Bulldozer Attack in Jerusalem: “He tried to run over anything that moves” July 2, 2008

The Jerusalem Post today breaks the heart-wrenching news: three people were killed and 66 more wounded (1 moderately, the rest “lightly”) when a bulldozer-driving terrorist, 30-year-old Husam Taysir Dwayat from “Southeast Jerusalem” plowed through downtown Jerusalem. His rampage would crush six cars and overturn others, and would demolish a bus in its wake, and would end upon his being killed by a quick-thinking IDF soldier:

Three people were killed and 66 were wounded - one moderately and the rest lightly - on Wednesday afternoon when a bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem.

A half-dozen cars were flattened and others were overturned by the Caterpillar vehicle. A bus was also overturned, and another bus was heavily damaged. The attack, at the junction of Jaffa Road and Sarei Yisrael St., set off a panic in the area and left a large swath of damage in the heart of the capital. Traffic was halted, and hundreds of people fled through the streets in panic as medics treated the wounded.

A car was dragged several meters by the bulldozer before being crushed under the vehicle. A baby was pulled out by a passerby before the vehicle was crushed, with the child’s mother still inside.

The rampage would come to an end at the hands of Moshe Plesser and Eli Mizrahi — Plesser only being 18 years of age at the time — who would shoot a combined five rounds at Dwayat, killing him:

As he began running towards the bulldozer, Plesser said that he shouted out to onlookers for a gun. Together with another civilian, Plesser climbed aboard the bulldozer and began wrestling with the driver. “At one point he [the driver] yelled out “Allah Akhbar” [God is great] and stepped on the gas pedal,” Plesser recalled. “I drew the weapon of the civilian who was with me and shot the driver three times in the head. I think I did what is expected from every soldier and citizen.”

Seconds later, a police officer, Eli Mizrahi, climbed aboard the bulldozer and shot the terrorist again, killing him.

…The policeman, Mizrahi, later told reporters at the scene that he had acted “precisely as we were taught to do.”

Mizrahi said he had been on duty with his partner nearby when word of the attack came through and he sped to the scene on his motorbike. He saw a trail of smashed and crushed cars and wounded pedestrians, he said, cocked his gun and dashed toward the bulldozer in which the perpetrator was driving.

An armed Israeli civilian fired first, Mizrahi said, referring to Plesser, but the tractor was still moving, “crushing a car and heading towards more civilians.”

So Mizrahi climbed up to the driver’s cab. “I fired twice. And he was neutralized.”

Ironically, Plesser is the brother-in-law of of Capt. David Shapira, the IDF officer who killed the terrorist who went on a shooting rampage at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in March.

Three organizations claimed responsibility for the bulldozer attack - Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the militant armed wing of the Fatah movement, the Galilee Freedom Battalion, suspected of being “affiliated with Hezbollah”, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Besides the usual outrage at the horrible loss of life, and my heart going out to my fellow Jews who died in the Holy City — here’s why I feel personally played out, betrayed almost, by this particular terror attack: (more…)

Beitar Illit: Acid Spilled on 14-Year Old? June 5, 2008

A new disturbing word has apparently entered at least a few Yiddish speakers’ vernacular: טאליבאניסט’ן (talibanisten — accent on the next-to-last syllable), “the Taliban”, to describe the new radical, violent charedizealots who have no problems terrorizing and injuring and maiming women in the most audacious of places.

Please, someone, someone tell me when it has finally gone too far.

YNet brings the lamentable story of that which should have never taken place:

A 14-year-old girl from Beitar Illite was taken to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem after an unknown person spilled acid on her face, legs and stomach, causing light burn wounds.

The act has been attributed to a representative of the so-called ‘modesty guard’ in this town where religious and secular residents are increasingly at bitter odds.

Right there. The leader line — and I rarely praise Neta Sela, whose charedi “exposé” articles can often border on anti-haredi prejudice — says it all. A 14-year-old girl was rushed off to a hospital in the closest major city because someone spilled acid on her face. The graphic on the Ynet article — of the girl with chemically burned, wrinkled eyelids — even if it is a stock photo, is most disturbing. One can only imagine the trauma this girl is enduring, and the most skilled plastic surgeon’s most precise laser can not make the slightest impact on the deep psychological scars this girl must have.

