Evil begets evil: The Jerusalem synagogue tragedy

The latest tragic killings and injuries, this time in the Jerusalem synagogue, remind us once again of our responsibility to “stay human” as Mazin Qumsiyeh puts it.

In Jerusalem on 4 September 1997, a 13-year-old girl, Smadar Elhanan, was killed in a suicide attack. Far from being consumed by hatred, Smadar's parents, Nurit and Rami Elhanan, fighting for peace and justice, campaign for an end to Israeli military occupation of Palestine. Alexandra Williams published in If Americans Knew, quotes Smadar's mother Nurit: “Israel is becoming a graveyard of children. The Holy Land is being turned into a wasteland.” Her husband Rami adds: “Our daughter was killed because of the terror of Israeli occupation. Every innocent victim from both sides is a victim of the occupation. The occupation is the cancer feeding Palestinian terror.” Speaking of the Israeli military's response to suicide bombings that led to the deaths of five Palestinian children in one day, Rami said: “Palestinians grieve and cry exactly the same way as Israelis do. We all have the same blood.” Rami, whose father, an Auschwitz survivor who lost his grandparents, aunts and uncles in the Holocaust, reached out: “We started to look for contact with people like us from the other side. We now have many Palestinian friends, parents who have lost children too.”

Smadar's death drove her uncle, Miko Peled, to seek answers to questions that had been building in his mind – questions regarding the history and origins of the Israeli/Palestinian relationship and the seemingly inevitable hostility and violence that characterised it. Miko (who served as a paratrooper in the Israeli Army) is the son of a Zionist General, and his grandfather signed Israel's unilateral “Declaration of Independence”. Miko Peled travelled to the West Bank and discovered for himself the steadfast humanity of a people living for decades under brutal and discriminatory military rule. He came to realise the irrationality of the Zionist ideology that drives Israel's behaviour. What stands out is the amazing extent of Palestinian forbearance living under what would be for us intolerable conditions. Palestinian homes are subjected to invasion night and day; many homes are simply demolished and there is constant settler violence and racist abuse. Add to that, the heartbreaking settler destruction of Palestinian olive trees, aided abetted by the Israeli Army, and there is certainly cause for bitterness and despair.

The occupation is profitable for Israel. Israeli Army roadblocks hamper the distribution of Palestinian farm produce, making it increasingly uneconomic so that it cannot compete with Israeli imports. Also profitable but much more sinister is the advantage Israel takes of its guinea pig, captive Palestinians in the development of population control methods and technology. In most countries civilians are, quite sensibly, allowed nowhere near military exercises and the defence forces conduct them in suitably safe areas, well away from civilians. Yet Israel insists on driving Palestinian families from their homes in order to conduct its military exercises. United States police visit Israel to learn what is described as "cutting-edge policing strategies and technologies." According to the Jewish United Fund (JUF), a US delegation, led by Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, recently attended the Third International Homeland Security Conference in Tel Aviv. The United States is not the only country that is learning from Israel. Agencies from over 60 nations sent representatives to the security conference in the Israeli capital, according to the JUF.

Evil begets evil. Violence against innocent civilians is always immoral and unacceptable yet there is a world of difference between those who, having no control over their destiny, lose their reason – and the powerful, privileged, political classes that wield the reins of immense power with such cold and merciless calculation.

ENDS

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