Awful week in Israel: The criminals are not us

Last week, from Tisha B’Av through Tu B’Av (July 26–31), was loaded with a particularly awful set of occurences in Israel. From the vandalism on a Conservative (Masorti) synagogue in Modiin on Tisha B’Av, to the inexcusable stabbings at the gay pride parade (which led to a death of Shira Banki), to the arson attack on the Dawabsheh family home in Duma last Friday in which an 18 month old toddler died, one wonders what happened to the idea of being a light unto the nations.

Of course, the media is all over these stories, as they should be, for each one, in its own way, is a heinous crime. As of this writing, the perpetrators of the vandalism and the arson had not been caught, and the speculation of both sets of attackers being Jews is circumstantial. But as most are assuming that the perpetrators in both cases are Jewish, let’s go with that assumption for now. The parade-stabber/murderer is clearly Jewish.

In Devarim 8:14, Moshe warns the people of what will happen when “your heart may then grow haughty, and you may forget G-d your Lord, the One who brought you out of the slave house that was Egypt.”

Ibn Ezra describes this haughtiness as the kind that comes from forgetting your past slave-life, and the suffering and the hunger and thirst you underwent. Presumably because now you have it all, things are easy, and you are coasting through a good life.

For more than a generation, the question of whether the Zionist-spirit is dead has been discussed. The pioneering spirit that built the country has been replaced by an “it’s been built, now what?” question.

It has been argued that Arabs who engage in terror do so because they don’t have a self-fulfilling sense of purpose. They live in a culture of hate, in which too many people do not work, and therefore have the time to focus on destroying others’ lives instead of focusing on how to improve their own lives. How many people with families and a sense of purpose (a real job) engage in acts of terror? I would imagine the percentages are much lower than the unmarried non-working terrorists.