Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, stabbed six marchers in the annual Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. What is equally disturbing is that Schlissel was just released after serving 10 years for stabbing participants in the Gay Pride Parade in 2005. Schlissel immediately demanded a court held in accordance with Jewish law, a request which was denied.
Schlissel left two people in serious condition.
A decade ago, he wounded three marchers not far from the spot of his most recent attack. He was only released a month ago — a testament to his fanatical hatred of homosexuals and extreme religious beliefs. He explained to police that as a faithful Jew he had come “to kill in the name of God.” He was released from prison a month ago.
Orthodox Jews have long targeted Gay Pride marches for protests, though recently in New York the community actually hired Latino men to dress them up as Orthodox Jews to protest for them. An ultra-Orthodox news website referred to the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade on Thursday as “the Parade of Abomination.” Muslim and Christian groups also denounced the parade.
After stabbing his victims, Schlissel reportedly told people to get out of the way so he could escape.
Notably, the Orthodox community did not appear to shun Schlissel. Instead, he was interviewed on an ultra-Orthodox radio service nearly two weeks ago, and he used the occasion to assure fellow Ultra-Orthodox believers that “The battle is not over. Those unclean people want to continue defiling Jerusalem.” He also insisted that people must go to confront the people in the parade and that the goal must be “to disperse them, even by force.” None of that appears to have led the government to put him under surveillance or cause other Ultra-Orthodox Jews to call the police. Those are questions that are now being asked by many.
Paul:
http://history.rutgers.edu/honors-papers-2009/155-the-sea-people-and-their-migration/file
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
The term “pirate” is not applied in an academic sense, but rather informally. Technically, any group of people who prey on and sack ships for profit are pirates. As long as any of the Sea Peoples attacked any ships for profit, then they could technically be considered “pirates”. They are more often referred to as plunderers, invaders, and conquerers.
Piracy can have a sliding scale however, as illustrated by Letters of Marque as well as the British Navy taking as a prize enemy ships.
Gideon Levy:
“Nine Palestinian homes were torched in the past three years, according to B’Tselem. How many people have been prosecuted? None. So what happened in Duma on Friday? The fire was simply better, in the eyes of the arsonists and their minions.”
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Israelis stab gay people and burn children. There isn’t a shred of slander, the slightest degree of exaggeration, in this dry description. True, these are the actions of a few. True, too, that their numbers are increasing. It’s true that all of them – all the murderers, everyone who torches, who stabs, who uproots trees – are from the same political camp. But the opposing camp also shares the blame.
All those who thought that it would possible to sustain islands of liberalism in the sea of Israeli fascism were shown up this weekend, once and for all. It’s simply not possible to cheer for the brigade commander who shoots a teenager, and then be shocked by the settlers who set a family on fire; to support gay rights, and hold a founding conference in Ariel; to be enlightened, and then pander to the right and seek to partner with it. Evil knows no bounds; it begins in one place and quickly spreads in every direction.
The first breeding ground of those who torched the Dawabsheh family was the Israel Defense Forces, even if the offenders didn’t serve in it. When the killing of 500 children in the Gaza Strip is legitimate, and doesn’t even compel a debate, a moral reckoning, then what’s so terrible about setting a house on fire, together with its inhabitants? After all, what’s the difference between lobbing a fire bomb and dropping a bomb? In terms of the intention, or the intent, there is no difference.
When the shooting of Palestinians becomes an almost daily occurrence – two more have already been killed since the family was burned: one in the West Bank, another on the border of the Gaza Strip – who are we to complain about the fire throwers in Duma? When the lives of Palestinians are officially the army’s for the taking, their blood cheap in the eyes of Israeli society, then settler militias are also permitted to kill them. When the IDF’s ethic in the Gaza Strip is that it is permitted to do anything in order to save one soldier, who are we to complain about right-wingers like Baruch Marzel, who told me this weekend it was permissible to kill thousands of Palestinians in order to protect a single hair from the head of a Jew. Such is the atmosphere, such is the result. Original responsibility for it goes to the IDF.
