Honoring Ezra Schwartz

At Saturday night’s memorial ceremony for 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz at Ben Guiron airport, William Grant, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, was in attendance. Yet if the ceremony had taken place at the site of the attack where Ezra was murdered, U.S. diplomats would have boycotted the event. 

That’s because the attack took place in Gush Etzion, and believe it or not, the policy of the U.S. government is to boycott the funerals of American victims of Arab terror if the funerals take place beyond the pre-1967 armistice line. 

On top of all the pain that an American family suffers when a loved one is cruelly torn from this world by Palestinian terrorists, our own government adds to their pain and suffering with this pointless insult.

This incredibly insensitive policy first came to public attention in May 2001, after a Long Island woman, Sarah Blaustein, was murdered by Arab terrorists. The funeral was held in Efrat, a large Israeli city that is all of 13 miles south of Jerusalem. But that is past the 1967 line, which for no logical reason is treated as if it is sacrosanct, when in fact it is nothing more than an old and irrelevant armistice line. And so Martin Indyk, who was the U.S. ambassador to Israel at the time, boycotted Sarah’s funeral.

The presence of an American diplomat at such a funeral is only symbolic. But in this world, symbols are important.

When American representatives stand shoulder to shoulder with the families of terror victims, it sends a message to the terrorists that America has Israel’s back. 

But when the U.S. government boycotts a terror victim’s funeral because it is in disputed territory, then the U.S. is saying that the territory really belongs to the Palestinians and, in effect, that the victims had no business being there in the first place. It drives a wedge between America and Israel. It gives the terrorists encouragement.

American Jews need to press the Obama administration to take specific, concrete steps to demonstrate American solidarity with the American victims of Palestinian terror.

Ending the boycott of victims’ funerals is just one small step.

Here are some others: