Thursday, November 14, 2013

Jihadist murder of soldier: spot the difference

Most people in the world have heard the story of the young off-duty soldier murdered in cold blood in his home country by a Jihadist fanatic slashing a knife across the soldier's neck in an attempt to decapitate him. .....Except this story is not about the British soldier Lee Rigby whose murder in Woolwich earlier this year grabbed the whole world's attention for days on end.  This is the story of Israeli Eden Atias, murdered on an Egged bus from Afula to Tel Aviv yesterday by a young Palestinian Jihadist terrorist. And, despite the obvious similarities in the nature of the crime, the world's reaction to it - and the almost certain outcomes for the terrorists - could not be more different.

In many respects the murder of Eden Atias is even more tragic and despicable than that of Lee Rigby. At just 19 Eden was 5 years younger than Lee. Moreover, unlike Lee (who was a professional soldier) Eden was (like the vast majority of young Israelis) a conscript - just two weeks into his basic training.  A child more than an adult. And while Lee at least had the small possibility to resist his attacker, Eden was brutally murdered while he slept on the bus.

While there was universal outrage and condemnation of Lee's murder, Eden's has gone completely unreported in the West. Even the Jerusalem Post (determined to tow the Israeli Government line of downplaying Palestinian terrorism while the facade of the 'peace talks' continues) only managed to put it as their 4th news item yesterday with the bizarre headline "Palestinian murders IDF soldier in suspected terror attack to avenge relatives jailed in Israel." Today - the day of his funeral - the Jerusalem Post has no reference at all to Eden on its home page despite there being no less than 15 stories there. Well, actually there is one story with an oblique reference to Eden: it is this one:
Suspected far-right activists set fire to Palestinian home in 'revenge' for slain IDF soldier: 5 Palestinians suffer smoke inhalation in Ramallah area attack.
..which gives you an indication of how bizarre notions of moral equivalence are just as bad in the Israeli press as on the BBC and in the pages of the Guardian.

There was one important non-Israeli reaction to the story. The Palestinian Press celebrated the murder and the Hamas spokesman Fawzy Barhoom announced on his Facebook page “Congratulations to the Palestinian West Bank hero who killed an Israeli soldier in Afula this morning”. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been in the UK - and the rest of the world -  if the Muslim Council of Britain had congratulated Lee Rigby's murderer for his heroism?

And what will happen to Eden's murderer - who himself is apparently just 16 years old (and according to IsraellyCool is called Hussein Ghawadra)? We know that his jailed relatives are two cousins. One of them, Muhammed Juwadra, is serving three life sentences for the murder of Cartiso Radikov and Amos Mantiu, a Bezeq employee shot dead in the village of Baka al- Gharbiya in 2003. The other cousin is serving a 12-year-sentence for attempted murder.  Ghawadra, along with both his murderous cousins, will soon be released like all other Palestinian terrorists as a 'gesture of peace' forced on Israel by the Americans for nothing in return. And, unlike murderers anywhere else in the world, they will be received as heroes, with the Palestinian Authority naming streets and football teams in their honour. They will all receive a salary for life that is 15 times higher than that of the average Palestinian employee- all paid for by EU and US taxpayers. This salary is paid to them from the moment they are imprisoned, since these terrorist murderers are considered political prisoners not just by the Palestinians but by whole swathes of the Western liberal elite. Indeed, the 16-year-old Ghawadra is already classified as a child political prisoner (remember that when you hear leftists screaming about Israel imprisoning Palestinian children). He will be free before he reaches the age of 21 because the West will demand it of Israel. Nobody will dare make any such demands of Lee Rigby's killer.

Finally, remember that Eden is just the latest of a steady stream of Israelis murdered without a murmur or even the notice of the rest of the world in the last few months as a result of a low level intifada encouraged by the Palestinian Authority and now - disgracefully - by the American Secretary of State John Kerry.

p.s. I see Elder of ZiyonRaheem Kassam and others have also picked up on the Rigby analogy.

Update 15 November : See how the UK Jewish Press has covered the story

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