No less to blame, of course, are the governments and politicians who vie with each other over who can suck up the most to the settlers. Whoever gives them 300 new homes in exchange for their violence at the flagship settlement of Beit El is telling them not only that violence is permissible, but also that it pays. It is already hard to draw the line between throwing bags of urine at police officers and fire bombs into people’s homes.
Also to blame, of course, are the law enforcement authorities, starting with the Judea and Samaria District Police – the most ridiculous and scandalous of all police districts, and not by chance. Nine Palestinian homes were torched in the past three years, according to B’Tselem. How many people have been prosecuted? None. So what happened in Duma on Friday? The fire was simply better, in the eyes of the arsonists and their minions.
At the end of a terrible day, it is this that leads to the burning of families whom God did not choose. No principle in Israeli society is more destructive, or more dangerous, than this principle. Nor, unfortunately, more common. If you were to examine closely what is concealed beneath the skin of most Israelis, you would find: the chosen people. When that is a fundamental principle, the next torching is only a matter of time.
Their minions are everywhere, and most of them are now tsk-tsking and expressing dismay at what happened. But what occurred couldn’t have not happened; what happened was dictated by the needs of reality, the reality of Israel and its value system. What happened will happen again, and no one will be spared. We all torched the Dawabsheh family.
Are you saying this is justified, Karen?
The first incident occurred in November of 2013 in the village of Sinjil. A house along route 60, the main transportation artery in the West Bank, was set on fire and sprayed with graffiti. By pure chance, a mother who had just woken up to nurse her baby noticed the flames and alerted people in the house, allowing them to escape harm. On two other occasions it was only luck that saved families from being burned alive. This happened in 2014 in Hawara and South Hebron Hills, when several houses were torched in pre-dawn attacks.
None of these incidents led to any prosecutions. In the incident south of Hebron, three suspects were apprehended. They were subsequently released and instructed to stay away from the West Bank and Jerusalem under administrative order.
Torching houses goes a step beyond that of torching mosques. Predawn attacks on mosques pose little danger to people whereas torching a house is simply attempted murder. This is the way the Shin Bet relates to these incidents, taking over the investigation of these cases.
Charges were filed on Thursday against Moshe Orbach, a right-wing extremist. Orbach is suspected of composing a document that details methods for committing “Price Tag” attacks. Although this term has become short-hand for hate crimes in Israel, Jewish extremists originally used it to describe vandalism and violence that targeted Israelis as well as Palestinians and was aimed at preventing or avenging evacuations of West Bank settlers.
Orbach devotes an entire chapter to torching houses, which he ranks as the most violent option for a “price tag” attack.
“Sometimes we’re fed up with only destroying property and we want to deliver a blow that will clarify to the accursed that if we could we would…. So we simply want to torch a house and its inhabitants” writes Orbach. He explains that “this is an attempt to murder, considered much more gravely by the Zionists.” He says that this is work for professionals “with experience” (written with spelling mistakes in Hebrew). He recommends using a bottle filled with a gasoline-soaked rag (a firebomb), as was the case early Friday morning. He recommends placing burning tires outside the front door, to prevent anyone from escaping.
The assessment is that Friday morning’s arson in the village of Douma was carried out by a group of people who knew what they were doing. The building selected had only one storey; it wasn’t a multi-storied one in which people usually sleep on the upper floors. The house was on the outskirts of the village, with other houses nearby. The bottle thrown into the house immediately ignited the bedroom, killing 18-month-old Ali Saad Daobasa and severely wounding his 4-year-old brother and parents.
The Daobasa family had no time to react before the perpetrators fled the scene. Hundreds of people arrived at the scene very quickly, which destroyed evidence.
