Insolence is not exactly the word I’m looking for, but I couldn’t find a better word in English. Anyway below is what I’m referring to:
An angry Israeli Ambassador to UN, Dan Gillerman lashed out at Libya following the deadlock describing it as a ”terrorist country”.
”Unfortunately this is what happens when the Security Council is infiltrated by terrorists. It brings into question the legitimacy of such a country not just being in the Security Council but being a member of the United Nations,” he said.
I like the Libyan response though:
Libya’s deputy UN representative Ibrahim al-Dabbashi said his country did not need ”a certificate of good conduct from the Israeli terrorist regime.”
Full story here
On a more serious note, I cannot bring myself to commend or celebrate the attack in Jerusalem today. Even Orthodox Jewish students who support Israeli illegal settlements in the West Bank are civilians. This is just a personal thought.
I think the phrase “Empirically reprehensible, but contextually understandable” (coined by Dr. Tareq Ramadan) is a good way to sum up the situation. Below is Br. M. Saalakhan’s (founder of The Peace and Justice Foundation) commentary on the situation which I received by email, and I thought offers a needed perspective:
Recently, a brother in Islam (and friend of many years) shared a very astute observation made by the imminent Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan several years ago. “Empirically reprehensible, but contextually understandable,” is how he termed the periodic terrorist attacks committed by a small number of Palestinians against civilian targets within Occupied Palestine (aka, Israel).
These words came to mind after I learned about the most recent terrorist attack at the rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem – empirically reprehensible, but contextually understandable. Not only does this description seem fitting for the crazed gunman who went into that yeshiva, it may also apply to the reported “joyful reaction” among oppressed Palestinians in that largest open air prison in the world called Gaza.
In the coming days the world is going to be inundated with a litany of reports, analyses and commentaries, accented by political and religiously charged denunciations from an assortment of “leaders” and commentators of various stripes – all emanating from this admittedly tragic attack in Jerusalem. As detestable as this attack on a religious school is, however, it must be placed into relative context, in order for it to be properly understood and appropriately analyzed.
According to an Associated Press report by Aron Heller (released earlier today from Jerusalem), this was “the first major militant attack in Jerusalem in more than four years.”
When one juxtaposes this reality against an observation also made by [former] U.S. President Jimmy Carter, when he was making the promotional rounds for his provocative book (Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid), “No Israeli has died since August 2004 because of a so-called terrorist attack from Hamas. Almost all of the casualties in recent months have been inside Gaza…” – one is inclined to see such shrill and unbalanced denunciations as those coming out of Israel right now, for what they truly are: crass attempts to gain political and propaganda advantage from a tragedy that didn’t have to be!
(Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev reportedly stated: “Tonight’s massacre in Jerusalem is a defining moment. It is clear that those people celebrating this bloodshed have shown themselves to be not only the enemies of Israel but of all humanity.” What gall, for any representative of Zionist Israel to say such a thing!)
It has also been reported that after the attack ended, hundreds of seminary students demonstrated outside the school chanting, “Death to the Arabs!” This is precisely what instigated this tragedy in the first place; the daily deaths, and the living hell, of Christian and Muslim Arabs at the hands of unrepentant Zionists!
The seminary has been identified as the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, located at the Kiryat Moshe quarter at the entrance to Jerusalem. It is said to be a “prestigious center of Jewish studies,” identified with the leadership of the infamous Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank. (The school reportedly serves high school students and young Israeli soldiers.)
Rather than exploiting this tragedy in a manner that continues the never-ending cycle of death and destruction, it would behoove sincerely inclined peace and justice loving workers on both sides of the dividing line (but especially on the Israeli side) to reflect more deeply on the causative factors behind this mayhem…before more [Israeli] chickens come home to roost.
In the eternal struggle for peace thru justice,
El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan
