https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-08-18/ty-article-opinion/.premium/if-the-settler-riot-in-the-west-bank-shocked-you-so-should-gaza/00000191-6133-d993-a5d7-ebf7cdee0000Why Are Israelis Shocked by a West Bank Settler Riot but Blind to a Massacre in Gaza?
Gideon Levy, Aug 18, 2024 How easy it is to shock Israelis over rioting settlers. That's not us, we had nothing to do with it. They're not even part of Israel. They are the "wild weeds" on the margins of society. It's a fact, everyone is disclaiming any responsibility.
Politicians pipe up in a chorus of condemnations, and even the press puts on a shocked _expression_. Who would have believed it? Media outlets event went to the trouble of reporting the incident. On a really good day, a rioter or two may be detained for one or two hours.
In contrast to the concealment of the army's crimes, the approach to the settlers' crimes stands out. Suddenly, it's permissible to show the victims and condemn the criminals. But the crimes of the settlers pale in comparison to the crimes of the army.
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In Jit, Hawara, Qusra, the South Hebron Hills and the northern part of the Jordan Valley there are indeed people living under the terror of settlers, but compared to the havoc the army is wreaking in Gaza and in the West Bank, the settler riots are but a summer camp. A summer camp of horror, but only of minor dimensions.
The pogrom in Jit is perpetrated by the army on a daily basis, in a much more murderous version, in refugee camps in Tul Karm, Jenin, Nablus and obviously in Gaza. A pogrom every day. But only the settlers elicit shock.
Jit evoked shock, but the killing of 100 displaced people taking shelter in a school in Gaza only evoked a yawn. The shock at settler rioting is forced and despicable. It channels all the repressed feeling of guilt to the margins, shrugging off any responsibility.
When contemplating the unbelievable moral decline Israel has been going through over the last 10 months, one can observe that the army has been responsible for most of the crimes. Even in Jit, if the army had fulfilled its duty, no pogrom would have taken place there.
It knows how to suppress any peaceful protest or Palestinian riot, but stands aside or supports pogroms perpetrated by Jews. It's a policy, not a mishap. It's the intention, not a mistake.
But even when it's clear that the army is to blame for the pogrom in Jit, no one condemns it, because the army is us, and we weren't in Jit; we had no part in the rioting that took place there. We are the beautiful Israel and they are the deranged ones, with their long sidelocks and gigantic kippot. Another tribe, the tribe of Judea. We are from Israel. Our hands are clean.
A man standing next to burnt cars points at the damage in his house, a day after an attack by Jewish settlers on the village of Jit near Nablus in the West Bank, Friday.Credit: Jaafar Ashtiyeh, AFP
But the Sde Teiman base is the army, the human shields used in Gaza are the army, the assassinations are the army. Forty thousand dead are the army, the destruction of Gaza is the army; the cruel roadblocks in the West Bank are the army; the killing of the 3-day-old twins, along with their mother and grandmother, while the father was out obtaining their birth certificate, is the army; the growing use of drones for killing people in the West Bank is the army; the pilots, artillery units, armored units, bulldozers, canine units, they are all the army.
They are our sons; almost anyone walking down a street or driving on the highway is somehow related. They are the ones committing most crimes Israel is responsible for, not the gangsters from Givat Ronen or the stormtroopers from Havat Gilad.
It's precisely the protest camp that is unwilling to see all this. The right melts at the sight of any show of evil inflicted on Palestinians. These fulfill its wish for revenge and bloodthirst. But the protest camp isn't like that.
It is humane and ethical, look how it's shocked by Jit and its companions. This camp not only denies the army's crimes, it continues to worship it. That's where most of its leaders come from. Even the latest hit on the left, Yair Golan, comes from the army.
After the pogrom in Jit, one of the more severe ones, which resulted in the death of an innocent man whose killer will never be appropriately tried, is precisely the time to look at the overall picture. Benjamin Netanyahu is the prime minister, and he's to blame. All settlers violate the law and some of them are potential killers.
But over all of them hangs a dark cloud, covering their actions: the Israel Defense Forces. It is the true head of the criminal pyramid and it is responsible. It is the body we continue to worship, ignoring what it is wreaking.
It consists of our children and its commanders are our guides. No one is prepared to condemn its crimes or to list them. Hats off to the IDF, forever and ever.