As of now there are no clues that would lead to the perpetrators. The police and Shin Bet hope to rely on collaboration, even with elements in extreme right-wing circles. However, even among those who don’t support such acts there is still a code of silence that stops them cooperating with the authorities, which makes it difficult to collect information even from people who aren’t extremists. It is possible, however, that shock over the murder of a baby will lead to the authorities obtaining valuable information.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.668941
@I.Annie
Actually, both you and Po are wrong. My BFF, Fabia Sheen, Esq., an attorney, with a rye sense of humor, runs the place, under the name Penelope Dreadful. I help her, and do post there as one of the authors, but I won’t tell anybody which one because it is a secret.
I think Pansies for Plato is a fantastic blog, and there are a lot of really good editorials and things there, and cultural artsy stuff like poetry. They have even uncovered a lost Maya Angelou poem!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
And then this, which is, obviously, the kind of terrorism karen supports fully!
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Analysis Deadly West Bank Arson Surprised No One in Israel’s Defense Establishment
The arson on Friday morning in which a Palestinian infant was burned to death was preceded by attempted attacks, which miraculously failed.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.668941
The torching of a house in the West Bank on Friday morning, in which a Palestinian infant was killed, caught no one in the defense establishment by surprise. For two years, the police and Shin Bet security service have identified a pattern of predawn attempts to set Palestinian houses on fire, with the intent of burning it along with…
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.668941
Yep, Karen, facts sir, only facts!
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JERUSALEM – A law passed by the Knesset on Thursday with a majority of 46 to 40 will formally legalise the highly controversial medical treatment of force-feeding for Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.
Entitled “Preventing the Harm Caused By Hunger Strike,” the law is described as a way to communicate to prisoners that “hunger striking is not a way out of prison or a way to fulfill any goals,” said Yoel Hadar, legal advisor for the Public Security Ministry, which aggressively sought to advance the bill.
Avinoam Reches, former head of the Israeli Medical Association’s (IMA) Ethics Bureau, called the bill “insane,” and informed the government committee that any doctor known to be force feeding a prisoner will be summoned to the Israeli medical ethics court. Since the bill was introduced, the IMA has responded with extensive documentation which defined the practice, in conjunction with the UN definition, as a cruel and humiliating form of torture.
“We will do everything to prevent its implementation,” said Dr Leonid Eidelman, chair of the Israeli Medical Association, who last month penned a letter to Knesset members Gilad Erdan and Ayelet Shaked, explaining that doctors were forbidden from violating their ethics through this practice, to which Erdan responded that he was confident that he would find doctors who would be willing.
Dr Eidelman oversaw the treatment of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli hospitals over the past year, none of whom died as a result of hunger striking –evidence he points to in asserting that force-feeding is an unnecessary method which could also harm the patient’s health irreversibly or even cause death. The law’s primary purpose, said Dr Eidelman, who in 2011 went on hunger strike as part of negotiations for better conditions at state Israeli hospitals, is not to preserve life but to defuse pressure on the government.
In an official position statement, the IMA recognises that hunger strikers, who often have no other tools for protesting, present a particularly complex dilemma to doctors bound to the Hippocratic oath of “do no harm”.
“A hunger striking prisoner is not sick. He is an individual who has chosen to express his protest, his position, in order to achieve individual, political or other gains by embarking on a hunger strike,” writes Dr Karni, a surgeon and the chair of the IMA Ethics Bureau, in a chapter that describes the method as a violent attack against the individual rather than the authorities, in the tradition of Gandhi and the Irish hunger strikers of the 1980s.
Thousands of Palestinian prisoners have undergone hunger strikes with the aims of demanding their release or in protest at prolonged administrative detention, lack of fair trials, the use of torture and interrogations, and for the right to family visitations. Demands have also been as basic as access to books, regular clothing or other rights which prisoners say they have achieved only through hunger striking, according to Randa Wahbe, spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Organisation.