MDA received the call just before midnight on Wednesday and paramedic Dror Eini who arrived on the scene to treat the girl also managed to calm her down enough so she could explain what had happened. Eini told Ynet that “the modesty guards have been threatening her for quite some time.” According to the paramedic the focus of the threats has largely been the victim’s 18-year-old sister and some suspect the attacker mistook the younger girl’s identity for that of her older sister’s.

Eini said the teenager was in a difficult emotional state: “She cried the whole way to the hospital, partly because she was in pain but mostly because she was terrified.” According to Eini at the time of her attack the girl had been wearing loose-fitting long pants and a short-sleeved shirt.

“If she would have been wearing the same thing in Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv, she would not have stuck out in any way,” he added.

An ultra-Orthodox teen from Beitar Illite who is in contact with the girl’s family spoke with her sister who described the incident. According to the boy, the attacker stopped the girl and first asked her for directions. Then, after confirming her surname, he spilled a bottle of acid on her.

I don’t know what else I can say. This actually makes the Meah Shearim spate of bleach-throwing incidents almost pale in comparison — whereas, in Meah Shearim, women were only physically injured as an unintended upshot of the attempts to ruin what were perceived as immodest clothes, here, a 14-year-old girl had acid spilled in her face. Naomi Regan, who was beaten on a mehadrin bus in Jerusalem in a chillul Hashem of cosmic proportions, was an adult — who could at least attempt to fight back — at the time of her brutal attack. This was a 14-year-old girl who had acid spilled in her face solely because of her last name.

Of course, and rightfully so, people in the charedi world, both in America and Israel, are calling for this man to be found and punished.

Punished? Were there the means to do so, I think he should be deported. The mindset — the values — that would propel one, in the name of modesty, to throw acid in a teenage girl’s face are as distinctly un-Jewish as that of any missionary or white supremacist. And if not this attacker, then whoever it was that put it in his mind to do such a thing. If this is how the Beitar Illit modesty patrol is operating, it is time for a Rabbinical Court — and if not a beit din, then the police — to completely revamp it.

This can not be allowed to continue for even another moment — because, remember, this attacker wasn’t targeting her.

He was looking for her sister.

And now one can only wonder what will happen to her if this organization seeks reprisal for this first attacker’s (G-d willing) imminent arrest, or if nothing happens, and the attacker goes out with another bottle of acid to “ask for directions” again.

Jewish-Muslim Unity… in Kuwait’s Al-Watan! March 11, 2008

It’s about damn time. Baruch Hashem and AlhamduliLl-h for Abdallah Al-Hadlaq.

Writing for the Kuwaiti Al-Watan newspaper, Mr. Al-Hadlaq wrote a scathing opinion piece (Arabic) condemning the “terrorism” of Hamas and Hezbollah in last week’s massacre at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem. Mr. Al-Hadlaq, among other things, calls the attack “a barbaric murder of eight children who were engaged in religious study” and says that the “odious and inhuman terror attack exemplifies the extremist and inhuman path of the terror organizations Hamas and Hizbullah.”

Indeed, as the Jerusalem Post notes:

The writer goes on to assert that “the terror attack must prompt the free world to comprehend the magnitude of terrorism and its threats and to realize that a clear and unequivocal stance must be assumed against it. There can be no negotiations with terrorism that indiscriminately aims itself at students, women and babies without any consideration for the means and the targets.”

Contrasting the terror attack with the IDF’s operations in the Gaza Strip, the writer explains that “there is no link between a murderous terrorist act and the inadvertent killing of civilians in response to the firing of rockets by Hamas.”

The piece presented a stark contrast to the main current in the Arab press, which presented almost sweeping praise for the “heroic operation.”

The Google-translated version (which I’m sure does not do the original Arabic piece justice) shows Mr. Al-Hadlaq referring numerous times to Hamas as a terrorist organization, and speaking of the incident as ” الهجوم الارهابي /al’hajoum al’irhabi” — the terrorist attack carried out by the “evil Alliance” of Hamas and Hezbollah.

(On the other hand, here’s a contrasting opinion on Hamas from a local chapter of an American organization.)

Scathing criticism of Hamas — هجمات الارهابي (hajmaat al’irhabi), the terrorist organization — and calling terrorism for what it is — in defense of murdered innocent Jews engaged in the service of G-d. At least one person is standing up for human life — indiscriminately — in the face of a pro-Hamas media deluge.

A brilliant display of unity. Well done, Mr. Al-Hadlaq, and well done, Al-Watan. Kudos. May the anti-terrorist voices only multiply exponentially throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and the world as a whole.

