Israel Matzav

Death of a pacifist

Some of you may recall a post I wrote last week about Juliano Mer Khamis, the pacifist son of an Arab father and a Jewish mother who was murdered on the streets of Jenin by Arabs who didn't like his theater.

Italian journalist Giulio Meotti, who has become an expert on the victims of Israel's terror wars, pens an op-ed for YNet in which he discusses a man whose idealistic pacifism did not save him from the scourge of 'Palestinian' Arab terrorism.

Mer’s lineage comprises the entire history of Israel’s anti-Zionist Left. He was the son of an Arab Christian who was among the founders of the Communist Party, the Red Bolshevik utopia that rejected the Zionist plan, was loyal to Moscow and pushed for a bi-national state.

The director’s Jewish mother was a pacifist icon, Arna Mer, who during the Intifada went to Jenin to create the “Theater of the Stones”, an experimental group for Palestinian children where Mer-Khamis also worked.

Arna Mer won the “Alternative Nobel Prize” given annually by the Swedish Parliament to humanitarian activists. She preferred to be called “Palestinian,” not Jew or Israeli. She was arrested several times during riots protesting Israeli policy in the Territories. She said that “Zionism is a racist ideology.”

Yet all of Mer-Khamis' pacifism, idealism and radicalism did not protect him from the genocidal ideology that Israel had to confront since its foundation. Just like Massoud Mahlouf Allon, an observant Jewish immigrant from Morocco, wasn't spared by the terrorists because he was giving blankets to poor Palestinians. And how can we forget all the Israeli kibbutzniks and pacifists decimated in buses and cafés during the Second Intifada?

The above attacks were all the more chilling because the victims were people willing to give up land for the sake of coexistence; they believed in a moral, just, democratic, egalitarian, better Israel.

...

When Arna Mer-Khamis started her experimental theater, it comprised six Palestinian boys. Five of them have died as suicide bombers and “martyrs.” Now the black hole of hatred has also swallowed up the beautiful Israeli son of this dark utopia.

Mer-Khamis' body was transferred through a checkpoint to Israeli authorities. It was his sad return to reality. The ancient Greek Thucydides said that it is normal for children to bury their parents, but parents burying children contravene the laws of nature and anger the gods. That's the most important and saddest difference between Israel and the rest of the "civilized world." Hatred doesn't differentiate among Jewish targets.

I consider myself pretty jaded. There is very little about this region that surprises me. That five out of six statistic surprised me greatly. It probably tells you all you need to know.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Giulio Meotti, Juliano Mer Khamis

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:18 PM