Thoughts While Watching Palestinians Dancing
If your enemy drops a bomb on you or shoots your child, you will be understandably aggrieved, angry and want revenge. This is only human.
When Israel suffers a shooting, as yesterday, with 9 rabbinic students slaughtered, I understand the rage and calls for action. When Palestinian families lose their children and their homes, I understand that they too cry out for what seems like justice to them.
Here’s what I do not understand. Truly, I do not understand dancing and celebrating the deaths of civilian members of the group you oppose. Not being a pacifist, I accept that war and violence are sometimes necessities. This is always tragic and never holy. There are no holy wars. That is an oxymoron. There should be no joy in the destruction even of an enemy.
The Talmud teaches that when the Red Sea closed up on the Egyptians who were pursuing the escaping Hebrews, the angels began to rejoice. G-d rebuked the angels saying that they dare not take pleasure in the deaths of the Egyptians, by saying that “they too are my children.”
Yes, when death and destruction rain down on you, your family or people you won’t much care about mood or motive. You will have pain, loss and rage. But there is something fundamentally different between fighting and killing with enthusiasm and fighting with heart aching and eyes filled with tears.
The Palestinians danced today; they danced at 9-11, they danced while dead Israeli soldiers were dragged through the streets and displayed like animals. I have never seen Israelis dance at Palestinian suffering and death. Why?
What a powerful statement: "I have never seen Israelis dance at Palestinian suffering and death." Can any of those who condemn Israel answer the Why?
Maybe the Palestinians who dance in the street don't believe in G-d. Maybe they think their leaders are godlike and they believe only in the surrigates :-0
I cannot answer this question - but as a Jew readint the first accounts of the Palestinians joyful response to the shooting, apain shot through my heart almost greater than the pain caused by the shooting itself And that's what I asked myself: why? how can they hate their enemy this much? Certainly, younger Palestinians have been taught to hate, but my gut tells me that human beings would naturally recoil at a situation such as the one in the Yeshiva. Could the joyful reaction be "put on"? Could Hamas have somehow threatened the Palestinians and could that have been the reason for the dancing. I don't see how that could be, but I hope somehow that explains it. It is too painful to believe that the natural reaction of human beings who happen to be Palestinian is to dance at news of the death of innocent victims who happen to be Jews.
A powerful piece that speaks to ultimate horror, the slaughter of the opponents' civilian young, and the revelation of the lost humanity of the perpetrators. This, however, is what can result from the spiraling effects of unresolved differences that fuel unspeakable hatred. The dance of the Palestinians is a provocative dance of revenge that reveals how far hatred can go. What now? More killings to avenge the killings?
Imagine how George Bush would respond if Mexicans fired rockets into San Diego, walked onto the Cal State LA library and shot 9 students, and then danced in the streets of Mexico City. I can only hope the Israelis are able to exercise more restraint.