Jewish Women of the Hijab and Burqa II March 10, 2008

“Muslim women are imitating Jews” — “M” of Beit Shemesh, follower of the new ultra-modest “sal” style

I was walking down 13th Avenue in Brooklyn’s Hasidic neighborhood of Boro Park a few weeks ago, and I saw a woman walking down the street decked out in a hijab and an abaya.

My first thought was that she was an observant Muslim woman — there is no shortage of hijabi women in Brooklyn — but her Hasidic female walking companion and her shopping bags made me realize she was Jewish. My realization of her Jewishness was followed soon by a sense of anxiety.

“Please tell me this woman is Persian, please let this woman be Persian”, I muttered under my breath as the woman approached. Many Iranian Jews in America continue to wear the clothing of their homeland, with some older Jewish women retaining the chadors they had worn in Iran. As she approached, I could tell by her accent — the woman was Hasidic and she was apparently a follower of the hijab and abaya-advocating movement of ultra-Orthodox women taking hold in Israel.

“They’re here,” I thought to myself. “They’re here in Boro Park.”

Friday’s Times Online featured a story about the Jewish women of the veil, and profiled “Sarah” and “M”, two of now 100 women in Beit Shemesh who have begun to go about fully veiled. “M” tells of how her first encounter with a woman in a hijab sal was at the Western Wall in Jerusalem:

“I saw a woman who looked like an Arab and I was scared. I got near her, to try to determine why she was there, and saw that she was praying in Hebrew. I began to talk to her and became curious and then attended her classes,” she said.

The woman M met that day was a religious instructor in Beit Shemesh, and the founder of the sal style. “We have been criticised by so many in the community who see what we are doing as the opposite of Jewish law. Many women have stopped wearing the sal because of pressure from their husbands or rabbis,” said M, who adds that her family persuaded her to stop wearing the garment.

“Muslim women are imitating Jews to try to gain God’s favour with modesty. The truth is that the women of Israel are lessening in God’s eyes because the Arabs are more modest in dress. If the Jews want to conquer the Arabs in this land they must enhance their modesty,” added M, who covered her face for over a year, but currently wears just a loose cloak over her garments.

One hijab-wearing self-described “Conservative Jew” talks about how she has endured difficulties since taking on hijab and jilbab.

I can’t think that this is happening in a vacuum. One commenter on the charedi newswire Vos Iz Neias implied that the same person who had rocks thrown on 13th Avenue at an “immodest store” in January was behind the recent concert ban.

Are we really witnessing the beginning of the ultra-radicalization of Orthodox Judaism? And if we are, what effect will this have on already-fragmented American Jewry? How will this impact those of us who have never had such a phenomenon impact them directly? The concert ban, as was shown, was just a recycled one from the charedi community in Jerusalem — how many more things will be imported from Meah Shearim and Beit Shemesh?

Moshiach. Now.

“The floors are littered with holy books covered in blood” March 7, 2008

Only the most accomplished linguist could properly strike a phrase to accurately describe the carnage which occurred in Jerusalem’s Merkaz HaRav yeshiva today. Two Hezbollah-affiliated terrorists from the “Galilee Freedom Battalion” dressed as charedi Orthodox Jews, entered the yeshiva and one opened fire, showering the library with 500-600 bullets.
“The whole building looked like a slaughterhouse. The floor was covered in blood. The students were in class at the time of the attack…”
“The floors are littered with holy books covered in blood.”
– Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, ZAK”A rescue service
When it was over, 8 yeshiva students would be dead, another minyan of ten injured, and the two terrorists dead at the hands of a well-prepared yeshiva student, Yitzchak Dadon, armed with nothing but a rifle and a good vantage point.

Here’s why this story is so particularly disturbing to me — to the point of hysteria — a murder in a place of Torah scholarship says something more horrifying than anything which could happen on a bus.

It is written in Jewish tradition that the Melaveh Malkah meal, eaten by observant Jews at the conclusion of Shabbat, is done in honor of King David, who died on Saturday night, Jewish tradition teaches. It is written that King David knew that he had been decreed to have a short life span (only 70 years, borrowed from Adam’s life, who was supposed to live 1000 years), and that he would die at the conclusion of Shabbat, and it was for this reason that every Saturday night he would celebrate G-d’s keeping him alive by honoring the Shabbat one last time.

However, during the Shabbat, he would still take his own spiritual precautions just to be safe. He would engage exclusively in the study of Torah — because he knew the Torah would protect him from Death. Once, the angel sent to take King David’s soul was exasperated — he knew that he could do nothing while King David was engaged in the study of Torah — and decided to make a noise outside to catch King David off guard. The interruption of study was long enough for him to be able to take King David’s soul, and it was then that he died.

Torah is supposed to protect people. People aren’t supposed to die while holding their volumes of Talmud in their hands. “Holy books covered in blood”? How does this happen? Why isn’t the Torah protecting us?

Stories like this shake me to my core — things like this are supposed to be metaphysical impossibilities. In yeshiva they would tell us stories of how during Gulf War I, one of the most righteous heads of yeshivas would sit on the roof of the yeshiva and learn Torah continuously in hopes that the merit of their learning would protect the students, and those students would be proudly telling these stories, alive at Shabbos tables all over Brooklyn.

Forget the security — metaphysically, how could a terrorist walk into a room full of volumes and volumes of Torah and shoot down 8 people who dedicated a year of their lives to learning them? On the spiritual plane, what breach in our collective soul’s “security fence” was exploited to facilitate such death?

Israel is not Canada, is not Switzerland, is not Taiwan. Its security is not solely in the hands of its military and paramilitary forces, as it is written in Deuteronomy 11, Israel is “a land which the L-rd, your G-d, looks after; His eyes are upon it continually”. When something like this happens in a place of Torah scholarship in the holy city of Jerusalem, when yeshiva guys dedicated to Torah learning spill their lifeblood over the text of Gemara they were just learning, when a room full of prayers requesting life go so pungently replied to with a sharp “no” (on the physical plane) — then one who believes in G-d takes pause.

Hezbollah can not be the only reason this happened — though their murderous evil will be paid back to them by G-d eventually (Mishnah). We must put our minds, hearts, and souls into the spiritual reconnaissance mission we have been called upon — to find out where our “security breach” is, repair it, and come back united in tikkun, because apparently we are in dire straits.

“The Torah, Israel, and the Holy One, Blessed be He are One.” If the Torah is not protecting members of the nation of Israel IN Israel, what does that say?

We must ask ourselves “how did this happen” and prevent, both physically and spiritually, such carnage from ever happening again.

Will McCain Reject? Will Jews Accept? March 5, 2008

The American Prospect clued me into a little piece of GOP double-talk and double standards that I didn’t know about during this primary campaign.

Howard Dean, DNC Chair, went after John McCain on CNN Late Edition this past Sunday for not having come out as saying he “rejected and denounced” the vehemently anti-Catholic pastor John Hagee after Hagee endorsed him — the way Obama was asked to do (and complied in flying colors) with the anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas was called in to defend her fellow party member, and the transcript shows just how hypocritical this really is:

BLITZER: But here’s the point that the critics are making right now, and those Catholics who are urging John McCain to reject Pastor Hagee. Louis Farrakhan has called Judaism “a gutter religion.”

Hagee has suggested, at least according to the Catholic League president — we’ve done some checking of our own – he said that Catholicism is “a great whore and a false cult system.” That sounds very, very damning, Senator.

HUTCHISON: Well, John McCain has said he doesn’t agree with that.

BLITZER: But is he ready to embrace someone who calls the Catholic religion “a great whore?”

HUTCHISON: Well, I think John McCain’s statement that he put out from the campaign, after the question was raised, speaks for itself. And I think that, many times, people who endorse someone are not in total agreement with them on every issue. That’s the case with most people. I think this is turning into a political attack, rather than anything that’s substantive.

What did this chick just say? “That’s the case with most people”?

And let’s not for a second confuse this endorsement with the wholly unsolicited and unwanted Farrakhan endorsement Obama had the unfortunate displeasure of having to deal with. As recently as this past weekend, McCain was making decisively pro-Hagee statements, saying:

I am very proud of the Pastor John Hagee’s spiritual leadership to thousands of people and I am proud of his commitment to the independence and the freedom of the state of Israel. That does not mean that I support or endorse or agree with some of the things that Pastor John Hagee might have said or positions that he may have taken on other issues.

