Israel's fear of abandoning Jewish morality will backfire

Four days after a Palestinian teenager was kidnapped outside of an East Jerusalem mosque and burned alive in a forest nearby, the Shin Bet revealed partial details of its investigation: Six Israeli Jews believed to belong to an ad-hoc extremist group have been arrested.

A cloud of secrecy has hovered over the police investigation, but suspicions that Jewish rightists were behind the murder was clear from the start, in both the Israeli and Palestinian public. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself condemned the murder immediately after on the basis of it having been the act of Jewish extremists, even as a strict gag order kept the details of the probe undercover.

Rumors began flying as the police kept mum that 16-year-old Mohammed Abu-Khdeir was killed by members of his own family over unsubstantiated claims that he was a homosexual, or by a rival clan for some yet-to-be-determined settling of debts. The teenager's family insisted that this was not an honor killing and that their son was a good student with no enemies. The false claims continued to circulate, with the Israeli right-wing eager to prove to themselves and to others that Jews could not be behind such a heinous crime.

There was little doubt that this was the work of Jewish terrorists. The abduction was carried out less than 12 hours after the three Israeli teenagers abducted and murdered three weeks before were laid to rest and amidst rampant demonstrations of Israeli Jews in Jerusalem calling for blood and death to the Arabs.

The gag order was sealed again Sunday just hours after the initial details of the investigation were revealed, at the behest of the Shin Bet, which is holding the Jewish suspects in custody. One small piece of information managed to filter through before the file was removed from public information, however: that the same six suspects were linked to the abduction attempt of a 9-year-old boy in the same East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shoafat just a day before Abu Kheidar's kidnap and grisly murder.

Netanyahu again condemned the murder, in his first press conference in more than two years. "Israel does not differentiate between terror," Netanyahu said, vowing to crack down on Jewish extremists with the same vigorousness Israel uses against Palestinians. "As I condemn the calls of death to Arabs, I condemn calls of death to Jews." In the same breath, he followed by declaring that what differentiates Israel from its neighbors is that the latter welcomes murderers and terrorists and names streets and squares after them.

Netanyahu's weakened condemnation, to play into the Israeli sentiment that Jews could not be responsible for such an act, were followed by a harsher and more surprising remark by his right-wing Economy Minister, Naftali Bennett, who proposed subjecting Jewish terrorists to the same legal retributions accorded to Palestinians convicted of security offenses.

The prime minister's quick clarification of Jews' moral superiority will do little to douse the flames engulfing Israel, nor will the gag order reinstated on the investigation, leaving open conspiracy theories and unsettled suspicions.



Arab rioters have taken to the streets of Israel, from Wadi Ara to the highways leading to wealthy suburbs in both north and south, hurling firebombs and stones, and lighting tires aflame. Israel's highways are beginning to look like the West Bank or East Jerusalem. The riots subsided briefly on Sunday morning and resumed at full force on Sunday evening, following news of the arrest. Police were forced to shut down major thoroughfares over the course of the demonstration, as the rioters targeted cars entering the Jewish neighborhoods. Nearly 200 demonstrators were arrested in a single day of clashes.

Jewish claims to moral superiority must not be taken at face value. Extremists are capable of and have carried out far more extensive massacres over the course of Israel's recent history. Baruch Goldstein's murder of 29 Palestinians in Hebron is the most well-known of these attacks, but many other examples exist: the Bat Ayin underground's plan to wipe out a Palestinian girls' school, deserted soldier Eden Natan-Zada's murder of four innocent Arab passengers on a bus in Shfaram, contractor Asher Weisgan's targeted shootout of four of his Palestinian workers, the arson of a home in Sinjil which trapped and killed an entire Palestinian family.

The Israeli Arab demonstrations and concurrent clashes with police have drawn the war between Jews and Arab across the Green Line, into the affluent suburbs of secular Israel. Their riots were preceded by a venomous popular campaign among right-wing Israelis – not even those considered extreme - calling for bloody revenge over the murder of the three Israeli teens. What will stop these Jewish revenge-seekers from countering their Arab counterparts in Israel in a bloody face-off?

Those who are capable of burning a teenager alive are capable of taking up arms against their enemy masses in the Israeli Arab sector. The Israeli government, however, is not capable of issuing a firm declaration without forgiving society for its Jewish morality in comparison with its neighbors and the "lone" extremists responsible for these attacks.

