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<div class="breadcrumb"><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/opeds">Opinion/Editorial</a></div>
<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Netanyahu government knew teens
were dead as it whipped up racist frenzy</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/max-blumenthal"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Max Blumenthal</a> </div>
<div class="field-publisher">
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">The Electronic Intifada</a> </div>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-07-08T03:44:00+00:00">8
July 2014</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
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<p>At a right-wing protest in Jerusalem a sign reads “May
God avenge their blood” and a youth wears a sticker
stating “Kahane was right,” referring to the Brooklyn-born
violent settler movement leader, 1 July.</p>
<span class="credit">(<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/tali-mayer"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Tali Mayer</a> / <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/activestills"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ActiveStills</a>)</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><em>“Cursed be he who says, ‘Avenge!‘ “ </em><br>
<em>—Chaim Bialik, from “On The Slaughter”</em></p>
<p>From the moment three Israeli teens were reported missing last
month, Israeli Prime Minister <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/benjamin-netanyahu">Benjamin
Netanyahu</a> and the country’s military-intelligence
apparatus suppressed the flow of information to the general
public. Through a toxic blend of propaganda, subterfuge and
incitement, they inflamed a precarious situation, manipulating
Israelis into supporting their agenda until they made an utterly
avoidable nightmare inevitable.</p>
<p>Israeli police, intelligence officials and Netanyahu knew
within hours of the kidnapping and murder of the three teens
that they had been killed. And they knew who the prime suspects
were less than a day after the kidnapping was reported.</p>
<p>Rather than reveal these details to the public, Israel’s <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/shin-bet">Shin Bet</a>
intelligence agency imposed a <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gag-order">gag order</a>
on the national media, barring news outlets from reporting that
the teens had almost certainly been killed, and forbidding them
from revealing the identities of their suspected killers. The
Shin Bet even lied to the parents of the kidnapped teens,
deceiving them into believing their sons were alive.</p>
<p>Instead of mounting a limited action to capture the suspected
perpetrators and retrieve the teens’ bodies, Netanyahu staged an
aggressive international public relations campaign, demanding
sympathy and outrage from world leaders, who were also given the
impression that the missing teens were still alive.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Israel’s armed forces rampaged throughout the
occupied West Bank and bombarded the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza">Gaza Strip</a>
in a campaign of collective punishment deceptively marketed to
Israelis and the world as a rescue mission.</p>
<p>Critical details that were known all along by Netanyahu and the
military-intelligence apparatus were relayed to the Israeli
public only after the abduction of more than 560 Palestinians,
including at least 200 still held without charges; after the
raiding of Palestinian universities and ransacking of countless
homes; after six Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli
forces; after American-trained <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinian-authority-police">Palestinian
Authority police</a> assisted Israeli soldiers attacking
Palestinian youths in the center of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ramallah">Ramallah</a>;
after the alleged <a
href="http://euromid.org/en/article/533%E2%80%9D">theft</a> by
Israeli troops of $3 million in US dollars; and after Israel’s
international public relations extravaganza had run its course.</p>
<p>The assault on the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/west-bank">West Bank</a>
arrived on the heels of the collapse of the US-led framework
negotiations, for which the US blamed Netanyahu, and immediately
after <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hamas">Hamas’</a>
ratification of a unity deal with the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/fatah">Fatah</a>-controlled
Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu was still smarting from the US
recognition of the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/national-unity-government">unity
government</a> when news of the kidnapping reached him. Never
one to miss an opportunity to undermine the Palestinians, he and
his inner circle resolved to milk the kidnapping for maximum
propaganda value.</p>
<p>Weeks after the incident, it is now clear that the Israeli
government, intelligence services and army engaged in a cover-up
to provide themselves with the political space they required for
a military campaign that had little to do with rescuing any
kidnapped teens.</p>
<p>The disinformation campaign they waged sent a heavily
indoctrinated, comprehensively militarized population into a
tribalistic frenzy, provoking a wave of high-level incitement,
the shocking revenge killing of an innocent Palestinian teen and
rioting across East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Where the chaos will end and how far it will spread is unknown.
But its origins are increasingly clear.</p>
<h2>Gagging the media, lying to teens’ parents</h2>
<p>On 12 June, three Jewish Israeli youths, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad
Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, went missing while hitchhiking from Kfar
Etzion, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. At
10:25pm, Shaar placed a panicked call to Israeli police.</p>
<p>During <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Brothers-Keeper/In-extended-version-of-kidnapped-teens-call-to-police-murderers-heard-singing-in-celebration-361270">the
eerie call lasting two minutes and nine seconds</a>, the
supposed kidnappers can be heard ordering the youths to keep
their heads down. Israel Radio plays in the background as Shaar
repeatedly appeals for help. Then several gunshots can be heard
followed by celebratory singing as the kidnappers remark, “We
got three.” The teens had been killed.</p>
<p>It took until the next morning for the police to connect the
call to a missing persons report filed by the youths’ parents.
