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| Maya and Rina Dee murdered by Palestinians last Friday (VIN) |
The names of the two young sisters murdered in Friday’s shooting attack in the Jordan Valley have been announced, as their mother who was also injured in the attack remains in very grave condition.
20-year-old Maya and 16-year Rina Dee HyD were residents of Efrat who had immigrated from Britain. Maya was doing her national service in Yerucham. The two were travelling in a car with their mother when terrorists opened fire on their vehicle, shooting 22 bullets at the car and killing both sisters. Their mother, 48-year-old Leah Bas Tzipora (Lucy), was rushed by helicopter to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in critical condition and remains in very serious life-threatening condition after undergoing an operation in the hospital Friday.
Efrat. My nephew and his family just made Aliyah and settled there. So this particular set of murders has special significance to me. Making me desperate for a solution that will once and for all significantly diminish - if not end terrorist attacks like this.
I have expressed my opposition to settlements on the West Bank (Judea and Samaria - both part of biblical Israel) many times. Not that the Jewish people don’t have the right to live there. They absolutely do. But sometimes exercising that right is the wrong thing to do. When it endangers the lives of the Jewish people it ought not happen.
But I have also repeatedly said that there are certain cities that were established well over 50 years ago that have all but been conceded to Israel by Palestinian leaders as part of the Jewish state in a 2-state solution. So my opposition is primarily to settlements deep into the West Bank. Which accomplish nothing except the increasing the bloodshed of our people.
Arguments like ‘they hate us anyway’ do not sway me. Clearly settlers whose hateful anti Palestinian rhetoric scares their Palestinians neighbors and feeds the very hatred that they are talking about. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Jews have been killed that would not have been had hostile settlers and their representatives in the Knesset not exacerbated Palestinian enmity.
That being said, the reality is that Jews are being killed by Palestinians who have been indoctrinated to see the Jewish people as their version of Amalek. An ancient nation that the Torah commands us to obliterate. Now it’s true that not every Palestinian sees us that way. But enough do to make these kinds of attacks common. Hatred reinforced by Kahanist type settlers whose violent rhetoric is sometime matched with violent responses against innocent Palestinians.
Whatever the reason, though, the hard fact is that innocent Jews are increasingly being attacked by implacable Jew hating terrorists. 2 young idealistic young religious Jewish women (one of whom was at that point in her young life doing Chesed on behalf of the Israeli government) were brutally and indiscriminately murdered
It’s therefore hard to blame Israeli voters for turning rightward in light of this reality. In my view it helps to explain why Ben-Gvir’s party got so many seats in the Knesset giving him more power than he ever imagined he would get.
Israelis are sick of being targets. Sick of the fear that at any moment they might get killed the same way those two young Israeli sisters were. They are angry that previous governments have been unbale to stop these attacks. Which has in my view contributed to the right wing shift in voter sympathy.
Maybe they have a point. The policies of the past have not been working. Maybe it’s time to try something else. Maybe a little hard core military action will help. Maybe Israel has not been tough enough. Maybe what we really need is more military actions in hotbed terrorist towns like Jenin. Maybe it’s time to clean house of terrorists in those towns - and do whatever it takes to make that happen. Regardless of any international criticism.
As long as they are as careful as possible to target terrorists and not innocent Palestinians, I am all for it. There ought to be more determination than ever to get that job done. A strong right wing government is in my view best suited to do that. And to take similar hard core actions against governments that fire rockets indiscriminately at Israel - as Syria did yesterday. If they hit Israel, Israel should hit them back twice as hard. Let the world squawk! Jewish blood ought to no longer come cheap. Not after the Holocaust. And not any longer in Israel.