Where do you want the casualties?
Under the topic of “Introducing the Old Testament”, a video is being promoted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) purporting to help congregations to “understand the conflict in the Holy Land from the perspective of Lutheran Palestinians”. The video, Forbidden Family (details available here), highlights one Christian family and how they are affected by the conditions of life in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
“The social, political, economic, and religious situation in the Holy Land is complex,” we are are told, yet the video misses an extremely important aspect of this “complexity”. David Meir-Levi points this out in his letter below to Ann Hafften, Coordinator for Middle East Networking at ELCA:
Dear Ms. Hafften,
The 8-minute video captures in exquisite and gut-wrenching detail the trials and tribulations of one, probably very characteristic, victim of the current conflict in Israel.
But the absence of the context within which Rimaz’s problems are created gives the video a deeply skewed and misleading message. The de-contextualization of Rimaz’s situation from the context of the conflict gives the viewer the impression that she is a victim of some random, almost whimsically evil anti-Christian or anti-Arab Israeli legislation.
Rimaz is indeed a victim. But not of any Israeli desires or prejudices against Arabs or Christians.
As you must know (since I wrote this to you in a previous email, which you never acknowledged and to which you never replied) that prior to changes in legislation two years ago, Israel placed no such restrictions on people in Rimaz’s situation.
Two years ago, after several horrific terror attacks inside of pre-67 Israel, which were perpetrated or facilitated by Israeli Arabs, Israel found that non-Israeli Arabs (mostly from the West Bank or Gaza Strip) were marrying Israeli Arabs in order to get Israeli ID papers so that their anti-Israel terror activities would be facilitated. With an Israeli ID card and license plates, Israeli Arabs drive unhindered through most check-points and during curfew periods.
Prior to the change in legislation, non-Israeli Arabs could marry Israeli Arabs and receive Israeli citizenship pretty much automatically. This was part of Isael’s humanitarian family reunification plan which had been in effect since 1949. More than 100,000 non-Israeli Arabs entered Israel and became Israeli citizens by means of this plan.
But….when Israel discovered that this plan was being exploited by Arab terrorists to acquire the ID cards needed to move freely through Israel, and at least a dozen or so non-Israeli Arabs had married Israeli local Arabs in order to perpetrate acts of terror, the legislation was revised.
That is why Rimaz lacks the freedom of movement that would otherwise be her natural right as a citizen of Israel.
And the same is true of the defensive barrier that makes it almost impossible for her to see her friends and family in East Jerusalem. Recall (as I have explained to you in previous emails which you have not acknowledged or answered) that the barrier was built in 2002-3 ONLY as a defensive mechanism against endless, relentless, brutal, lethal terror attacks. The fence works. Attacks were reduced by c.90%.
So Rimaz is indeed a victim, and a hapless helpless one at that. But she is not a victim of Israel. She is a victim of the Palestinian terror war.
In presenting her as a victim of Israeli machinations, you delude your audience, you stigmatize Israel, and you leave unmentioned the heinous terror crimes perpetrated daily against Israelis of all religions.
When considering Rimaz’s predicament, one must ask the question that I have several times asked you (and to which you have never replied: “Where do you want the casualties?”
With the barrier and the legislation prohibiting Rimaz freedom of movement, Rimaz and people like her are indeed the casualties of the terror war that Arafat began and his terrorist heirs are continuing.
Without the barrier and that legislation, the victims would be the dozens or scores or hundreds of Israelis who would be killed by the terror attacks that would succeed in the absence of these defensive restrictions.
So…where do you want the casualties?
David Meir-Levi
