Seth Freedman is a writer living in Jerusalem. He grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb in London and worked as a stockbroker in the City for six years, before moving to Israel.
He served for fifteen months in a combat unit of the IDF, between 2004 and 2006, and has worked as a writer ever since.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... middleeast
There can be no excuses. Nothing; not the occupation, nor the siege of Gaza, nor any of the myriad attempts to justify the actions of the murderous bulldozer driver, who slaughtered with wanton abandon earlier today. Once defenceless civilians become fair game in the never-ending cycle of Middle Eastern violence, then the gloves are off and nothing is sacred anymore.
But just because there can be no excuses, does not for a minute mean there can be no explanation. The usual suspects were quick to voice their rage at the events within minutes of the carnage unfolding, and bubbling to the surface were precisely the wrongheaded, knee-jerk reactions that have led the region to such a bloody impasse.
Trade and Labour Minister Eli Yishai's on-the-scene response was to demand an immediate freeze on freedom of movement for Arab residents of East Jerusalem, as well as the predictable call for the terrorist's home to be demolished. Not for him the option of treating every criminal as an individual; instead, the attack was reason enough to tar all Arabs with the same brush, and clamp down, vice-like, upon their thousands-strong community.
Yishai is well aware that hard-line rhetoric wins hearts and minds in the immediate aftermath of an attack, but – as a senior politician – he should also be keenly aware that branding an entire section of society as potential terrorists, and curtailing their freedoms, plays right into the hands of the extremists among them. That's how it's been for decades over here, and the results speak for themselves.
Besieging Gaza has turned the area into the most fertile breeding ground imaginable for jihadists and suicidal militants; daily raids and round-the-clock curfews have done the same in Palestinian cities the length and breadth of the West Bank. Occupation breeds terror; so, too, does the assumption that just because a terrorist is an Arab, ergo all Arabs must therefore be terrorists.
There can be no excuses, but equally there can be no room for fear-mongering on the part of the Israeli authorities and their cheerleaders. Lorna Fitzsimons of Bicom told Sky News from her vantage point in London that "people [in Israel] will be absolutely petrified", talking of the attack as though it were the psychological equivalent of a nuclear warhead arcing through the sky from Tehran. I've spent the day in Jerusalem, talking to native Israelis and immigrants alike, and "petrified" is a wild exaggeration of the real mood on the street. Horror, revulsion, despair – of course. But not petrified. This is a country that has seen it all before, not learned from history's mistakes, and is thus doomed to repeat them.
"Petrified" implies that today's attack was a massive shock to the collective Israeli system, as though, until now, they'd never realised that 40 years of cruel and unusual punishment of the Palestinians was likely to bear such murderous fruits. To Lorna Fitzsimons, however, reality is seen through blue-and-white-tinted spectacles, hence her assertion that "Israelis [will nevertheless be] steadfast in their pursuit of peace".
Inane comments like that are the reason my life, and the lives of my peers in Jerusalem, are under constant threat. The longer the likes of Fitzsimons persist in painting Israel's persecution of the Palestinians as the "pursuit of peace", the more those being oppressed will throw their arms up in despair and take the law into their own hands.
A Hamas spokesman said as much when delivering the group's official reaction to the murders, calling the attack "a natural response to Israeli aggression". The fact that they refused to condemn the slaughter outright means that they, too, are no better than the IDF when they explain away Palestinian civilian casualties as "unfortunate, but unavoidable", but at the same time those six words are indisputable.
Israelis should be under no illusions as to why we're being targeted by terrorist killers such as Hosan Dwayyat. It's not because we're Jews; it's because of the relentless oppressive tactics employed by successive Israeli governments since the very foundation of the state. After all, pre-state Israeli militias were similarly deadly in their violent uprising against the British – and that was no anti-Protestant crusade.
Once the dust settles on Jaffa Road and the bodies have been given a proper burial, the only question will be how Israel can protect its citizens and pull the rug from under the extremists' feet. Vicious reprisals against the killer's family, mass restrictions of movement for all Arab residents of East Jerusalem, and revenge attacks on Palestinian towns and cities, are not the answer.
Because when we crush their civilians' lives and livelihoods, the chances are that the radicals among them will do the same to us. There can be no excuses for what happened today, but there can be no excuses for what will happen tomorrow in the so-called "steadfast pursuit of peace".
