duma, west bank | The smell of stale smoke wafted from the burnt concrete home now marked by a banner bearing the smiling face of a baby and, in bold red letters, a name: Ali Saad Dawabsha.
Some 100 Jewish visitors trudged hesitantly under the banner and into the house on Aug. 2 to pay respects to the family of 18-month-old Ali, who died July 31 when arsonists, suspected to be Jewish, set two village homes on fire. Ali’s parents and his 4-year-old brother are in critical condition at an Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv. The brother, Ahmed, has burns over 60 percent of his body.
The attackers left Hebrew graffiti on the walls with the words “revenge” and “Long live the King Messiah.”
Meir Ettinger, the grandson of assassinated far-right activist Rabbi Meir Kahane and head of his own Jewish extremist group, was arrested Aug. 3 for “involvement in extremist activities” and is being held in administrative detention, but as of midweek had not been directly linked to the firebombing.
The Jewish visitors, who were organized by a group called Light Tag, a coalition that opposes anti-Arab racism, had come to comfort mourners and bear witness to the crime. However, a local guard detail organized by the village urged them not to stick around. Residents of this village near Nablus had glared when the group arrived, and the guards warned them to leave quickly in case things got out of hand.
“They can’t do anything,” said Yusef Dawabsha, a cousin of the family who suggested that visitors wearing yarmulkes would do better to take them off. “Jews coming in these hours, it’s not good.”
Dawabsha’s sentiment was perhaps the most blunt expression of a feeling widely circulating here since the attack that this time, gestures aren’t enough. The arson is the latest act in a string of Jewish violence that has made international headlines and sent shaken Israelis by the thousands into public squares in protest.
In June, Jewish arsonists torched the Church of the Multiplication in northern Israel. On July 30, an extremist stabbed six people at the Jerusalem Pride Parade, killing a 16-year-old girl. The Duma attack followed hours later.
Harsh condemnations of the attack poured from the highest levels of government over the weekend, but many public figures say it’s time for the government to back up its words with concrete changes in how it treats Jewish terrorists.
“We cannot continue to dismiss these flames, which are consuming the public in Israel, as an unfortunate set of coincidences,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said at a rally Aug. 2 in Jerusalem. “These flames, which are consuming all of us, cannot be extinguished with weak condemnations.”
Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, urged the government to adopt harsher methods with terror suspects, even at the risk of infringing on their civil rights.
“We’re not talking about the freedom to express hate here, but rather a will to really kill,” Plesner said. “So we need to use stronger tools, with the understanding that we’re compromising some of our basic rights. We need to do it thoughtfully.”
On Aug. 2, Israel’s security Cabinet approved the use of administrative detention for suspected Jewish terrorists. Administrative detention, which allows security forces to detain a suspect without charges, is commonly used against suspected Palestinian terrorists. As of June, 370 Palestinians were being held in administrative detention, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group.
B’Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli criticized the move, saying security forces need to do a better job investigating Jewish attacks and bringing perpetrators to justice. According to Light Tag, of 43 churches and mosques torched or vandalized by Jewish extremists since 2009, perpetrators have been indicted for just one incident.
Light Tag chairman Gadi Gvaryahu also said that the government needs to treat Jewish terrorism more seriously, and acknowledged that sending a large group of Jews to Duma three days after the attack may have inflamed tensions. But he said the trip was still valuable, allowing the visitors to face what was done in their name.
“It was important for us to come look in their eyes and say, ‘This is the worst thing a person from our nation could do,’” Gvaryahu said. “To say we’re sorry, we’re shocked. It’s not a mistake to come and meet people and ask forgiveness.”