A Bad Day in Israel

Got home today and checked the news to hear that, in downtown Jaffa street, there was an attack, and there were casualties. Apparently, our unoriginal neighbors, who copied classical European anti-Semitism and called it their own, and who invented Palestinian Nationalism as a twisted imitation of Zionism, do have one creative spark. Then never tire of finding innovative ways to kill Jews. In this case, the suspect in question was a construction worker on the Jerusalem Light Rail. While pushing dirt around with his bulldozer, he apparently got the idea to start running over the parked cars, overturning busses, and generally rampaging through the streets. Apparently, he had been shot several times by police personnel in the area, but kept up his killing frenzy until he was finally put down by an off-duty soldier who climbed onto the bulldozer and shot the perpetrator three times in the head. The soldier who put an end to the rampage happens to be the brother-in-law of the soldier who killed the terrorist in the Merkaz Harav Massacre.

What's interesting about both of these attacks is that they were inside-the-wall jobs. The massive barrier being built by Israel also happens to encompass East Jerusalem, which became entirely Arab after 1948. In 1982, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and offered the residents the ability to become citizens. From 1967 until 2004, very few took up this offer for fear of being branded as "collaborators" with the Zionist entity. However, with the failure of the Second Intifadah to destroy Israel, the collapse of the Palestinian Authority into a hellhole of armed gangs, the emigration of Jerusalem's educated Arab intellectuals, and the deaths of terrorist mastermind Yasser Arafat and Jerusalemite Arab leader Faisal Husseini (grandson of Haj Amin Al Husseini,) there has been a shift in attitude. Today, most Jerusalem Arabs, at least publicly, don't find inspiration from the rapidly dying concept of Palestinian Nationalism. That, coupled with the building of the wall, and the subsequent threat of an end to medical care, law enforcement, and the myriad of other services provided free of charge by the Israeli taxpayer has led to a spike in citizenship applications by those now living beyond the wall. There's a desperate race to gain citizenship in the Zionist Entity.

But as today's attack shows, committed by an East Jerusalemite with citizenship just like the Merkaz Harav Massacre killer, the old hatred is still there, still seething. I haven't heard any reports about the driver, but I'm willing to bet that he was an affable fellow, probably relatively friendly, who showed no signs of his murderous designs, and probably didn't think of it until a split second before going berserk.

This is an example of a known phenomenon, the spontaneous terrorist. I remember during the Intifada, an interview was played with an Israeli factory manager in Atarot, North Jerusalem, who had narrowly survived an attack. He had gathered his workers together during a break and announced that the employee of the month was Mohammad, who commuted daily from Ramallah. He awarded his worker a new cell phone, a cash gift, and some other rewards. A few minutes later, once everyone had returned to work, the factory was rocked by the sound a massive explosion. The factory manager went outside to find his car, and what was left of Mohammad's body, blown to pieces. Apparently, after receiving his award, Mohammad had walked right outside and continued with his plan, to plant a bomb under his bosses seat, when it accidentally detonated.

And that's not the only example. There are cases where families employed a gardener for decades, and went to each others family weddings, and then were one day found killed. "It's like someone who brings home a bear cub," one Israeli explained to me. "He looks so cute out there in the woods, so you take him home, feed him, and raise him. And then one day, when he's a little bit bigger, he wakes up and remembers he's a bear."

This sort of spontaneous switch from functional member of society to murderous sociopath is, of course, the exception, not the rule. But it's not so exceptional that it's shocking. It’s another component of the wildness of the mind which characterizes our neighbors. This wildness is something I think we will never truly grasp, and from which the only sensible protection is to put as much distance between ourselves and the Arabs as possible while we wait over the generations for their culture to evolve into a genuine civilization.