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Israeli Arabs

Israeli-Arabs unreservedly condemn act of terror ? for once


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
August 04, 2005

Israeli-Arab Members of Knesset and civil officials expressed an unusually intense level of outrage Thursday following a terrorist attack that saw four people gunned down on a bus in the northern town of Shfaram.

Their nearly-hysterical cries of condemnation were believed attributable to the fact that the terrorist in this rare instance was a Jew, his victims Arab.

Israeli Jews across the political spectrum reacted to the attack as they always respond when murder is committed by one of their own, expressing mortification and disgust, denouncing the killer as a "madman" and his crime as "a sinful act by a bloodthirsty terrorist."

The eruption came after a 19-year-old resident of Rishon LeZion opened fire on unarmed people in an Israeli public bus as it entered Shfaram, an Israeli-Arab town, killing the driver and two teenage girls, and wounding a number of other civilians inside and outside the vehicle.

When his gun ran out of ammunition, Eden Natan Zada was attacked and lynched by a mob from the town.

The killing sent shock waves through the nation, but was seized upon by some politicians and journalists who cast aspersions on the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who oppose the Sharon government?s ?disengagement? plan, inferring their activities were in some way to blame.

In his outburst following the attack, Israeli-Arab Member of Knesset Ahmed Tibi, a former adviser to late-terror chief Yasser Arafat, said, according to ?Ha?aretz, that the attack was the ?result of anti-Arab incitement and racism which are spreading in Israeli society. Jewish politicians treat Arab citizens as enemies and anti-Arabism translates here to the murder of innocent Arabs.?

A colleague of Tibi, MK Mohammed Barakeh, blamed Israel?s ?security, political and judicial establishment? which, he said, gave ?extreme right-wing people, terrorists, who want to set the region ablaze [the] freedom? to act.

In a statement, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Zada?s actions ?a sinful act by a bloodthirsty terrorist.? The killer, he said, had made ?a deliberate attempt to harm the relations between the citizens of Israel.? Acts of terrorism between Israeli citizens were ?the most dangerous thing for the future of Israel and its democratic stability.?

The chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (Yesha), Bentzi Lieberman, condemned the attack, telling Israel?s Channel 10 television station it had been the act of a madman.

?Murder is murder is murder,? he said, ?and there can be no other response but to denounce it completely and express revulsion.?

Israeli Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra earned the ire of the Yesha leadership when he attempted to tie the killing to the peaceful acts of protest carried out by tens of thousands of Israelis opposed to the plan to expel some 10,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza and Samaria later this month.

Labeling Thursday's killings ?a terrorist attack in every way,? Ezra called on those protesting against the intended Gaza-Samaria evacuation to stop their activities.

Responding, the Yesha Council rapped Ezra and like-minded fellow Israelis for ?the cynical use of the incident by certain political entities to try and make a connection between a serious incident [and] the democratic, legitimate and non-violent protest against the expulsion from Gush Katif.?

Arutz 7 reported that Yesha also slammed the predominantly left-wing, anti-settler media for repeatedly referring to Zada as ?a settler,? despite the fact that he came from a town on the western side of the so-called Green Line.

?Naming him 'a settler' even though he was not a resident of any settlement is an attempt to slander a whole population that is leading a democratic protest in an exemplary way. It would be better to act with more responsibility instead of criticizing only in order to gain dubious political benefits.?

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