Unless Netanyahu acts on his pledge of cracking down on the right-wing violence, his claims of Jewish superiority will backfire and leave Israel not only in further isolation but in a bloody sectarian war.

Israel should take West Bank kidnapping as chance for peace, not war

Police evacuating Arabs from riots in Jerusalem / Olivier Fittousi, Haaretz

Soon after the three kidnapped teens were laid to rest side-by-side in an emotional funeral attended by tens of thousands of mourners, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet of senior ministers convened for the second time in 24 hours to determine its response to the attack and to the barrage of rockets that have been lobbied at southern Israel in the weeks that followed.

Just a few kilometers away, in the center of Jerusalem, dozens of right-wing Israelis gathered not for a vigil, but to cast their anger and frustration on any Palestinian they could find. They rampaged through the streets shouting racist slogans, hurling rocks and firing pepper spray, demanding "revenge" and death to the Arabs.

Five Palestinians were wounded and some 50 rioters were detained. The mob on Tuesday night carried the spirit of their comrades who chose a similar course of action the evening before, when it emerged that security forces has found the boys' bodies, 19 days after they were whisked away from a hitchhiking stand in the West Bank.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu and his defense minister, Moshe Ya'alon, lay out to the public the three tasks facing Israel's defense establishment: first, to find the abductors and all accomplices; second to destroy Hamas' infrastructure and membership in the West Bank; and third, "to expand the operation as far as required" to wipe out the military capabilities of the ruling Islamist organization in the Gaza Strip.

"We will not rest and we will not relax until we have reached every last one of them. It doesn't matter where they try to hide. We will reach them all," Netanyahu said.

Despite Netanyahu's harsh words, the cabinet is torn on how to respond, particularly on whether to turn its energies also on Gaza rather than just focusing its search on Hamas in the West Bank. The majority in cabinet fears that a violent circle will result in an all-out war, which both sides are eager to avoid.

Israel has struck Gaza targets by the dozens in the last few weeks, in response to the near hundred rockets fired at Israel, with the goal of reaching Hamas' operational ranks in the coastal territory.

Hamas is used to these reprisals, however, and most of its senior commanders have already taken refuge underground. The only exposed targets at this point are the low-level militants doing the footwork in Gaza and the weapons warehouses they man.

Ya'alon, for his part, while showing caution on the military front, is keeping up his image as a shoot-from-the-hip right-wing politician, proposing that a new settlement be created in response to the kidnapping in memory of the three teens. His suggestion is no less provocative than the activities of the vigilante rightists roaming the streets of Jerusalem seeking revenge with their eyes closed.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is considering its next move just as carefully. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held out an olive branch in vulnerable hands three weeks ago when he told a forum of Arab foreign ministers, in their native language at a summit in Jeddah, that he condemned the kidnapping and resolved to find the perpetrators.

Abbas plans to approach the international community in a plea to halt Israeli military moves, fearing the domino effect it will create: a popular uprising, a third intifada, and a renewal of unrest in the West Bank that hasn't been felt in nearly a decade.

Hundreds of homes have been overturned and nearly 500 Palestinians have been arrested since Israel embarked on its operation to find the boys and their kidnappers. Palestinians will not tolerate the overnight raids and incursions much longer; the majority, unaffiliated with Hamas, wants to live in a state of stability, to escape the sense of occupation, without fear for family, property and peace of mind.

The defense establishment must focus on pinpointing the terrorists and their accomplices, but need not turn the West Bank upside down in its search – and most certainly should not open a wide-scale operation in the Gaza Strip. Such a move will only escalate enmity on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

More air strikes on Gaza will be met with multiple rocket barrages on the south; extensive raids in the West Bank will find its match with a populist response from angry young Palestinians; that uprising will spur further violence from the right-wing Israeli extremists. And so forth and so forth. There will be no end to the cycle.

The deadline for renewing peace talks expired in late April, but such dates are flexible; Israel and the Palestinians have been going at this process for 21 years. Israel should take the opportunity to see Abbas and his Palestinian Authority as a partner for peace, and together form a true partnership to wipe out the extremism within both Israel and the West Bank.

Israel is intent on destroying Abbas' unity agreement with Hamas. Attacking the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will only strengthen their fraternity. Israel now has the chance to fortify a bond with Abbas that will ensure security on both sides of the Jordan River, for the Israelis and the Palestinians on each side. Abbas has shown he is ready. Netanyahu must do the same.