As I expected, there was a lot of contention about my post yesterday that accused Hamas of kidnapping and killing three Israeli teenagers. I was generally pleased with the polite tone of all the comments, though I had to ban several people for insulting the host (one even had the temerity to tell me that the topic had nothing to do with evolution!). In the future, please stick to the topic and avoid saying things to me that you wouldn’t say in my living room, which of course is what this website is. And read “Da Roolz”, which you can find on the sidebar. And try to keep a lid on your anger.
My original claim that the kidnappers were from Hamas has not yet been verified, so, as I noted in an update yesterday, my claim is actually in limbo. Yet Israel has identified two men associated with Hamas, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisheh, as suspects, and they’re nowhere to be found.
The Times of Israel reports, though, that Hamas doen’st really actually deny responsibility, nor do they seem too upset about the teenagers’ murders. In fact, they’re happy about it. Look at the palpable and sickening glee expressed by the head of Hamas about the murders (my emphasis):
Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal on Monday praised the June 12 kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers as a heroic act but denied having any information on the abduction
In a lengthy interview with Al-Jazeera on Monday evening, Mashaal insisted that Gil-ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach, abducted while hitchhiking in the Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem, were “settlers and soldiers in the Israeli army.”
“No one claimed responsibility so far. I can neither confirm [Hamas’s responsibility] nor deny it,” Mashaal said, quickly adding that the circumstances of the kidnapping were more important than the perpetrators.
“Blessed be the hands that captured them,” Mashaal said. “This is a Palestinian duty, the responsibility of the Palestinian people. Our prisoners must be freed; not Hamas’s prisoners — the prisoners of the Palestinian people.”
The “disappearance,” as he termed it, took place in the West Bank, an area he said was considered occupied “even by the United States.” Secondly, the three were not “youths, as Israel calls them, but first and foremost settlers … and not even regular settlers, but armed ones.”
. . . Mashaal blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the abduction, lambasting his insensitivity to the plight of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.
“I ask the families of these three soldier-settlers: Had Netanyahu heard the voice of these hunger strikers … would the Palestinian situation be so stressed? … had Netanyahu not provoked us in Jerusalem by Judaizing it, would Palestinians be as angry?”
Contrary to Mashaal’s claim, these teenagers were not soldiers (they were going to school), and only one of them lived over the “green line,” in the occupied territories. Note, too that Mashaal blames Israel for the murders. He’s an odious man.
At least one website gives plausible reasons why Hamas would deny the kidnapping: because it was a botched operation, a kidnapping designed to ransom Palestinian prisoners, but one that went wrong when the kidnappers were forced to kill three victims instead of the one they intended to random. Hamas has apparently published handbooks on how to kidnap Israelis to facilitate prisoner exchange.
In another sickening twist on this story, a Palestinian teenager has been killed and his body dumped in a Jerusalem forest. It’s not yet clear whether this was done by Israelis to avenge the murder of the three teenagers (one source reports that it may have been an honor killing), but if it is a revenge killing, it’s as monstrous and brutal as the murder of the three teenagers. Israelis have no moral high ground if they, too, deliberately target and kill innocent civilians. We’ll simply have to wait to see what happened with all four of these murders.
But, as the New York Times reports, Israeli officials, unlike Mashaal, show no glee over this latest killing:
Mr. Netanyahu spoke before noon with Mr. Aharonovich, the internal security minister, and requested that “investigators act as quickly as possible to find out who stands behind the despicable murder,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office. Mr. Netanyahu called on all sides not to take the law into their own hands, saying, “Israel is a state of law and everybody is obligated to act according to the law.”
. . . The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, condemned the killing of the teenager in a statement.
“This is a horrible and barbaric act which I strongly condemn,” he said. “This is not our way and I am fully confident that our security forces will bring the perpetrators to justice. I call on everyone to exercise restraint.”
Compare that to the Palestinian celebrations that inevitably follow the murder of Israeli civilians.
