view from central park: tehilla r. goldberg

From Israel, a tale of two heroes

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We are all still reeling from the news — a mother of six children who, despite heroically fighting back, was brutally butchered into submission amidst bloodcurdling screams and a pool of blood, all before the eyes of her children.  And we wonder: How can any human do this to another human? Seriously, how?

As terrible as shooting another human is, it is usually done from afar, so you don’t have the kind of intimate contact and proximity that a stabbing entails; with a bullet the horrific process of taking another life is swift.

But to engineer the cold blooded murder of a mother, someone whom you knew as you were employed in her community, and to make her children the witnesses of this bloody brutality … how?

There are those whose impulse is to cite the Israeli occupation as the reason — in other words, as the justification — of cold-blooded murder.

No doubt the political reality is a complex one. But when you think about how this happened, when you think about this teenager — yes, this savage was merely 16 years old — you think about the society that cultivated him.

Certainly there are good Palestinian families who educate their children toward kindness, responsibility, ethics and even altruism. But Palestinian TV — the stuff of Palestinian childhoods — reflects unbridled hatred, the lauding of cold-blooded murder and of beheadings, all wrapped in sweet catchy, childhood songs and fun. This is Palestinian entertainment.

This transcends politics.

So when, twistedly, over and over, your girsa deyankuta — your childhood imprint — is viewing the murder and knifings of Jews as routine, normal, cute and laudatory, your senses get dulled. Your humanity gets dulled. Until one day you are capable of imitating the repeated televised behavior that you know will yield praise and renown. So taking a machete and slaughtering a fellow human … wait, but he’s a Jew, so he’s not really human, right? Well, it becomes doable and matter-of-fact to a depraved person, a hollow of humanity.

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