Yisrael Medad
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was “shocked and deeply saddened” when she learned about the murders in Itamar. She announced:
The United States condemns this appalling attack in the strongest possible terms. To kill three innocent children and their parents while they sleep is an inhuman crime for which there can be no justification.
She did not use the term “illegitimate” or “corrosive” which she employed previously to describe what those five civilians were doing with their lives: residing in a Jewish community beyond the Green Line.
What does Mrs. Clinton presume Arabs would think, and then do, if they hear the words she utters? Does she not grasp her language influence? Does she not think that an Arab would assume he has a license to kill?
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the authorization of construction of hundreds of new housing units in Judea and Samaria, in a visit to the families sitting shiva for those murdered Jews of Itamar said: “they murder, we build” and the US State Department which Mrs. Clinton heads then let loose another volley of verbal abuse, calling "settlement activity" 'illegitimate' and that construction therein runs counter efforts to resume Middle East peace negotiations. The State Department was "deeply concerned by continuing Israeli actions with respect to settlements in the West Bank."
And the statement, also issued by the US Tel Aviv Embassy (which the US refuses to move to Jerusalem despite a Congressional directive) continued:
Israeli settlements are illegitimate and run counter to efforts to resume direct negotiations...through good faith direct negotiations, the parties should mutually agree on an outcome that realizes the aspirations of both parties.
The statement stressed that “the continued peace-talks stalemate injured both parties" and that "the lack of a resolution to this conflict harms Israel, harms the Palestinians, and harms the interests of the United States and the international community.” That is dangerous language. Harms?
It appears obvious that the United States in now justifying, in principle, that attack. If the Arab side is “injured,” if the Arabs of the former Mandate of Palestine territory are “harmed”, if the right of Jews to reside in their national homeland is “illegitimate” and runs “counter” to peace efforts, what do you think an Arab, educated in the hate-filled incitement-generated atmosphere of the Palestinian Authority with its anti-Semitic mosque sermons, is assuming and concluding?
And if agency reports, along with many other mainstream media outlets, including the Washington Post, continue to call the persons who slaughtered the Fogel family members as “militants”, then terror becomes irrelevant as a moral issue simply because the media assures it doesn’t exist. Terror is a term that is excluded from public discourse and so the Arabs get, as it were, a free ride to kill, to slaughter, to destroy. A new value system is in place.
In the fixation centered on the Jewish communities in Yesha while avoiding Arab violence, the media will overlook all items as the story that Hamas was planning to murder Israelis, take their bodies and then 'negotiate' their return to Israel which appeared a day before the Itamar terror attack.
It is terror that is illegitimate just as the Pal. Authority incitement is illegitimate. And what is especially "corrosive" is an American Administration policy that cannot but appear to encourage Arab obstinacy and even provide succor for violence against Jews.