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A World Where Depravity Is Normalized, while Those Who Hit Back Are Condemned
(Substack) Jake Wallis Simons - The image of an Israeli Knesset member who took a sledgehammer to a stone memorial in the Palestinian village of Madama in the West Bank travelled the world within hours. Yet almost nobody bothered to report what was carved on the stone that he demolished. The monument listed 10 names, with dates of death ranging from 1930 to 2004. At its base was an inscription recording that it had been presented by "the comrades in the Popular Front." The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Marxist-Leninist outfit who assassinated Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi in a Jerusalem hotel in 2001. One of the men commemorated is Yaman Tayeb Ali Faraj, who was involved in a suicide bombing at a bus stop in Petah Tikva on Dec. 25, 2003, which killed four Israelis and wounded more than 20. Another is Shadi Nassar, who blew himself up at the Eshel HaShomron hotel in Ariel in 2002, injuring 14. Smashing up a village war memorial is not the behavior of a legislator. Prime Minister Netanyahu called taking the law into one's own hands "a reprehensible practice." Yet, try to imagine the equivalent in Ramallah. Try to imagine Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas clamping down on the lionization of terrorists across the West Bank. Anybody who has visited can attest to the thousands of posters, portraits, graffiti and tributes to murderers in almost every town and city. We live in a world where such depravity is normalized, while those who hit back are condemned. As former prime minister Golda Meir memorably put it, "they say we must be dead. And we say we want to be alive. Between life and death, I don't know of a compromise." The sacralization of bloodshed and sanctification of killers is the main reason why this conflict is so intractable. The monument is part of that story, yet everybody is ignoring it.