From the time of Israel’s founding, there have been those who worried whether Israeli Arabs might pose an internal threat to the Jewish state. This week, with West Bank settlers storming a military base and clashing with police in Jerusalem, we glimpsed a different kind of threat to Israeli democracy.
A Jewish one.
The first incident took place Dec. 13, when zealots, angry over rumors that a settler outpost was about to be dismantled, attacked a nearby IDF base, burned tires, and threw rocks at Palestinian cars and military officers.
Area commander Major General Avi Mizrachi told the media he had “not seen such hatred of Jews towards soldiers during my 30 years of service.”
On Dec. 14, extremist rioters fought with police in Jerusalem after arsonists torched an abandoned mosque in Mea Shearim and spray-painted words that included “The only good Arab is a dead Arab.”
These incidents fit the description of the so-called “price tag” attacks fringe settler groups have launched against Palestinians and now Israelis as well.
Israeli officials have condemned the attacks, as they should. Knesset member and former defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer called the rioters “a bunch of criminals,” and Defense Minister Ehud Barak decried what he called “homegrown terror.” Though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to label the acts “terrorism,” as was recommended to him by a panel of Cabinet ministers, he did order a crackdown on those responsible. Suspects from both incidents have since been arrested.
The crimes show the danger of having taken half-hearted measures for too long. The government’s tendency to go easy on lawless settlers for their misdeeds has only emboldened them, and now we see the results.
Hopefully, tough measures will replace the former slaps on the wrist.
Our ire is not political. It is not directed at all Jews who live across the Green Line, but at the thugs who carry out price tag attacks and thumb their noses at the rule of law. They are lawless, racist bandits and they must be stopped.
We know the Israeli military and police forces have the means to end these destructive actions. We suspect a majority of Israel’s political leaders would like to see them stopped as well.
Needed now is the will to enforce the law, arrest the perpetrators, break up their networks and punish them to the fullest extent possible. Anything less dishonors Israel’s Jewish and democratic nature.