrew) which transforms the word into “Moloch.” In effect, he says that the settlers are worshippers of a vicious, brutal pagan god. A god who demands the blood of babies for his rites. Mysh tells us that these evil ones are not Jews. They are worshipers of idols and demons. Israel must vomit up such evil if it ever wishes to be cleanses of the sins these terrorists represent. Instead, I fear the State itself will increasingly embrace them. That will make it a terror state on a par with North Korea.
The homophobia of the right, o.k.
But there are articles talking about how Israel promotes the country as supportive of the gay community as a counter to the Islamic world where homosexuality is condemned.
@ Richard
“Popper is serving a life sentence for murdering seven Palestinians in a West Bank terror attack.”
Ami Popper killed the Palestinian laborers within Israel proper.
His wiki-page is worth a look, his 7 life times have been reduced to 40 years, he got married three times, had kids, and had a car accident while on a leave. Palestinian prisoners don’t even have the right to hug their children ……
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_Popper
Also see all this:
“After his act, Palestinians rioted, and Israeli security forces killed seven rioters and injured about 700 more. Yitzhak Shamir dismissed his act as of no political significance since Popper was “deranged”. ”
Just demented and ridiculous (and in the first case, that’s a severe understatement) on both accounts,
Amen!
The NYTimes had this article blurbed on it’s front page online “watching” list this AM, the title an understatement:
Israeli Justice Is Seen to Be Often Uneven Among Palestinian Cases
But this line in the article stands out:
“We do not want to live in a police state,” Mr. Plesner said. “The caution is respected and understood. But the government also has a responsibility toward all the citizens under its jurisdiction. We need to change the balance between these two values.”
Ahem…there are citizens and non-citizens that do live in a police state.
Any news on the killers? I understand there is a gag order.
There would unquestionably be a gag order. But whether & when they’ve arrested someone is the key. I’m trying my best to find out.
By your logic on Honenu – The US and EU supported convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons for years by paying them salaries which can be over average salary even in Israel. http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Palestinians-duping-world-by-denying-it-pays-salaries-to-prisoners-in-Israeli-jails-404197
If you can show that U.S. or EU money in any way directly supported Palestinian prisoners that would be a big story. Can you?
You Israelis are a funny “herd”, always tirelessly inventing new fairy tales to portray yourself as the victims in this “show”. Actually it is a miracle – for Israel, not for Palestinians -, that EU, USA, Japan, Arabs, UN etc pay the costs of Palestinians. Costs and responsibility which solely belong to the invader/occupier. To keep up this macabre political theater of PA’s role and status, a almost state without land and real power, but with the demands of a real state, these outsiders have financed the whole show and made it possible for Israel make tons of money and enlarge its own economy with billions.
In financial history this is one of the most hilarious processes of invading areas. US yearly donations have paid the costs of the military occupation. Gaza has become a perpetual financial motion machine for Israel. First with US and Israeli, paid by USA, weapons Gaza is flattened every 2-3 years and then with foreign money rebuilt with goods bought in many cases from Israeli companies. Israeli economy also has earned much by stealing land with minimal costs from the West Bank, developing it to settlements and selling it with the nearly normal price of land + house to Jews. This decades long strange earning system has been keeping Israeli economy rolling. If Israel itself would have had to pay the costs of occupation, military + the costs of Palestinians, this show would have ended decades ago. Still the most clever strategy for EU and USA is to block the Israeli economy and stop instantly to give money to PA. In a month or two Israel would make peace on the basis of 1967 borders, it simply could not afford to keep those millions “slaves”.
Your logic is completely sound and you can extract from it the US and EU support occupation (if you consider Israeli presence as occupation. Let me guess… you do).
At the same time, The PA for years paid salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons. The US and EU donate millions to the PA. A->B->C = A->C. So can you say according to this logic that Israeli supports terror? Defiantly! Is it meaningful? It is as meaningful as saying the US and EU support terror.
Not to mention, Honenu provides legal assistance which I would assume Richard is fond of considering his outcry for human rights.
