Israel Matzav

Haaretz's blood libel

The police announced on Sunday that they have arrested an American immigrant named Yaakov (Jack) Teitel and have charged him with several unsolved shootings and bombings. Teitel is accused of murdering two Arabs in 1997, planting a bomb outside the home of Hebrew University professor Zev Sternhell and planting a bomb outside the home of a Messianic Jewish couple in Ariel in which the couple's 15-year old son was seriously wounded.

The police have concluded that Teitel was not the shooter in the case that is currently their most vexing - the shooting attack on a gay club in Tel Aviv this past summer.

Teitel has been charged and will stand trial, and that's as it should be. Unfortunately, Haaretz takes the opportunity to bash Israel's law enforcement for not being hard enough on crimes committed against 'Palestinians.' Surprisingly, it's not one of Haaretz's usual suspects doing the bashing. It's Avi Issacharoff, formerly Israel Radio's Arab affairs correspondent, and usually one of their more balanced writers.

Experience - and statistics - show that Israeli law enforcement is remarkably lax when it comes to tackling violence against Palestinians. Twelve years ago, Teitel confessed to killing two Arabs and then took a break from such activity. Sure, he was detained for questioning after the murder of shepherd Issa Mahamra, but he was released due to insufficient evidence. As with many other cases of murder and violence committed against Palestinians, the story of the shepherd from Yatta and the taxi driver from East Jerusalem disappeared into oblivion - until Teitel returned and attempted to harm Jews, bringing the wrath of public opinion, the Shin Bet security service and the Israel Police down on his head.

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.

In an editorial on Monday, Haaretz went berserk:

By his own confession, implicating himself in two murders and 10 other acts of terrorism, Yaakov (Jack) Teitel should be regarded as one of the most dangerous terrorists ever to operate in Israel and the territories. Teitel is the Jewish counterpart of "The Engineer," Yahya Ayyash - Hamas' expert bomb maker - with one fundamental difference: Ayyash's targets were all Jews, whereas Teitel operated against everyone, Israelis and Palestinians, homosexuals and policemen. He was active for a dozen long years before his capture by the Shin Bet security service and the police, who thwarted his plans for carrying out further acts of terrorism.

Evelyn Gordon responds.

According to both the police and the Shin Bet security service, Teitel was a lone wolf, perpetrating his terrorist acts with no help from anyone. Moreover, when his deeds became known, he was unequivocally repudiated by his own society. Both the Yesha Council of settlements and the settlement where he lived issued condemnations. So did every settler-on-the-street that Haaretz reporters interviewed. Even on far-Right websites, the paper found very few statements of support for Teitel’s acts (and probably not for lack of trying; Haaretz usually likes nothing better than vilifying settlers). And of course, Israel arrested him itself.

Ayyash, in contrast, belonged to a large, well-funded group whose terrorist acts, far from being denounced, have consistently been lauded by Palestinian society. As leading Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj told the Los Angeles Times in 2002, suicide bombers have “unparalleled” status among Palestinians. “Their pictures are plastered on public walls, their funerals are emotional celebrations, their families often receive visits from state officials. They become almost holy,” the LA Times report continued, “praised by imams at mosques or over loudspeakers at rallies, where children are often dressed as shrouded dead or as pint-sized suicide bombers.” Indeed, Palestinians value terror so highly that in 2006, they elected Hamas — a terrorist organization that not only holds the record for most Israelis killed in suicide bombings but flaunts its prowess in anti-Israel terror as its calling card — to run their government. Palestinians don’t arrest their terrorists; they make them cabinet ministers.

This different societal responses also explains the difference in the amount of mayhem the two men succeeded in perpetrating. In a terrorist career spanning a dozen years and about a dozen attacks, Teitel managed to kill two people. In contrast, Hamas suicide bombers killed 57 people in the two years before Ayyash met his death (at Israel’s hands) in December 1995; as the organization’s chief bomb maker, Ayyash presumably shares credit for most of these deaths. It’s not that Teitel was any less enamored of bombs; it’s just that it’s easier to perpetrate mass murder when you are backed by a large organization and a supportive society.

As to Issacharoff, Teitel is far from the first Jew to be arrested for allegedly killing 'Palestinians.' Oren Edri, the Kahalani brothers, Nahum Kurman and the Bat Ayin group all come to mind when thinking of Jews who have stood trial for allegedly killing Arabs.

The truth is that there have been far fewer Jewish terrorists than Arab terrorists. And two of the most prominent alleged Jewish terrorists - Baruch Goldstein and Eden Natan-Zada - were murdered by Arabs in revenge attacks on the spot.

There's another difference between Jewish and Arab terrorists. If Teitel is convicted of doing what he is accused of doing, he will likely spend the rest of his life in jail. 'Palestinian' terrorists, on the other hand, are often released in 'prisoner exchanges.'

There is no basis for Issacharoff's accusations.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:59 PM