SOLDIERS OF IDF VS ARAB TERRORISTS

SOLDIERS OF IDF VS ARAB TERRORISTS

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The Fogel Family Massacre - There Must Be Consequences

A home invasion is everyone's worst nightmare, as is the idea to a parent of not being able to protect one's own children in the place where they should be safest. So the massacre in Itamar is shocking and nauseating on many levels.
Israel's prime minister can't afford, nor should he, to have any family anywhere under Israel's control not feel safe in their own beds, and so he must act not only to reassure the Israelis but to disturb the Palestinian Authority as deeply as the people of Israel and Jews and rational people everywhere are disturbed by this twisted act.
Israel knows that you can't fight terrorism by sparring with individual terrorists. The infrastructure that supports and nourishes it must be continously be shaken up, as the United States has done with al Qaeda. It's not enough for any Palestinian not to engage in terrorism, they must all feel a stake in reporting terrorist activity, which they will only do when it is in their self interest.
Aid from the United States and international sources that allow the creation of a culture of death through martyr-oriented education must be ended and shifted to a grant system that awards funds only for qualified programs that encourage coexistence and civilized negotiation of grievances. 
"The Palestinian Authority engages in double talk," said Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his properly indignant reaction to the murders (video here). "They talk peace to the outside world and to their own people inside they teach hate and violence against Israel, in their schools and mosques and their state-controlled media.
"The international community must demand from the Palestinian Authority an end to incitement. The Palestinian Authority must stop incitement and begin to educate its people toward peace."
That's the only outcome that can prevent horror stories like that of the Fogels and bring some measure of justice to their deaths, not rewarding the killers with a renewed discussion about the settlements, building freezes or renewed peace talks. Still, while there is a certain logic to the announced decision that Israel will authorize the building of an additional 500 units of West Bank housing in response to the murders, to spite the terrorist, but it seems more of a political move to placate rightward elements in the government than the more necessary practical response of shaking up terrorism, largely dormant for a long stretch, before it can take hold again.
The surviving family members of the Fogels, whose pain I can't imagine, have decided that releasing gruesome photos of the victims will galvanize the public outcry. I think it's a misguided idea that violates the dignity of the dead. When people die violently we usually see images of them at their best -- yearbook photos, wedding pictures, happier times so that we remember the lives they lived, not the way they died. People, not corpses.
They will inevitably become a focal point of many political debates inside and outside Israel, from the Knesset to college campuses. But the Fogels deserve to be remembered as a family that loved Judaism and Israel, and each other, and not as a crime scene.