“Hunger strikes, historically, have been the most successful way that prisoners have gained rights in the prison, organised collectively and kept the prisoners movement alive, and for these reasons, the Israeli government wants to quash all forms of resistance within the prisons,” said Wahbe, adding that the blatant lack of respect for Palestinian prisoners’ human rights is apparent in the fact that Israel bans force-feeding of geese based on animal cruelty laws.
In recent years, thousands of Palestinians have been held from any period ranging from a number of months to a number of years in administrative detention, according to the rights group, B’tselem. Dozens of Palestinian prisoners are currently believed to be on individual hunger strikes, said Wahbe, but solidarity movements have been the highest cause for concern for Israel.
Most recently was the case of Khader Adnan, an activist with the Islamic Jihad, who undertook his first 66-day hunger strike in December 2011, thought to be the longest hunger strike in Palestinian history. He was put under administrative detention – in which Israel holds Palestinians indefinitely on security grounds and without formal charges or trial – for the 10th time in June 2014.
– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-government-sanctions-force-feeding-palestinian-prisoners-1232916376#sthash.YSGHYAdl.dpuf
Paul C. Schulte says:
1, August 2, 2015 at 6:42 pm
Karen – po is a CAIR apologist. His job is not to make a great argument.
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I tell you, Paul, you are the only one on this blog who keeps bringing up CAIR!
I am starting to wonder if you are a CAIR plant trying to get us used to the name. Are you a double agent? Did they get to you?
No wonder, Annie, as you say, I did not think him that talented either but the amount of trollishness and general obsessiveness behind it was very reminiscent of our friend Nick.But, yeah, it requires some odd talent that he doesn’t have.
Po,
I don’t think he’s that talented. That would be the other islamaphobe, Squeeky running that blog you speak of. It is pretty darn dysfunctional to go to such lengths. Karen doesn’t want to know about the seamier side of her buddies.
Nice to hear from you too, Nick! Are you done dedicating your spare time running pansies for plato? How much time do you have to yourself and how dysfunctional are you that you would build a copycat blog of a real blog you claim to hate with fake puppets of the same bloggers you claim to hate and invite your little friends to make fun of them?
What kind of life do you live?
Are you okay? Should I call someone?
Just nod yes! Blink twice!
karen, I would be very careful not to acknowledge the endorsement of such dysfunctional person!
You know, birds of feathers…
Yep, Karen, as usual, short of refuting my arguments logically, you accuse me of being an apologist for extremist jihad.
I baited you and you couldn’t help it, you fell for it hook, line and sinker. There has yet to be one argument about violence that you haven’t tied to shariah law. If pot is a gateway to drugs, everything is, to you, a gateway to shariah law, which is deluded at best, and hypocritical at worse.
I offered you facts, FACTS, I say. You offer nonsense!
Unlike Pogo and bam bam, who are open about their islamophobia, you, ayatollah, are lying about yours, claiming to speak only about islamic extremism, the problem being that you see islamic extremism everywhere and are blind to any other form of extremism.
Will you finally address my arguments or is this the last remous before you give up the fight and slink back whence you came from?
Where is your offense to orthodox judaism, calling for the murder of arab women and children? Of raping them? Of lighting up a sleeping family and burning up their baby? Of blowing up 4 kids playing on the beach? Of blowing up hospitals and women and children’s shelters?
Where is your offense to the Israeli form of shariah law that makes women less than men? That prevent them from worshiping at the wall? That keeps them in the house? That photoshops them off anything? That prevents non-jews from having a legal marriage in Israel?
Where is your offense to that, dear hypocritical ayatollah Karen?
Thanks, Nick. 🙂
Karen
Po isn’t just a river in Italia.
Karen, You are a very good person. Don’t let people who are disturbed and angry get to you. They could not shine your shoes.
Max:
And the reason why I even brought up Muslims and gays was because Po said this:
“Ahem!
Looking forward to hearing our friends blame Islam for this.
Shariah law anyone?”
Which I found completely offensive because extremist Islam actually murders gays under the authority of government.
