Op-Ed: A Baby is Stoned for Being an "Occupier"

The "occupation" terminology has lethal results.

Giulio Meotti

The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He is at work on a book about the Vatican and Israel.

A two-year-old Jewish girl named Adele, who lives in the "settlement" of Ariel, is fighting for her life, and her mother and two sisters are severely injured. The truck driving in front of the Bitons was attacked with stones during Palestinian Arab riots that erupted in Judea and Samaria ahead of Obama’s visit. The driver stopped short and Adele's mother, whose vision was blocked by the width of the truck, hit the back of the vehicle.

A week earlier, an old Israeli man was shot near Kedumim.

In 2011, Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan were killed when their car overturned after being pelted with boulders.

The Fogel family is already legend in the pantheon of Israel's victims of terrorism.
Who is responsible for this? The Western "symbolic violence against the Jews" is to blame, as Shmuel Trigano called it in a recent essay. The Israelis must be burn in effigy, he said, before being physically slaughtered on the streets.
The same week as the terror attack against the Bitons, a 8,000-word New York Times magazine cover story justified Palestinian Arab terrorism and called for another Intifafa.

“If there is a third Intifada, we want to be the ones who started it: One village in the West Bank tests the limits of unarmed resistance”.


The NYT's abominable cover shows the faces of eight Palestinian residents involved in the Nabi Saleh's false myth, which presents the Palestinian Intifada as a battle between IDF soldiers and Arab kids. The goal of the 8,000-word article is to angelize and exculpate Arab terrorism and stimulate the ever increasing Arab expectations.
After all, weren't these Arabs just fighting against "the occupation"? Weren't they?
Palestinian apologists and their supporters at the New York Times like to assert that such horrific acts are desperate expressions of “frustration” against Israel’s policies.
But today, 97% of the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria are governed by the Palestinian Authority. In practical terms, they manage their own lives independently. The Palestinian Arabs have a parliament and government, voted in by the Palestinian electorate in elections.
As a new Yesha's booklet prepared for Obama's visit explains, the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria carry an orange identity card with the emblem of the PA on it. They can be issued a Palestinian passport, receive a driver’s license from the Palestinian Ministry of Transportation, send their children to Palestinian-run schools, receive medical treatment from the Palestinian health-care system, be sentenced by or receive legal aid from the PA judicial system, and also acquire building permits in Areas A and B from the Palestinian Housing Ministry.
They lack authority in only two areas: security and foreign affairs, because if granted to the Palestinians, these powers would specifically endanger Israeli civilians.
Another example of symbolic violence against the Jews is the elevation of the assassin of Israeli minister Rehavam Zeevi by the French mayor of Bezons, the latest proof of Europe’s self professed anti-Semitism. Another example is Europe’s boycott of Israeli goods (why didn't Shimon Peres, in his recent address to the Europan Parliament, criticize the racist policy promoted by Europe’s governments?).
By far the worst is Barack Obama's speech in Jerusalem, where he spoke in front of an idiotic Israeli parterre: “See the world through the eyes of Palestinians”. And "peace must not be made through occupation".
This is Obama's carte blanche to murder the Jews. What will be the effect of Obama’s words in the mind of an Arab in Nablus and Gaza? It is an invitation to “liberate” the territory stolen by the Jews. Obama said it clearly: for him, there is no Eretz Israel.
It was explained to the Israeli judges by Akim Awad, the Arab who slaughtered the Fogels in Itamar: "I am a person like you, I have no mental condition, I never had a serious illness. My only illness is the Israeli occupation".
Obama has targeted the "settlers" as a group, as a dangerous "other", charging them with being "violent".
When these five Jews from the same Israeli family were killed in their own beds, a famous Italian priest, Mario Cornioli, wrote - immediately after the massacre - a subliminal justification of the killings: "What is Itamar? An illegal Israeli colony built on stolen land". This is also what Obama said in Jerusalem.
Adopting tactics reminiscent of the way some anti-Semitic regimes abroad handled their Jewish problem, Obama has targeted the "settlers" as a group, as a dangerous "other", charging them with being "violent".
Israeli writer and Holocaust survivor Aharon Appelfeld begins his story "Badenheim 1939" thus: “Spring returned to Badenheim. Bells were ringing in the country church near the town, and primeval shadows drew back into the forest”. The primeval shadows of hatred linger in the forests, while the bells of denial are ringing out their silence across Europe and the West.
The New York Times’ publications, the European Union’s protocols and Barack Obama’s rhetoric, which all together foment the blood libel and the dark lie of the occupation, must be denounced for what these really are: a burlesque masquerade of anti-Semitism which is meant to facilitate the killing of the Jews.
It is symbolic violence against Israel which opens the doors to real violence. That’s why a little Israeli girl named Adele Biton is now fighting for her life. Because this victim of terror has been turned into a "symbol of occupation".
It is the West which arms the Palestinian hand. But it is the Israeli establishment that helps anti-Semites drown the Jews in this dark lake of lies.
I saw too many compliant, awkward and pleased Jewish faces - just happy to be invited - while Obama was indicting Israel's name in front of the world.