Soccer Dad

Gunman kills 8 bacteria in yeshiva

Meryl noted:

The AP managed to spin this one anti-Israel and make it all the Jews’ fault.
The seminar[y] is the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe quarter at the entrance to Jerusalem, a well-known center of Jewish studies identified with the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank. Most of the students are high school age.

Oh, so that makes it justified. They’re settlers.

We see it again in the NY Times coverage of the terrorist outrage:

The yeshiva is a symbol of the national religious strain of Judaism that provides the backbone of the settler movement. After the 1967 war, the national religious movement was the ideological father of the idea of redemption through reclaiming the land. The yeshiva was founded in 1924 by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and it is considered an elite institution, with 400 students. Thursday night the library contained some 80 students, witnesses said.

"Strain?" Isn't that how you describe bacteria? Has the Times been taking its cues from Ahmadinejad?

The Times continues:

Avi Katz, 23, was one of the first volunteers to enter the building as part of a medical help organization that gathers body parts for burial.

He was shaken by the sight. “I’ve seen terrorist acts before, but never like this,” he said, breathing shallowly. “We came to the library and saw two bodies at the entrance on the floor, and it was very bad. There were bodies and Jewish books all over the floor.” He and a colleague tried to save one student’s life until ambulance workers came, he said. “It’s not just the symbolism of the yeshiva,” he said. “They were shot one by one.”

I'll assume that the medical organization is Zaka. But this outrage didn't go unnoticed.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack “in the strongest terms” and said he was alarmed at “the potential for continued acts of violence and terrorism to undermine the political process.” But the Security Council, in an emergency closed-door session, was unable to settle on a similar statement.

Why can't terror be condemned for what it is? Why does it get needlessly conflated with the "political process." If the political process were worth anything, these outrages wouldn't happen at all.

Mercifully the Times didn't try to make Mahmoud Abbas into a good guy here. Noah Pollak nailed some of what was wrong with his mealy mouthed "condemnation."

Abbas is a man in the habit of condemning specific acts of terrorism, but honoring and celebrating terrorism and terrorists generally–especially in Arabic. When George Habash died — the founder of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and an unapologetic celebrator of savagery against Jews — Abbas ordered the PA’s flags to half-mast for three days. Abbas’s state-run television station shows maps of “Palestine” with Israel eradicated, and he refers in speeches intended for domestic consumption to the glories of martyrdom. Abu Mazen has a long way to go before rivaling his predecessor in this kind of doublespeak, but he is certainly headed in the right direction.

But also notice how he couched the condemnation:

“President Mahmoud Abbas condemns the attack in Jerusalem that claimed the lives of many Israelis and he reiterated his condemnation of all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinians or Israelis,” said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat.

"target civilians" "Palestinians or Israelis" Got that? Abbas was condemning this terror attack as much as he condemned Israel's self-defense attacks against terrorists in Gaza last week. Israel's actions, last week, were what the doctor of holocaust denial deemed to be worse than the Holocaust. Of course he didn't really condemn the Qassams aimed at Israeli civilians. They were just "useless provocations."

And Pollak is right to compare Abbas's double talk with that of his mentor, Yasser Arafat. Back in 1988, Charles Krauthammer noted how Arafat rejected terrorism. ( . . . THE BALL'S STILL IN ARAFAT 'S COURT; Washington Post - November 18, 1988)

Story No. 1 is the PLO's "rejection of terrorism." The PLO has renounced terrorism dozens of times. Like the alcoholic who is an expert on giving up drink since he has done it so many times, the PLO has done it again -- and with the same sleight of hand. It used the oldest PLO ploy on the subject, couching any apparent rejection of terrorism in the context of relevant U.N. resolutions defining terrorism. Since these U.N. resolutions say that national liberation movements have the right to acts of "struggle" and "resistance," and since every act of murder and butchery ever committed by the PLO has by (PLO) definition been an act of "struggle" and "resistance," the PLO has therefore never engaged in terror. Nothing to renounce. QED. The Palestinians' rhetorical rejection of terrorism at Algiers was thus both customary and empty. It was certainly not news.

The problem isn't that the terror will upset the peace process; it's that the peace process is premised on good faith of both parties. Time and again the Palestinian side shows its bad faith (like last week when "Moderate Mahmoud' entertained the thought of returning to an armed struggle) and time and again Israel's told to ignore it.

Negotiations ought to be the final piece of reconciliation. If they're not, then they're a tool: either of grievance (I'd better get what I want through negotiation or I'm returning to violence) or of blackmail (You don't agree to give me what I want, I'll stop talking with you).

Israel's leaders and everyone who advises them ought to start considering whether negotiations help reduce tensions, or simply feed them more.

israel, terrorism, merkaz harav.