William R. Polk
With the killing of three Israeli teen-agers and the apparent revenge murder of a Palestinian youth — possibly burned to death — the hatred between Israelis and Palestinian has reached a new level of obscenity, and it looks like it will get worse. Much worse.
The major Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote in an editorial: “There are no words to describe the horror allegedly done by six Jews to Mohammed Abu Khdeir of Shoafat. Although a gag order bars publication of details of the terrible murder and the identities of its alleged perpetrators, the account of Abu Khdeir’s family – according to which the boy was burned alive – would horrify any mortal.
“Anyone who is not satisfied with this description, can view the horror movie in which members of Israel’s Border Police are seen brutally beating Tariq Abu Khdeir, the murder victim’s 15-year-old cousin.”
Or, as Israeli columnist Gordon Levy wroteabout the recent atrocities: “The youths of the Jewish state are attacking Palestinians in the streets of Jerusalem, just like gentile youths used to attack Jews in the streets of Europe. The Israelis of the Jewish state are rampaging on social networks, displaying hatred and a lust for revenge, unprecedented in its diabolic scope. These are the children of the nationalistic and racist generation — Netanyahu’s offspring.
“For five years now, they have been hearing nothing but incitement, scaremongering and supremacy over Arabs from this generation’s true instructor, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Not one humane word, no commiseration or equal treatment. They grew up with the provocative demand for recognition of Israel as a ‘Jewish state,’ and they drew the inevitable conclusions.”