28-Sep-14: Just another armed young man who slipped through the fence looking for victims

Children of the Kibbutz Alumim community doing art therapy,
August 2014 [Image Source]

No one was killed. And even more significantly, no Israeli killed any Arab. But this is still a news story of significance because it makes concrete the danger of living side-by-side with millions of people who are, daily, fed a cultural diet of "Thou shalt kill because this is what is expected of you".

From the Times of Israel this afternoon (Sunday):

An 18-year-old Palestinian male armed with a knife and a pick was arrested Sunday near Kibbutz Alumim in the Sdot Negev Regional Council. A security coordinator from a local community caught the Palestinian about seven kilometers from the Gaza border fence, which he is believed to have crossed near Kibbutz Nahal Oz. According to Sdot Negev security coordinator Raphi Bibian, local security chiefs received an alert that there had been an infiltration from Gaza, and closed in on the intruder from three directions. The Palestinian man surrendered without a fight. [Times of Israel]

He's not a threat any more...
for now [Image Source]

The brief report might have made a larger mark on the world's news headlines if an Israeli "security coordinator" on the frontier settlement's perimeter had been looking in the wrong direction at the critical moment, or if, instead of taking the armed and motivated 18 year old into custody, the security forces based in the Israeli communities close to the Gaza border had eliminated the threat in the customary way of militaries.

Those are not the things that happened. So this young man will be held in custody for a while and then freed. If he plays his cards right, he may yet get to fulfill the lethal ambitions that others in his world have for him.

Meanwhile those who believe Israel is engaged in "a war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people", as Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, called it before the UN General Assembly on Friday, will ignore such events. And those who depend on the mainstream news media for an understanding of life in the Arab/Israel conflict will continue to be oblivious to its realities.

(For those interested to see a slice of life in the Alumim kibbutz community, here's a video clip from two months ago.)