Equivalence, and Lack Thereof

So, Israel has objected to Mahmoud Abbas meeting with Amna Muna. This woman was released this week, as part of the exchange of prisoners for Gilad Shalit. She had been serving a life sentence for luring a sixteen-year-old boy named Ofir Rahum to meet her in Jerusalem, with a fake Internet identity and promises of romance. She took him to Ramallah, where he was murdered by her co-conspirators.

And now she's out, to be greeted by a warm reception from Abbas. Israelis are, understandably, a little agitated at yet another reminder that people who've committed horrific crimes against civilians are, in fact, considered heroes and freedom fighters by Palestinian leaders.

Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, feel that it's entirely unreasonable for Israelis to be upset about a little business of a continential breakfast or two between a president and a terrorist. Jibril Rajub, who the AP describes as a 'Palestinian official', but the liberal-left Ha'aretz more bluntly describes as a 'Fatah strongman', was quite iffy about the whole thing. "If she doesn't deserve to live, why did you let her go?" he demanded. "We can't he talk to her?" he went on, addressing Israel Radio. "There are Israeli parliamentarians and army generals who are worse than her."

That's the sort of insane, unaccountable logic that anti-Israel nuts on the Internet tend to favor. Warfare, terrorism, diplomacy...it's all the same thing, more or less, right? There are members of the Knesset who are just as bad as this woman who lured a sixteen-year-old civilian to his death in cold blood, and we know this because...well, because Mr. Rajub says so, and he ought to know.

A Facebook friend provided a 'what-if' that I think casts some light on this whole situation: what if Netanyahu had sat down with some of the recent 'price tag' vandals, for coffee and a photo op? Bear in mind that as little as I approve of these people, they have done nothing that even begins to approach what Ms. Muna was convicted of. What if his excuse was the same as Abbas', that he should 'be with his people', wherever they were? What would the people say who are going to look at this and shrug, because it's not important, and there are people worse than Amna Muna? I think we all know.

(Ha'aretz also notes that Muna was supposed to go to Gaza after her release, but refused, because she's a secular Muslim. There's a sort of sad fitness to learning that even terrorists don't want to set foot in what Fortress Hamas has become. Amna Muna may be evil, but she's apparently not stupid.)

Price Tag attacks. A Tale of Two Cities.

In Israel, they are called "price tag" attacks.

From Patrick Martin of the Globe and mail:

Amidst a series of audacious attacks carried out apparently by young Israeli settlers this week, one of the extremists’ targets stood out. It was a site I’d never heard of right in the centre of the city: The Nebi Akasha mosque, built more than 800 years ago.
It’s situated, I would learn, where three ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhoods converge, on a small one-way street named Prague.
The mosque itself is a simple single-storey stone building, with most of its barred windows bricked up – no longer active as a place of worship since 1948. Attached is a modest, attractive stone minaret that stands about two and a half storeys high.
Across a courtyard dominated by a playground filled with children on swings and climbers sits an equally old domed mausoleum. Inside this stone structure are three graves, believed to be those of some of Saladin’s commanders who perished in the taking of Jerusalem in 1187.
The mosque is named for Akasha Bin Mohsin, a 10th century Muslim, whose tomb was on the site when the stone buildings were constructed.
It was to this unused historic structure that the young extremists came before dawn on Wednesday. They threw a gas bomb through a small opening of one of the bricked up windows, scorching the stone all around the window and doing minimal damage inside.
They spray-painted on the outside stone walls and on the green metal doors things written in Hebrew such as “Mohamed is dead,” “Mohamed is a pig,” and “price tag,” a reference to the costs that Muslim and other Arab institutions will pay if Israel moves to dismantle any Jewish settlements or outposts in the West Bank.

Reports of the vandalism attack spread throughout the country and the act was widely condemned. But words are one thing. Actions are another. Two young men, Avi Mayer and Arie Hasit showed up. They painted over the graffiti and scrubbed smoke off the exterior walls.

“What happened here is unconscionable, and I don’t think it is representative of Israeli society, this neighborhood or Jerusalem,” said Avi Mayer, a Jerusalemite who works for the Jewish Agency. I found the entire incident deplorable and felt I had to try and right this wrong..."

Thank you, Avi and Arie. May you go from strength to strength, and continue to be a source of light to all.

In Berkeley, there appears to have been a local version of a price tag attack. The fence surrounding Michael Lerner's home in the Berkeley Hills has been vandalized again.

From JTA:

The northern California home of Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the progressive Tikkun magazine, was vandalized for the fourth time in the last year.
In an e-mail sent to Tikkun supporters, Lerner said that on Tuesday evening, two black-hooded men pasted signs on the outside of his house and garage saying that "Palestine is an Arab fantasy." ...
"It seems obvious to me that the attack, while responding to the NPR interview with me this morning, is part of the same attempt to terrorize me and my family as the past three assaults," Lerner wrote in his e-mail. "As the police made clear to us the last time, the goal is not to destroy property as much as to remind us that they know where we live, and that we are not safe."
People. This type of childish hate-driven vandalism is wrong in Israel. And its also wrong in Berkeley. Your actions do nothing to help our people or to further our cause. Remember the words of our sage Hillel "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary".