A delegation bloggers understands the Itamar massacre better than the legions of Israel’s foreign press corps. Out of everything I’ve read about the grisly murders, Claire Berlinski‘s take is the most humanizing and intelligent I’ve seen:
One very quick point I’ll make is that this was clearly not a family above all of “settlers”–some alien species that exists primarily as a political bargaining point–but of human beings. In the home next door to the one that was invaded, kids’ clothing was hanging on the line next to a child’s bicycle. You simply cannot look at that and think, “This story is above all about land and politics.” This story is above all about murder. They were children and they were murdered. Two more children were orphaned. The children were targeted deliberately. This was a premeditated murder–not a crime of passion or self-defense–and it was a psychotically savage crime.
Anyone who in any way tries to rationalize or minimize this or to suggest that this is a fitting punishment for anything needs to go out and look at a three-month-old baby and ask himself what it would take to climb over a fence, climb in a window, and cut off that child’s head. If that act seems an “understandable” reaction to a political grievance to him, I don’t think we can have much of a conversation.
Unfortunately, the MSM regards the Fogels as simply “settlers;” that “S word” dominated headline after headline after headline, while the BBC placed politics ahead of murder. (Sky News skewed priorities too.) The Fogels were a family.
Other bloggers in the delegation — arranged by Act for Israel — include Chuck DeVore, Tim Mak and Judith Levy. More about their visit to Itamar at YNet News.