Sometimes people bring up a gang shooting in Watts and say something like, “See! Why do you complain about ISIS when people get shot here in the US?” It’s a way to block criticism of what the vast majority of people in the Western World view as wrong by bringing up an unrelated issue.
Paul:
“His job is not to make a great argument.” I know, he says the most ridiculous things, completely making it up as he goes along, and he’s so smug about it. He can’t have any idea how absurd his argument sounds to others. Or maybe he thinks repetition will help?
Paul:
I believe the Philistines were called pirates by some because they were sea faring conquerers. The reason that the area was at one time called Philistine, and Palaestina by the Romans, was because these “Sea People” invaded, conquered, and then later vanished from the area. I suppose they could be considered similar to the Vikings in that respect.
The Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians were the titans fighting over the world at one time.
Karen – do you have a cite on the Sea People being called pirates? I can find nothing.
“Exactly, Max, and the Mexicans raping, torturing, burning and dismembering are also Muslims.”
This is what makes you an enabler of extremist violence.
Crime has many causes, and therefor different solutions. The violent crime of Mexican drug cartels requires a completely different approach than violent jihad. Clearly, the existence of one does not negate the necessity of fighting against the other, and is an excellent example of the absurdity of false logic.
“Mullah Karen’s lie #2:
In every single Muslim nation, homosexuality is a capital offense.”
Homosexuality is a crime in the following ME countries:
Afghanistan
Gaza Strip (under Palestinians)
Iran
Iraq
Kuwait
Lebanon (actually, this is subject to imprisonment rather than the death penalty, so some vestiges of cosmopolitan Lebanon still exist)
Oman
Pakistan (life imprisonment)
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Turkmenistan
UAE
Uzbekistan
Yemen
Turkey, that used to be rather secular, does not make homosexuality illegal, but violent attacks on gays are common and institutionalized. (A study found that 89% of trans women taken into custody are assaulted.) There are also studies on the epidemic of gay honor killings in Turkey.
Israel, on the other hand, recognizes gay marriage and has anti-gay discrimination laws.
Yes, homosexuality is also illegal in Russia and Uganda, which has absolutely no bearing on my statement about homosexuality being a serious crime in the ME. There are also people who kick puppies somewhere in MI, which, again, does not relate in any way to this statement.
You’re wasting your time defending this practice.
And the rest of what you said follows in the same way, with patently false statements.
You’re just another ugly cinder block wall covered in graffiti.
Think of what you could accomplish if you actually were a voice for peace and change in the Muslim community.
Karen – po is a CAIR apologist. His job is not to make a great argument.
Max:
“Karen, the diatribe against Muslims being anti-gay has much traction in this story about a Jewish man who is anti-gay and has killed for it. This is his second attack now… Perhaps he’s secretly Muslim”
Haha. Violent extremism can arise under any guise, from religious to secular. That horrible, tragic church shooting was another casualty of extremism.
You and I don’t see eye to eye on all issues, but I do enjoy speaking (and sometimes arguing) with you. I’m sorry that gay men are unsafe in so many parts of the world.
PS The Romans first named the area Palaestina, a derivative of the Philistine pirates who conquered, and then lost, the territory before them.
Honestly, some of the most hotly contested pieces of land on the globe are so bleak, arid, and lacking in resources, and yet they are more precious than jewels to those involved.
Po:
“karen, have we agreed that I won this engagement?” Actually, since I proved you kept lying, I just stopped reading your comments until I came upon this ridiculous statement. You have no leg to stand on and I get as much out of trying to reason with you as I would talking to a wall. A wall covered with offensive graffiti.
Karen – the Philistines are probably the remnants of the Trojan War, either Greeks or Trojans. Literally the name means Sea People. They likely followed the coast from Turkey to Egypt where they landed and settled. At one point they ran the Egyptian government, if I remember correctly.
They weren’t pirates as much as they were nomads, at least at first.