And you consider Israel’s “presence” on West Bank, Golan and Gaza as a natural right, because God promised it to Jews 4371 year, 3 days and 5 hours ago? Come on by international law, which you obviously can not understand, Israel is the occupier and invader.
Who pays the salaries of Jewish terrorists? They are and were not in prisons. Those mass murders, assassins, bomb throwers, well poisoners, war criminals, church burners etc were and are paid in most cases by the state of Israel and Jewish organisations.
My opinion has been for a long time that EU and USA should not pay a single cent to PA and Israel. It only keeps this absurd robbery going on and you Israelis manage to earn with the occupation. A total economical, cultural and movements boycott is the instant way to peace (and to neutralize Israel’s nuclear weapons).
Myself I call it “rightful sovereignty” but this isn’t the point.
Even Richard make some logic acrobatics in order to say Israel support terror. You just outright say – “they pay to Jewish terrorists”. Do you have the slightest proof for that? Last time I checked, they were hunted down and put to trial if the evidence amounted to that.
@Eilati: I presume you know how to click on a link and read Hebrew. If you did you would see the report from which I derived this information. You be extremely careful before you derogate my sources.
@ Eilati:
Oh, but it is the point. Israel has neither sovereignty nor right to Palestine. Except according to settler Judaism.
@Eilati
Arrogance before the fall … ill-conceived self-righteousness. See old-testament.
@ Eilati: Honenu provides far more than legal assistance. It is a pro settler lobbying outfit. It pressures the government to forgive the crimes of terrorists like Yigal Amir. This is not the ACLU! It’s a disgusting group.
“…terror state on a par with North Korea”? Can you really equate a brutal authoritarian regime with Israel, a pluralistic democracy that comes with all the advantages and disadvantages of democracy? What was the party that got the most votes after Bayit Hayehudi, after all, and what is the platform of some of their members?
Should I judge the USA based on the fact that even someone like David Duke managed to get elected into office?
@Tom Aviv: “Pluralistic democracy? By this measure, Sri Lanka was a pluralistic democracy when it slaughtered thousands of Tamil rebels in the final throes of its genocidal civil war.
Just because a state has minorities doesn’t mean it’s either pluralistic or democratic. Israel is neither. There is one difference between North Korea & Israel: Israel is a budding theocracy. North Korea is merely a feudal dictatorship.
The fact that the Joint List is 3rd largest party in Knesset has no meaning since it is ostracized & excluded by the fascist majority. It has no power except to shame & embarrass, with Israel almost impossible to shame or embarrass.
You should judge the U.S. if every one of our cabinet members were corrupt, had called minority groups “little snakes,” African refugees “a cancer in the national body,” and other genocidal, racist remarks.
BTW, David Duke has never been elected dog catcher, let alone anything else (I can’t remember whether he was ever a Louisiana state senator–if it was it was for the blink of an eye). Running for office is not the same as winning. Or have you forgotten this basic democratic principle??
“Should I judge the USA based on the fact that even someone like David Duke managed to get elected into office?”
USA obviously has a bunch of problems, and the fact that David Duke got elected for something is the least of it. E.g. if you are a Latino farm laborer, a policeman can gun you down with impunity for bicycling at night without a light, google “indio cyclist shot”. But the domestic efforts to correct those problems are actually encouraging, e.g. in the same Indio, a year after a cyclist was shot to death policemen were sentenced for beating up another young Latino, and yet later, they had to pay more than two million dollars to the family of the cyclists. And there is a lot of activism that helps.
Israel is of course not unique in “having problems” but it seems that it resembles more USA 70 years ago than now, while it relies on propaganda that presents it as a progressive cute adorable country, while it actually regresses.
By the way, how inept police can be in a country where security is allegedly THE top concern? Mr. S. stabs participant of Jerusalem gay parade on account of being religious fanatic. He is released after a bit less than 10 years, just in time for another parade. Police compiles the list of six top potential troublemakers that can threaten the parade and Mr. S makes the list (so they are not all idiots in Jerusalem police) and later they cannot track Mr. S. as he ambles among the other paraders looking “like everybody else”: tall, gaunt, pale, dressed like a Hasid, with incredibly long beard. How many tall, gaunt, pale, bearded Hasidim you have on a gay parade?