Soccer Dad

Unspeakable Cruelty

The New York Times reported that the Hatuels were a "settler family." Sorry. That's wrong. They were a family of people. They're people not settlers. And they were brutally murdered. They were people. The Tzurs were people. The Kahanes were people. The Dicksteins were people. The Horowitzes were people. They are people and they were murdered. Where they live is irrelevant to the fact that they were killed in cold blood.
It might be easier to refer to victims of Arab violence as "settlers" because it provides a comforting context. After all the Arab violence is based on a religion based hatred. Many in the west don't understand such things. Many in the west want to believe that such violent hatred doesn't exist. Many in the west want to believe that all differences are resolvable through negotiation. To believe that the motivation of the terrorists is simple antisemitism defies a western outlook. "Settlers" provides a mean for understanding the motivation. After all if the people don't belong in "Palestinian lands" they are provoking the Palestinians. They are putting themselves in danger. Thus the word "settler" doesn't just place blame on these peoples' deaths on themselves; it absolves the murderers.
If "settlers" dehumanizes Tali Hatuel and her four daughters - Hila, Hadar, Roni, and Merav it is merely doing rhetorically what their murderers did to them physically. Reports of their murders tell that it wasn't enough for the bloodthirsty terrorists to spray their car with bullets. They had to make sure. They shot a pregnant woman through the stomach. They shot a two year old in a car seat through the head. They shot five helpless people at point blank range. This gives lie to the premise of "settlers." This is a crime of pure hate. Not of politics.
Three years ago Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran explored a cave near where they lived. Instead of an adventure, they met with death. The cave in which their bodies were found was soaked with blood. Charles Krauthammer wrote:

These boys were not targets. They were not deliberately sought out by a terrorist on a mission. The most chilling part of this story is that the boys were merely chanced upon. And then were torn to pieces.

Last year, two Israeli reservists lost their way and strayed into Ramallah, where they were lynched by a frenzied mob. The Palestinians then made up the story that the Israelis were suspected undercover agents.

What could the story be this week? Fourteen-year-old boys are neither spies nor soldiers. Yet they were bludgeoned to death with stones, their blood then dabbed on the walls of the cave.

This is not war. This is not even terrorism. This is bloodlust.

It is savagery so grotesque that it might not have been believed had we not all seen that picture last fall on the cover of Time of the Palestinian, having just beaten to death the two Israeli reservists in Ramallah, exultantly holding out his blood-stained hands to the crowd in a gesture of triumph.

Krauthammer has it right. Jews in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are not being killed over territory; they're being killed for being Jews.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin declared:

"The profound distinction between Israel and its enemies is that if a child is killed by Israel, it is in an act of defense directed at a building where shots were fired at soldiers. In the case of Kobi and Yossi and Shalhevet, the enemy picked out innocent children to destroy them."

Shalhevet Pas, a ten month old girl in Hebron, was killed a few months earlier when an Arab sniper trained the crosshairs of his weapon on her head and pulled the trigger as her parents held her. Her father was also wounded.
The cruelty required to beat two soldiers to death; to beat two teenagers to death; to shoot a bullet into the head of a baby was repeated again this week. And, as Krauthammer noted, this cruelty is a function of hate.

People are not born with bloodlust. They learn it. It is no mystery where the Palestinians have learned it. For years Arafat's mini-police-state has been feeding his people the rawest Jew-hatred since the Third Reich. In television, radio, newspapers, and textbooks, Arafat has created the psychic infrastructure that sustains his endless war on Israel -- and gives us the barbarism in the cave.

"I hate the Israelis," declared Palestinian first lady Suha Arafat only two weeks ago. That hatred is in the air Palestinians breathe. A few days later, Syrian president Bashar Assad -- in the presence of the pope, no less -- accused the Jews of trying "to kill the principle of religions in the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and in the same way with which they tried to kill the Prophet Muhammad." His defense minister then said on television: "When I see a Jew before me, I kill him. If every Arab did this, it would be the end of the Jews."

This is not from crackpots. This is not from the political fringes. This is from the highest level of the leadership among Israel's neighbors.

Keep that up for years, and you have raised a generation prepared -- no, designed -- to bathe in the blood of 14-year-old boys.

Once again we see the fruits of Arafat's corrupt regime. Not a regime to live peacefully with its neighbors but to kill them, sometimes in unspeakable fashion.
The cruelty of shooting two year old Merav at point blank ranger cannot be overlooked. It is not an act of revolution but of hate.
Finally, I cannot imagine the grief that the father David Hatuel feels. Not only did he lose his family, but on a day in a few weeks from now he was to have welcomed a new child. That day will pass and instead of joy he will be bereft. It must be similar to how Chanan Sand felt last year when he dropped a wedding band onto the shroud of Navah Applebaum the day he was to have slipped it onto her finger
Nor can I imagine how he will feel every Sabbath from now on. I also have a two year old girl. When I come home from synagogue she grabs my hand and insists that I dance with her as we sing "Shalom Aleichem." I have no idea how David Hatuel celebrated the finaly Sabbath with his family. That he had no idea that is was the last is even worse. Now those girls dressed in their finest, their smiles and joy exist only in his memory. A day later his family was taken from him by the foul hatred of Palestinian nationalism.
During the week David Hatuel's mourning will be no less. He will go to a school where there were be three students absent. His own daughters.
When I think of him it is impossible not to have tears. May he someday be blessed with comfort.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at May 4, 2004 04:29 AM | TrackBack