Here’s how John Hagee introduced John McCain on his “No Surrender” tour, featured on the John McCain.com site:

Yeah, McCain totally doesn’t want Hagee’s support.  Hagee has since amended his anti-Catholic statements, which included his calling the church the “anti-Christ” (video), but the Catholic League is not buying it, saying “no amount of spin” can change “reality”. (Hagee also said that he believes that the anti-Christ will be the head of the European Union.) McCain initially said that he was “very honored”‘ by Hagee’s endorsement.Former GOP candidate Mike Huckabee also appeared, however, at Hagee’s church, so apparently McCain is not the only GOPer to seek an endorsement from the man who said:

“Adolf Hitler attended a Catholic school as a child and heard all the fiery anti-Semitic rantings from Chrysostom to Martin Luther.”

“Pope Pius XII, called by historians ‘Hitler’s Pope,’ joined Hitler in the infamous Concordat of Collaboration, which turned the youth of Germany over to Nazism, and the churches became the stage background…To those Christians who believe that Jewish hearts will be warmed by the sight of the cross, please be informed—to them it’s an electric chair…”

And let’s not forget about Hagee’s racist slurs. The Emerging Minds blog (among others) points out a San Antonio Express-News article from 1996 which mentions Hagee meeting with black ministers about running a “slave sale” fundraiser. Its advertising promised “[s]lavery in America is returning to Cornerstone”. And let’s not forget the sexism:

“Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

Racist, sexist, anti-Catholic, wholly insensitive, Islamophobic and anti-Arab.

A man John McCain is “honored” to be endorsed by.  Will McCain step up and “reject and denounce” his prejudiced endorsers the way Obama did?  Or will GOP supporters just have to wonder precisely how much of Pastor Hagee’s “gospel” McCain agrees with?

Jewish Women of the Hijab and Burqa February 7, 2008

Jewish women across Israel are joining what more and more Orthodox Jews are seeing as an alarming social trend. “Dozens of” charedi Orthodox women, under the tutelage of one Rebbetzin Bruria Keren in Ramat Beit Shemesh are eschewing their traditional covered wigs in favor of burqas, hijabs, and abayas/jilbab.

I first wrote about this on Jewlicious, when I first read the Muqata translation of the Ha’aretz piece which introduced me to this sect of ultra-modest women, one of whom “show[s her] children” to prove “[she’s] not…Arab” at security checkpoints, because she doesn’t want “men seeing [her] ID.” The story was run in the British Independent and Jewish Chronicle, and blogged about throughout the blogosphere. I echoed the same sentiments as MomInIsrael, that this was alarming and shocking — and I prayed that it never catch on.

And then I saw this. Perhaps my blog-prayer was in vain, after all.
(more…)

CEO: Orthodox Jews Are “Cancer” To Be “Excised” December 12, 2007

Here’s one to warm your spirits — because I know stories like this always fill me with joy.

Just lovely. Yeah, this one from Globes Online is a real winner:

Zohar Zisapel: Yeshiva students arrangement is a cancer: “The current situation is the result of the political activism of the haredim.”

Diana Bahur-Nir 10 Dec 07 13:10

“When Ben Gurion made his arrangement with the haredim (ultra-orthodox), he saw only a few dozen yeshiva students. Today, this has developed into a cancerous growth that must be excised so that it does not become even more malignant,” said RAD Data Communications Ltd. founder and chairman Zohar Zisapel at the “Israel’s wasted human capital” panel at the “Globes” Israel Business Conference 2007 yesterday.

Zisapel added, “We must revert to the original arrangement, and set a quota of a few dozen outstanding yeshiva students, for whom the Torah is their vocation, which is what the religious world really needs as a reservoir of future rabbis. The current situation is the result of the political activism of the haredim.

Zisapel said, “When studying Aramaic and Gemara instead of mathematics and English, few 20-year olds will be able to join the academic world, not only in computers, but also in other professions.”

Wasted human capital? Has a magic wand been waved, making absolutely all aspects of the Israeli labor force hospitable for non-modern Orthodox Jews? While one can not disagree with the fact that the kollel system has become way too much of a legislated part of the haredi lifecycle — “cancerous growth”?

Unmitigated anti-haredi prejudice not even given the courtesy of a thin veil of rhetoric to use as a cover, the “Aramaic and Gemara” line was only a codeword for “get secularized”. Drop the whole Torah thing. Learn “mathematics and English” (as if one can not learn from English-speaking Torah giants, or find trigonometry in Tosafos). Get “enlightened” and Westernized.

How 1705.

Israeli Religious Schools - Not For Ethiopian Students? December 6, 2007

Today on Missing the Point: Israeli Knesset Member Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor).

