The story of the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar in Samaria, or, if you insist, the West Bank, should be known to you. If not, then here is a short description of what happened from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
At least one terrorist infiltrated the West Bank settlement of Itamar, southeast of Nablus, late Friday night (11 March) and stabbed to death Udi (36) and Ruth (35) Fogel, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and 3-month-old Hadas.
The killings occurred shortly after 10 p.m., when one or two attackers jumped the fence that surrounds Itamar and broke into the home of Ruth and Udi Fogel. The attackers went from room to room, first stabbing the parents and their 3-month-old baby girl, Hadas. They proceeded to the next room where they killed the two sleeping boys, Elad, 4, and Yoav, 11.
Two other boys – Ro’ie, 8 and Yishai, 2 – were sleeping in another room and were not attacked.
The family’s oldest child, 12- year-old Tamar, was out of the house at the time and alerted neighbors when no one opened the door for her.
I don’t know what your views on Israeli settlement activity in Judea/Samaria are. If you are an anti-Zionist, that’s fine. If you don’t like Jews, then I think you are a bigot, but never mind. If you don’t agree with Israel’s policies in Judea and Samaria, ok, I’m not a big fan myself.
If you dislike Israel and/or Jews and/or Zionists BUT you want peace and you want two peoples to be able to live together despite your dislike of one of them, then please read what I am about to write.
Just to be sure. I don’t care what your politics are or which side you support or who you hate or dislike but I do want you to think about this incident.
I am especially keen that those of you on what’s known as the ‘hard left’ who are very fond of demonising Israel and Israelis read this.
If you are a supporter of Palestine and somehow think that this family deserved this, then I want you to read what I am about to write.
If you think that these actions are a valid form of ‘resistance’, then read this.
If you love life, Israel, Jews, Zionism, humanity in all its forms and with all its terrible faults and contradictions, then I would guess you are already outraged and don’t need to read this; but please spare me a few more minutes of your time.
Look at the picture of 3-month old Hadas Fogel above. Now imagine that you are about to break into her bedroom and find her in her cot. You have a knife, a very sharp knife, in your hand. You are fired up with hate and anger and, no doubt, jihadi passion. Maybe you have seen friends killed by Israelis. Maybe you have been fed hatred of Jews your entire life. Maybe life is hard for you and your family because of Israeli checkpoints and restrictions. Maybe some Jew has torn out your olive trees.
Maybe you have a 3-month old sister or niece or daughter. You love children and babies. They are the future. They are innocent, are they not?
Nevertheless, you find the sleeping baby (and you have already killed her parents whilst her young brothers wait for your knife in another room). Maybe the the baby has woken with the commotion. Maybe she is crying for her dead mother whom you have just slaughtered in her bed, stabbing her many times.
You grab the baby Hadas. You don’t know her name. She is just a Jewish baby. Something inhuman. Less than human. Of less worth than a dog or even a rat.
You have her by the head and you draw your knife across her throat and watch the lifeblood spill out on her pillow and bedclothes.
You do not feel remorse. You feel jubilation. You have committed an heroic deed. You can’t wait to get back home and show them your bloody clothes and your hands still drenched in Jewish blood. But there are still two young boys to despatch. Did one watch as his brother was stabbed to death awaiting his fate? Or were they still sleeping as your knife did its deadly work?
And what do your friends and your parents and your community think of you? Do they alert the police? Do they scream bloody murder?
No. They rejoice. They could not be happier.
When the news reaches Gaza, Hamas hands out sweets/candies to children of a similar age to those just murdered.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas calls Israeli president Netanyahu to express his sorrow at the deed and then continues with his never-ending slanders, blood-libels and dehumanisation of Jews.
No doubt Abbas is happy that Netanyahu has retaliated. Did this retaliation take the form of a massacre of Palestinian innocents? No, it took the form of approving 500 new housing blocks in West Bank ‘settlements’, for which he was condemned by the USA. Another notch is tightened on the rack of Israeli delegitimisation. The assassin has done well.
So, I ask you, you who approve or at least ‘understand’ how such things can happen, or, rather then condemn, reel off a long list of Israeli ‘crimes’ which justify the ‘resistance’, I ask you to explain your moral position. Or maybe you’ve come out with some platitudes about how sorry you are, but…
Yes, it’s that ‘but’ which says it all.
There are no ‘buts’.
Any person who can perform such a depraved act is no person. They are not members of any human race that I can recognise. No-one, however angry, however repressed, however poor and certainly however ‘religious’ can ever, ever, ever justify or minimise or excuse or explain, let alone rejoice, at such an act.
And any people, which wants to take its part in the family of nations, which bases its national aspirations on the demonisation and dehumanisation of another race or nation or group is not, nor deserves the name of, a ‘nation’ or ‘people’.
And before you start to tell me about the atrocities Jews perpetrated against Arabs and the British and bring up Deir Yassin and Gaza and Lebanon and Sabra and Shatila, then read again the sentence above.
All I hear is the deafening silence or mealy-mouthed ‘explanations’ coming from the Arab world and the hard left.
At the Fogel home there is also deafening silence.