The Pogrom on Israeli "Settler Children"
The Pogrom on Israeli "Settler Children"

“Palestinians kill a Jewish baby”.

No, this is not the headline published by the major global newspapers about Asher and Yonatan Palmer, the Israeli father and infant murdered last Friday near Kiryat Arba by terrorists.

What did the newspapers publish? Nothing.

In recent years we have seen plenty of saccharine movies about Jewish children killed in the concentration camps in their pajamas, but the same public opinion is reacting with indifference and complacency to the images of Israeli babies dismembered by terrorists.

It’s because the massacre of Israeli children, which resembles the Cossack pogroms of 1648–49, reveals the nature of the terrorism that Israel has faced for more than half a century. The “settler kids” have become invisible, as the Galilean towns were during the ‘70s, when Arafat’s terrorists murdered Israeli babies in Ma’alot, Kiryat Shmona and Avivim.

Nobody in the West today knows the Fogels’ story from Itamar, of the father, mother and three babies slaughtered during the night.

The onslaught on Israeli “settler kids” began in 1988, when Tirza Porat was killed near Elon Moreh. Tirza was the first Israeli civilian to die in the first Intifada and she was a schoolchild.

Who knows the name of Shalhevet Pass? Her mother Oriya was pushing the stroller in Hebron, while the father Yitzhak, with his long beard and skullcap, was walking beside her. A shot rang out and Oriya turned around. There was a hole in Shalhevet’s head. An Arab sniper had aimed from his window.

Who knows the name of Hila, Hadar, Roni and Merav Hatuel? Four little Jewish children slaughtered with their pregnant mother, Tali, on the road to Gush Katif.

Who knows the names of the pregnant women living in the settlements and killed by terrorists? Yael Shorek from Carmei Tzur was nine-months pregnant. Avital Wolanski from Eli was six-months pregnant. Tehiya Bloomberg from Karnei Shomron was five-months pregnant.

Who knows the name of Keren Shatsky, a girl killed in a pizzeria of Karnei Shomron?

Who knows the Shabo's from Itamar, Rachel butchered with three of her children, Avishai, Zvika, and Neria?

Who knows that a thirteen-year-old boy from Bat Ayin, Shlomo Nativ, was killed with an ax?

Yehuda Shoham was just five months old when he was struck in the head by a rock while his parents were driving home to Shiloh. Yehuda clung to life for a week on a respirator. His parents gave him a second name, Chaim, “life”, hoping for a miracle that did not come.

Danielle Shefi was killed in Adora, where the terrorists shot her while she was playing in her parents’ bedroom together with her two younger brothers. It was just after 9 A.M., and many of Adora’s families were either attending Shabbat prayers, spending time with their children, or sleeping late. An adorable Israeli baby was slaughtered in her bed - her mom looking on in horror as her daughter’s blood spilled out across the covers.

Shaked Avraham, a seven-month-old girl from Negohot was killed by a terrorist who had penetrated the community enclosure while the inhabitants were celebrating Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Shaked had just started walking.

In a world less surreal than the one we live in, the act of bursting into a Jewish home and shooting a baby in the head, or throwing rocks at an infant, would be the cause of moral outrage.

Multiply this act by thousands and one might think it would rate an international political uproar.

Yet in the world in which we live, the new pogrom on Israeli children has become fashionable and socially acceptable. Seventy years ago the Germans had a word to say for it: “Salonfähig”. 

The burned skin, the slit throats and the smashed faces of the Jews and their children have never interested the West.