Pines-Paz misses the gigantic pink elephant of religious school reform in the room, and instead advocates that, to remedy the poor treatment of Ethiopian students in religious schools, simply moving the students to secular schools.

Like I said, file this Ha’aretz piece by Ruth Sinai under “Missing the Point”:

Placing Ethiopian immigrant children in religious schools “has greatly harmed the group’s integration into the wider society, and has left them a coerced religious sector,” Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz said yesterday.

Due to the Chief Rabbinate’s strict conversion requirements, the majority of Ethiopian children attend state religious schools.

“No ethnic group or immigrant group is required to study in one system. We need to stop discriminating against the Ethiopian sector and to endlessly find faults with their Jewishness,” Pines-Paz said in initiating a bill to facilitate secular education for Ethiopian children.

This week, a state religious school in Petah Tikva was found to have isolated four second-grade Ethiopian pupils from the other children, teaching them in a separate classroom and scheduling their recess at a different hour. The school reportedly said the Ethiopian children were not religious enough to mix with the other children.

“Although it is very late, the time has come to redeem the [Ethiopian] sector from the isolation that was forced upon it,” Pines-Paz said.

Not religious enough?? Where anyone gets off making such an assessment in a religious school where all students are bound to the same code of dress and conduct is beyond me. They’re not shomer Shabbat? Shomer kashrut? Who are these Torah giants that are these other kids’ parents?

I would think that this would show, with stark clarity, how bad that 2nd-grade teacher needed to be fired. I would think that this would show how badly that school needed a new principal. I would think that this would show how far the State Religious School system has strayed from achieving its goal of providing a Torah education for all G-d-fearing families who so desire it for their children. I would think that this would show how badly reform is needed in the dati school system.

Perhaps this could be fixed with legislation. Perhaps some sort of oversight commission is the key, or maybe increased parent involvement could fix the schools. The key word is “fix the schools”.

Instead, Ophir Pines-Paz has chosen to advocate taking these children out of the school, and the Torah out of their curricula, and putting them in secular schools. This assumes that - a) the racism that was the root cause of their inferior treatment in the religious school somehow won’t be there in secular schools, and b) that this is just the status quo for religious schools, who should be left to arbitrarily choose when to segregate students like this.

Getting rid of Torah education as an alternative for Ethiopian students is not an option. Nor is advocating a Torah-free alternative as an option for religious Ethiopian students. The Chief Rabbinate and religious education system must be made to provide equal Torah education for all its students, and to treat all its students with dignity. If a child truly isn’t religious, then this should be examined — without respect to color or ancestry.

The Jews will come back from all four corners of the Earth — looking quite differently from each other — and they will all need to learn Torah in the Holy Land. G-d willing the Holy Land will have teachers willing to teach them.

Who Cares About Ethiopians? October 16, 2007

An article from YNet today caught my eye. The body of Gabi Ababao Dwait a”h was returned to Israel from Lebanon on Monday, ending a three-year harrowing experience for the Dwait family, during which they had no idea where he was. No whereabouts. No videotaped messages flooding CNN. Nothing.

YNet reporter Danny Adino Ababa’s op-ed piece today, entitled “Who Cares About Ethiopians?” asks a question which I think should both ask, and answer, itself:

The Dwait family is a typical Ethiopian family whose world collapsed. The family was hit by one tragedy after another: A father who was run over by a car; a brother who committed suicide. For three years now, the family has been engaged in a search for the lost son. The son who nobody heard about, saw, or cared about. He just disappeared. Evaporated.

Just like any of us would do under such circumstances, they turned to the authorities, to the Israel Police. Yet the answer they received at the police stations in Haifa and Be’er Sheva was always the same: “He’s a big boy, he’ll return home.” Just like that. Just another Ethiopian guy wandering around – as if all members of the Ethiopian community are destined to wander forever.

Imagine that Gabi Dwait’s name was in fact Danny Gutshtein; imagine his family was Israeli-born and that his parents had connections in the right places – what would the last three years look like? Wide-scale searches, photos in the media, interviews with leading journalists?…Maybe some good will also come out of the fact that Gabriel Dwait’s tragedy finally exposed the humiliating attitude of the establishment, media, and Israel Police to members of the Ethiopian community.

