Tim King
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing revenge over the deadly attack in an Israeli synagogue Tuesday that left four rabbis and one Israeli police officer dead.
The act is said to have been carried out by two Palestinian cousins. Netanyahu appears to be harnessing the anger as a political opportunity, calling for Israelis to unify against those who committed this “massacre.”
According to Ma’an News Agency, the two cousins were Ghassan Abu Jamal and his cousin, Uday, of East Jerusalem.
Without even leaving time for the dust to settle, Netanyahu had the homes of these men destroyed, a common practice against Palestinians.
Causing all who lived there to suddenly become homeless is clear insight into the thinking of Israel’s PM.
More than a dozen Palestinians were arrested.
Exactly two Palestinians are being blamed for this deadly event, yet Israel’s leading warhawk wants to target, essentially, the entire Palestinian population.
Are races of people and governments responsible for the acts of individual people?
This hardly seems the case. The truth is that no entity has claimed responsibility for the deadly synagogue attack and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas specifically condemned the killings.
Netanyahu, who is directly responsible for full-scale attacks against Palestinian civilians: the 2008/2009 “Operation Cast Lead” that initially targeted a police academy graduation, then went on to destroy dozens of schools and hospitals, leaving more than 1,400 people dead, and this year’s “Operation Protective Edge,” which saw 2,192 Palestinians killed, among them 1,523 civilians, which included 519 children, 70% of whom were under the age of 12, is blaming both Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, the Islamic movement, and the Palestinian Authority.
Netanyahu’s words will lead to significant misery for Palestinians who are already subjected to endless checkpoints, constant harassment, and attacks by Israeli military forces. At the same time, the Palestinian Muslims and Christians are not allowed to drive on “Jewish only” roads or live in “Jewish only” settlements.
It is reported that three of the rabbis killed in Tuesday’s synagogue attack are Israeli-American citizens. This leads to the main point of my article: the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.
Those who are feeling their hate mechanisms kick into gear over this latest attack need to understand that targeting people inside of religious buildings during time of prayer in this part of the world is nothing new, nor is it unique to either particular side.
The 25 February 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, also known as the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, and the “Hebron massacre,” was a deadly mass murder committed by none other than a US-Israeli citizen named Baruch Goldstein.
This gun wielding menace left shot 29 worshippers to death, and wounded 125.
While former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin called Goldstein a “degenerate murderer” and “…a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism,” it is also true that hardcore Israeli settlers in al-Khalil (Hebron) have publicly claimed that the murderer Goldstein is a hero, and his deadly attack against unarmed people is viewed as an act of martyrdom.
The Palestinian people took to the streets in protest and within the first 48 hours, Israeli troops killed 19 of them.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Baruch Goldstein was associated with an anti-Arab hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
After moving to Israel, he was drafted into the Israeli military, where this would-be murderer served as a doctor.
Offering insight into his possible “insanity,” are press reports at the time that this doctor would not treat an Arab person if they were in need of medical care.
He even refused to treat Arab soldiers serving in the military. Later, Goldstein became associated with Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was assassinated in 1990.
Goldstein reportedly swore that he would personally avenge the killing of Kahane.
This likely was the direct motive for the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre.
In light of that information, it seems hardly possible that Goldstein simply lapsed into a state of insanity. Instead, he cleverly and deliberately chose to murder a large number of Muslim people in response to the killing of a single Israeli man.
That is, after all, how things work in Occupied Palestine.
If one Israeli citizen is killed, dozens of Palestinians are targeted.
The terrorist label is one that should be worn boldly by the Israeli regime, yet they maintain that all who do not condone and support the illegal occupation of Palestine are “terrorists.”
Most of the world sharply disagrees with Israel’s hot-tempered warring tactics, yet there will be more outcry by Western media over this event than the murders of any Palestinians.
They are, thanks to Netanyahu, effectively dehumanized to the populations of the world’s most prosperous nations.
The recent attack against four rabbis and an Israeli police officer is an outrage, but it is too soon to even know exactly what happened, and nearly impossible to gain a clear, unbiased look at the deceased attackers or the event itself, in Western or Israeli press.
Instead you hear this referred to as “the latest act of violence” and the word “terrorist” is used over and over to further dehumanize these alleged attackers.
