26-Jun-15: Spring of hope and revenge

The spring at Ein Bubin - today [Image Source]

It's a delightful Friday - blue sky, bright sunshine, temperature in the mid-twenties (Celsius, of course), a light breeze.

The photograph above was snapped today and features prominently on the Israel National News site. It was snapped at the natural springs pool in the Binyamin district just north of Jerusalem where Danny Gonen spent last Friday, and close to where he and his companion, driving away from what must have been a lovely interlude, were flagged down by an Arab. He appeared to need help and had something he wanted to ask them.

But he didn't in fact need help, and shot Danny Gonen at point blank range, murdering him. The companion, Netanel Hadad, was injured.

Whether informally or by arrangement (we don't know), a revenge scenario was hatched by people living in the vicinity. Evidence of their act of vengeance can be seen above - converging as families on the pool and demonstratively enjoying themselves at this very moment, Friday afternoon.

The first signs of the extremist scheme were articulated at the funeral a few days ago when the mayor of Lod, a city on the south side of Tel Aviv and adjoining Ben Gurion airport, and home to the two victims, swore beside the open grave that scholarship awards would be created in the murdered man's name:

"Instead of dealing with unnecessary culture wars, we should be united against our enemies who rise up to destroy us, some of them have only one culture - that of murder and violence." ...Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel said, "Vengeance belongs to God Almighty. We say to you, the Gonen family, Lod, the nation of Israel: We will continue to build Lod, Dolev and Ma'aleh Adumim, where Danny studied. We will build our country spiritually and materially. The Ein Bubin spring will from now be named after Danny. We shall visit there, we shall plant and take root there and in all of the Land of Israel." [Ynet, June 21, 2015]

A fiendish plot: more scholarships, more education, more progress, more achievement, more swimming.

How are the vast numbers of Palestinian Arabs who align themselves with the strategy of shooting to kill Israelis when it's possible to do so [see "56% support return to an armed intifada", Palestinian Public Opinion Poll No. 54, December 2014], going to cope with that?

Actually, we fear that we do actually know.