Danny Admasu, director of the Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews (IAEJ), in his Jerusalem Post interview, shows that the Israeli Mishtara (Police Dept) is not the sole culprit, and that “integration of Ethiopians” into mainstream society (i.e., decreasing passive and covert racism) must be put on the front-burner in numerous arenas:

Admasu believes his role is to create awareness and dialogue so that Ethiopian Jews are more readily integrated and accepted.

“I want people to know that even if they don’t want us here, we are here to stay,” he says in a tone that he has made many an MK sit up and take notice.

“In the beginning, when Ethiopians first arrived here people said, ‘They are not educated; it will take at least 50 years for them to catch up,’ but that has happened much faster than anyone thought. Today, there are many educated Ethiopians, but they still end up working as security guards in the mall.

This is a serious problem and it must be solved. These people are the leaders of their family and their immediate community. If these people, who went to college, end up guarding a mall, everyone in the next generation sees that and says why do we bother? Why do I have to go to college if I will just end up working in a mall? We need to make this a big issue.”

Israeli security forces were unaware Dwait’s body was even in Lebanon until Hezbollah hinted that they had another Israeli there. “He’s a big boy, he’ll come home?” Would any Israeli-born family with “the right connections” even be told such a callous thing by an official? As his death wasn’t caused by Hezbollah fire (he drowned in the Mediterranean Sea), perhaps we can say this caused some of the lag in information gathering (after all, if you’re picking up bodies from a battlefield, drowning victims do begin to fade in priority), but to dismiss a grieving mother for three years and not even be aware of whether or not a soldier is in one’s own country or in enemy territory?

My condolences to the Dwait family, and I hope they are comforted in their time of need. I hope the Ethiopian community gets the representation it deserves. And above all, I hope that the worth of one’s lifeblood does not remain inversely proportional to the amount of melanin in their skin.

MORE Israeli Nazi Filth September 20, 2007

This is really starting to become a soapbox of mine. I literally can not believe that this is being allowed to go on in the Holy Land to this extent. Now, the charedi newswire Vos iz Neias tells us, it’s in Ashkelon:

Ashkelon, Israel - Dozens of tombstones were destroyed overnight in the Jewish cemetery in the Givat Tzion neighborhood of Ashkelon. Local police have begun an investigation.

The reason for the cemeterys desecration is unclear. Synagogues and private Jewish property were vandalized by neo-Nazis in several separate incidents earlier in the week.

(Just for background: an in-depth article from the British Independent from the indictment.)

Israeli Neo-Nazis: “Not some Marginal Phenomenon”

Sign and Sight.com, in its weekly rundown of news and analysis from today’s headlines, gave a link to this story in Die Neue Zürcher Zeitung by journalist Naomi Bubis. Ms. Bubis says that the reflex to sweep such a story under the rug has now been replaced by “outrage and incredulity” and that these neo-Nazis are not an isolated phenomenon.

That there are people in the Jewish state who tattoo Nazi symbols into their arms, perform the Hitler salute and attack Orthodox Jew comes as a shock to most Israelis. But we’re not talking about some phenomenon on the margins. Since 2002 over 500 anti-Semitic incidents have been reported, most of them involve swastika graffiti and graveyard vandalism but also attacks against Orthodox Jews.”

Also, as I noted before, Sultan Knish pointed out that these Nazis are joining the IDF — indeed, Ms. Bubis tells of what the founder of Pogrom.org.il found:

Sorge bereitet Gilitschinski eine rassistische Internetseite, die junge russische Einwanderer dazu aufrufe, zum israelischen Militär zu gehen, um dort den Umgang mit Waffen zu erlernen…Ilia Zolotov, der ehemalige Betreiber der Internetseite «White Israeli Union», sei beim Militär gewesen. Als die Polizei letztes Jahr sein Haus durchsuchte, fand sie neben Drogen auch jede Menge Nazipropaganda auf seinem Computer.

(Gilitschinski learned of a racist website which calls upon young Russians to join the Israeli military, where they will be educated on weaponry…Ilia Zolotov, webmaster of the “White Israeli Union” site, was also in the military. When police raided his house last year, they found drugs and a stash of Nazi propaganda on his computer.)

There is but one solution for this filth, and unfortunately, while the social work and concentration camp visit to which Mr. Zolotov was sentenced do serve him justice as a personal enrichment, measures like these do not serve their victims justice, nor do they benefit the social character of the state of Israel. Israel is behooved to make only one decision regarding these anti-Semitic, racist hoodlums.

Deportation now.