Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Ten years since the Passover massacre

Elder of Ziyon notes that Hamas is today celebrating  one of the worst massacres in Israel's history - the massacre at the Park Hotel Netanya when 30 Jews - of whom 20 were older than seventy, were killed (and 140 injured, many critically) by a suicide bomber during the Passover Seder service. It is poignant to read the names of the victims.
As Elder says:
Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall seeing any Arabs protesting against this attack, or writing anguished op-eds about how a fellow Muslim could have done such a thing. No Arab groups popped up on college campuses calling for solidarity with Jews against terror. There were no UN resolutions condemning the massacre. But there was a PA-sponsored soccer tournament in Tulkarem named after the suicide bomber.
Taking account of the relative populations of Israel and the USA this is equivalent to 1500 deaths and 70,000 injured.  If such an outrage - during a religious festival - were committed anywhere else in the world against any other group of people the event would be seared into the memory of everyone (in fact in the month 135 Israeli civilians were killed by suicide bombings - a US equivalent of 6,750 deaths - well over twice the number killed on 9/11). Yet the massacre barely received a mention in the UK media at the time, despite the fact that it was actually sanctioned by 'peace partner' Yassir Arafat (even though it was carried out by Hamas). In fact the media actually was more interested the next day in pushing news of the bogus Saudi 'peace plan' which was, cynically, made 'public' one hour after the massacre, almost certainly with American prompting as an attempt to 'restrain' the Israelis in their response.

Few people outside Israel, even Jews, know that the massacre took place. Yet, perversely, when a few days later Israelis attacked a terrorist enclave in Jenin (going hand-to-hand to avoid civilian casualties - resulting in the deaths of 23 Israelis and 53 Palestinians - of whom 48 were 'gunmen') there was condemnation from the whole world as the media became obsessed with the myth that a 'massacre' had taken place. Although the massacre myth was debunked as a hoax within a few days, most people still remember the 'Jenin massacre'. Similarly, in stark contrast to the Passover massacre,
everyone knows about "Deir Yassin" which the Palestinians (wrongly) claimed was a massacre of Arabs in 1948 and which is widely commemorated not just annually in the UK but at more or less every meeting where the Palestinians want to make a point about Israel's 'brutality'. In contrast to the zero articles in the UK media about the Passover massacre since 2002 there have been many hundreds of articles commemorating the non-massacres at Deir Yassin and Jenin. 




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