When it Rains, it Pours

[eumelia]

I'm so glad I don't need to go out and do things today.
It is miserable out there; thunder and lighting, all very very frightening.

Two things happened on yesterday's Israeli News circuit and I think it show cases the different treatment given to Jews and Palestinians.

The first thing I heard about is that Member of Knesset Mohammed Barakeh was going to be indited for assaulting a police officer during a demonstration in Bil'in.
I've been hearing about this possibility for three years now and I knew it would be just a matter of time.
I'm not keen on calling out unfair treatment, but the fact remains that witnesses have said that if Barakeh touched a police officer it was in defence, because friends... you do not want to get into it with Israeli police officers, especially not the Special Patrol Unit - basically the riot police - who have no qualms about picking people up and throwing them into a crowd - I speak as someone who cushioned someone's landing.

Point being, I've been trying to find more info about the story, because Dudes, inditing an MK for assault is no small thing.

The other News story is the arrest of one Yaakov "Jack" Teitel (an American Jew who immigrated to Israel and has been living in Shvut Rachel - a West Bank settelment - since 2000) who has been titled as The Jewish Terrorist, under his belt are, allegedly: the murder of two Palestinians (a Shepard and a taxi driver), rigging a package bomb that was aimed at and wounded a family of Messianic Jews, the attempted murder of Prof. Ze'ev Sternhell (prominent Left-Wing thinker) and for committing a series of warning attacks against the police at the times of the LGBTQ Pride Parades.

He has confessed to almost all the charges and said he came to Israel in 1997 to carry out attacks on Palestinians as revenge for the terrorist attacks and suicide bombings.

Yeah.

Obviously, the media was in a frenzy over this.

Yesha Council - the umbrella org that acts the West Bank Settlements spokespeople - has obviously condemned him and anyone who would commit such crimes.

He doesn't represent them - My nose isn't large enough for the huge derisive snort that statement deserves.

Nope, he doesn't represent them, just the destructive, racist and fascist ideology they base their actions upon.
And homophobic lest we forget - I'd heard that Teitel was a suspect for the shooting at the Gay Youth Centre back in August, those rumours were debunked, that doesn't stop his ideological peers from being suspects.

It's unsurprising that PM Bibiyahu has stated that these "'Minority' far-right wingers must be stopped" - I suppose Bibi doesn't actually realise that these people operate with a whole system backing them up, that they're represented in the Knesset and have had the freedom to spread hate about Arabs, Gays and Leftists without censor or sanction - as this op-ed asks: Would Israel arrest a Jewish terrorist with only Arab victims?;

It's reasonable to assume that if Yaakov (Jack) Teitel had focused only on attacking Palestinians, he would have encountered few problems with law-enforcement authorities. His big mistake, it seems, was targeting non-Arabs as well.

Experience - and statistics - show that Israeli law enforcement is remarkably lax when it comes to tackling violence against Palestinians.
[...]
The (justifiably) prevailing feeling among Palestinians in the West Bank is that their blood is of no consequence. It's hard to find a Palestinian today who will make an effort to approach the Israeli police about a settler assault, unless Israeli human-rights groups help him. The way Palestinians in the territories see it, Israeli law is enforced only if Jews are harmed, while incidents in which Palestinians are murdered, beaten or otherwise wounded are treated cursorily at best - and more often, are ignored entirely.
[...]
Investigations by Palestinian-rights advocacy group Yesh Din has found that 90 percent of police investigations of cases in which Israelis are suspected of committing offenses against Palestinians in the West Bank are left unsolved and are closed. In a 2006 case, four settlers were suspected of beating an elderly Palestinian man with a rifle, leaving him unconscious for three weeks - but police didn't check the alibis of two of the suspects, and a third wasn't even questioned.

There are many more such incidents that indicate that the impression of Palestinians in the West Bank is rooted in reality. Maybe it's Arab terrorists simply interest the law-enforcement authorities more than Jewish terrorists.

Emphasis mine
No shit.

Prof. Strenhell - Teitel's famous would-be victim - has advocated that he be treated the same way as Arab terrorists are treated - I can see how locking him up in isolation for a few months, being denied regular and conjugal visits, denied a fair hearing and used as political capital would be utterly justifiable.

All those articles came out yesterday, most of them last night and this morning there was no more News regarding Teitel.
I wonder if he'll get a public trial.
I'm quite certain that this arrest will bring about far more contention than the current rape trial of former-President Katsav.
But who knows, maybe not...
Hopefully this vigilantism isn't given silent consent and Teitel isn't given the minimum - which he might, there is precedence after all.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Something similiar happened over here recently. A white supremecist/Nazi with links to the BNP was uncovered by police to have the largest stash of bomb making equipment ever found in the UK. And he had plans to target muslims and immigrants.

The guy was arrested. But the media made virtually no fuss about it. If it had been a muslim arrested with the biggest stash of bomb making equipment, it would have dominated the news cycles for weeks.

British journalists have far more interest in Muslim terrorists than white terrorists.

[hemlock-sholes.livejournal.com]

re: your emphasis.
Arab terrorists simply interest the law-enforcement authorities more than Jewish terrorists.
This is as it should be.

Arab terrorists are much more likely, by-and-large, to attack large numbers of Israeli citizens than Jewish terrorists are. Israeli law-enforcement's primary mission, by law, is to defend Israelies and not Palestinians.

This may be a Bad Thing(tm), but put the blame at the feet of the politicians who decide these things, not the police.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

This is as it should be.
So the twelve years it took to arrest this guy is on the level as מעצרים מנהלתיים?
Good to know, I feel so much safer knowing that the police is arresting people based on suspicion rather than evidence, and lets multiple incidents drag on for years when the suspect is a Jew.

The police is an arm of the politicians, no? I have no qualms in blaming both them and the politicians that allocate their finances for allowing dangerous people to remain at large because the victims are of less consequence.

Israeli law-enforcement's primary mission, by law, is to defend Israelies and not Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank have no authority over the Settlers and the majority of violence perpetrated against civilians as opposed to soldiers, is that of Israelis against Palestinians - and the Palestinians do not feel, rightly, that they have anyone to turn to when it comes to settler violence (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1033864.html).

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Who said the Caste system was dead, eh?

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Can't imagine it changing any time soon either.

The thing that really continues to astonish me is the extent to which the news media really do seem to be able to influence peoples minds. Particularly the blatent instances of Telling People What To Think And Do, and... a majority of people will do it.

[hemlock-sholes.livejournal.com]

I don't understand what you're saying in your first paragraph.

The police [are] an arm of the politicians. That depends on what you mean:
1. Are they the enforcers of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government? Yes.
2. Are they the enforcers of a specific group of politicians? No.

Do you blame teachers for the low level of education in the country or do you blame the political factors that do not properly budget and prioritize?

I agree whole heartedly that the situation is wrong. I simply feel that blaming the Police is neither correct nor productive.

P.S.
Why, over the last year or so, has the expression "normative" replaced "normal" in the media?
Used for example "He seemed such a normative person"

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Re: P.S.
It's a buzz word that sounds more academic. As you know, normative talks about the system on the category of normal resides as the "average" or "default".
Within the sphere of normal there is, I think, an allowance for deviance (in the neutral meaning of the term, of course), so you can be normal but a little eccentric. Normative, I believe, denotes no deviation and that he was an example of the society from which he came.

I think that kind of shift shows less tolerance towards the idea of non-homogeneity within a group and creates the notion that everything that deviates is a cause of worry. It's also a reaction to the fact that, well, normal is relative, both as a term and a definition and as I said, normative is more case of individuals within a system.

Make sense?