Saturday, July 5, 2008

A friend's commentary on the recent violence in Jerusalem

"Many of you have probably seen the latest news of violence in Jerusalem: a Palestinian living in Israel attacked a bus while driving a bulldozer killing several people. What a tragedy. Immediately this was declared the latest act of Palestinian terrorism. This man, however despicable the act, was not a terrorist and did not belong to any terrorist organizations. The Israelis responded with calls to cut off this man's whole neighborhood from Israel with the infamous wall. This is to affectively isolate and withdraw the citizenship of everyone in his whole town. Furthermore, his home, which houses 22 people (!) is scheduled to be demolished. What a tragedy.

In the US it would be as if a school shooting was done by a black student from a poor inner-city neighborhood and then the US government demolishing this student's family's home and then calling for his whole black neighborhood to be punished by removing their citizenship and booting them out of the country. This is collective punishment and this is racism. Inflicting pain on others does not do away with our own pain and it does not provide security. Let us pray for both the victims of this attack as well as for the family of the attacker."

BBC does a good job in covering the story. Please read the story at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7490212.stm:

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