This is a guest post by Margie in Tel Aviv
Most Israelis sympathise with the Palestinians in condemnation of Ephi whoever he is, who signed a hate message on the door of the mosque at Kfar Yasuf and burned their books – a despicable act. The residents of Kfar Yasuf assume that the arsonist was from the village of Tapuah since they marched angrily towards the village and threw stones at border policemen attempting to keep the peace. My neighbours here in Tel Aviv didn’t go as far as throwing stones but a lot of angry words were hurled at the perpetrators, whoever they are. It was an act of spite and malice, designed primarily to embarrass the government and to thwart the democratic will of the rest of the country for acting against their wishes and imposing a freeze on building, it is assumed.
This is why I was shocked to read the talkback comments on the which reminded me of the piece by AKUS called Brainwashing of Britain, that discusses the purposeful attempts at alienation of the British people from the people of Israel and most of the Jews of the UK.
The most striking among the comments I read was to me, the following cold declaration, for a reason that appears in my final paragraph:
thomas eisner wrote:
I come from a holocaust family etc. and I am proud to say that I have not bought any Israel produce for about 5 years. More and more UK Jews are reacting in the same way. I feel that I can really identify with the Palestinians after all present day they have so much in common with my parents’ generation in terms of injustice and racism suffered.
Thomas Eisner apparently considers that all Israelis are to blame for all crimes committed by any Israeli since he appends this comment to the report on the Kfar Yasuf mosque. His lumping of all of Israel together strikes me as being racist in the extreme and his throwaway mention of ‘’holocaust family etc’’ seems designed to trivialise Israel’s existential fears. Just as we found it natural to differentiate between those who perpetrated 7/7 and the broader Muslim community Mr Eisner should distinguish between the obnoxious Ephi – an extremist and representative of a tiny fundamentalist minority in Israel whose views are outside the law, and the Israeli broader population, among whom he would be surprised no doubt to find many people who are a great deal more liberal minded than he is – judging his opinions by his words. I wonder whether his childhood was marred as my sister-in-law’s was by the regular nightmares of her father reliving his own teenage years in Auschwitz.
Mr Eisner and Ephi are brothers under the skin. The similarities of their intention to punish everyone without exception and their not caring who is hurt by their actions as long as their own morality is satisfied, are striking.
Gene adds: In a gesture of sympathy and solidarity, religious Zionist rabbis are visiting the vandalized mosque.
(Hat tip: Isy)
