Yesterday Israeli officials announced the arrests of two young men who will be charged with the brutal knife and gun murders of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar, a West Bank settlement.\u00a0 The killers, 18 and 19-year old men, are from a nearby village, Awarta.<\/p>\n
The brutality of these murders shocked Israelis and Palestinians alike.\u00a0 I was taken aback at the many Palestinians who rushed toward Israeli news cameras to condemn the murders.\u00a0 Their own families are so embarrassed by the crimes that they\u2019d rather deny their sons\u2019 guilt than embrace them as heroes of the resistance.\u00a0 They deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law.<\/p>\n
If I had the opportunity to turn to the people of both Awarta and Itamar, here\u2019s what I would say.<\/p>\n
Residents of Awarta:\u00a0 We have heard your expressions of outrage on Israeli television and about how this murder crossed the line.\u00a0 You know very well that this is the result of educating your young people to extreme hatred rather than toward an attitude of peace and the absolute necessity of future conciliation.<\/p>\n
I know that life under the occupation, even with limited autonomy, is less than ideal.\u00a0 But I also know that your lives are, arguably, better off than they would be under any Arab regime.\u00a0 Still, that doesn\u2019t make it right and many of us respect your national aspirations.\u00a0 These will never be achieved if you refuse to stop demonizing the Jews and fail to productively educate your children about the need to compromise with Israel.<\/p>\n
Residents of Itamar:\u00a0 No reasonable person believes that settlements are THE obstacle peace.\u00a0 That\u2019s because we know that they can be dismantled in a day.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t mean that settlements like yours, deep inside the West Bank, are necessarily wise or rational.\u00a0 In fact, you are living there in order to further your completely ridiculous idea that by doing so you will advance the coming of the messiah.\u00a0 Your town is far away from any sane future border between Israel and a future Palestinian state, which you, of course, completely reject.\u00a0 Many of you are former Americans who claim that it is dangerous to live anywhere in Israel.\u00a0 Well you may be in the land of Israel, but you do not live in the State of Israel.\u00a0 Your security is difficult to impossible to maintain and you expose your children to extreme dangers due to your completely irrational religious beliefs.<\/p>\n
Radical religious ideologues on both sides want nothing more than to transform this national conflict into a religious war.\u00a0 This is what Hamas and their ilk desire.\u00a0 And sadly for them and their children, it is what ultra-nationalist religiously-driven settlers are also trying to accomplish.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday Israeli officials announced the arrests of two young men who will be charged with the brutal knife and gun murders of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar, a West Bank settlement.\u00a0 The killers, 18 and 19-year old men, are from a nearby village, Awarta. The brutality of these murders shocked Israelis and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20,21,31],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-israel","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-orthodox-judaism"],"yoast_head":"\n