In a meeting with Shin Bet officials that day, the teens’
parents listened to a recording of the phone call.</p>
<p>Bat Galim Shaar, the mother of Gilad Shaar, demanded
investigators explain to her why gunshots can be heard in the
background, and if this meant that her son was dead.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/182438#.U7soso1dWzs">According
to Bat Galim Shaar</a>, police claimed the bullets were
“blanks.” When the car used by the alleged kidnappers was
discovered burned by a roadside, the Shin Bet <a
href="http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2014/07/02/israeli-police-plant-false-story-murdered-palestinian-boy-was-gay-flood-social-media-with-disinformation/">told
her</a> no DNA was found. In fact, bullets and blood were
present throughout the interior of the car. The Shin Bet had
lied to the parents of the missing teens in order to stoke false
hopes that their sons were alive.</p>
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<div class="legend">
<p>Israeli soldiers secure the area around a burnt car near
the West Bank city of Hebron on 13 June after three
Israeli teens went missing the day before.</p>
<span class="credit">(<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/mamoun-wazwaz"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mamoun Wazwaz</a> / <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/apa-images"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">APA images</a>)</span>
</div>
</div>
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<p>“When [the Shin Bet] told me finally at 6:00am Friday that the
army was on the job, I felt better — as if we were in good
hands,” Bat Galim Shaar told Israel’s Channel 10. “I was naïve,
I told everyone Gilad would be home before Shabbat.”</p>
<p>Having deceived the victims’ parents, Israel’s
military-intelligence apparatus moved to conceal the truth from
the general public, imposing a gag order that barred the
country’s media from reporting on the sound of gunshots in the
recorded call to police.</p>
<p>According to the text of the gag order, <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/06/maintains-missing-manipulation.html">which
was first published in English at <em>Mondoweiss</em></a>,
the military had forbidden Israeli reporters from publicizing
“All the details of the investigation” and “All details that
might identify the suspect.”</p>
<p>Not only did all involved in the investigation — Netanyahu, the
Shin Bet, the military — know right away that the three missing
teens were almost certainly dead, they had identified the two
men they believed were responsible for the crime little more
than a day after it occurred.</p>
<p>To legitimize the military’s wider goals, they withheld this
information as well.</p>
<h2>Hiding the suspects</h2>
<p>On 17 June, Arabic-language news site <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/rai-al-youm"><em>Rai
Al Youm</em></a> <a
href="http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=106495">reported</a> that
Israeli police and Shin Bet agents had raided the homes of
Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eishe, the main suspects, near the
southern West Bank city of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hebron">Hebron</a>.
As a Palestinian news outlet based in London, <em>Rai Al Youm</em>
was not subject to the Israeli military’s gag order and was
therefore free to publish the names of the two accused
kidnappers.</p>
<p>Citing a report in the Israeli online news outlet Walla! which
was either scrubbed due to the gag order or otherwise rendered
inaccessible, <em>Rai Al Youm</em> summarized an account by the
father of Abu Eishe as follows: “On Saturday at dawn [two days
after the alleged kidnapping was reported], special forces of
the Israeli army stormed into the house and interrogated sons of
the family trying to find any information that could lead them
to his whereabouts but they were unsuccessful.”</p>
<p>Abu Eishe’s father added that the Shin Bet had also arrested
his son’s wife to interrogate her about his whereabouts. An
uncle of Qawasmeh remarked that four of his nephew’s brothers
and his wife were arrested the day after the alleged kidnapping
and interrogated.</p>
<p><em>Rai Al Youm</em> added: “several of the military
correspondents in the Hebrew media have reported last Friday on
a statement attributed to a Palestinian security official in
which he said that the PA [Palestinian Authority] is tracking
two Hamas personnel who disappeared last Thursday [the day of
the kidnapping] and that the security forces of the PA have
given the information they have to Israel. And now it’s clear
that this story was true and that Israel is looking for them and
has charged them with being behind the kidnapping.”</p>
<p>Allison Deger, a correspondent for <em>Mondoweiss</em>, <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/aftermath-demolitions-palestinian.html">visited
the Qawasmeh home and confirmed</a> that the army and Shin Bet
brought several male members of the families in for
interrogation on 14 June.</p>
<div id="file-27730" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg
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<img typeof="foaf:Image"
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<p>The damaged family home of Amer Abu Eishe, one of two
Palestinians identified by Israel as suspects in the
killing of three Israeli teenagers, after it was destroyed
by the Israeli army in the West Bank city of Hebron, 1
July.</p>
<span class="credit">(<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/oren-ziv"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Oren Ziv</a> / <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/activestills"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ActiveStills</a>)</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>In a normal high-profile criminal investigation, the names of
fugitive suspects are widely publicized. Investigators
prominently display posters of the wanted criminals in public
spaces while police officials stage press conferences appealing
for help from the public. In this case, however, Israel’s
intelligence services chose to keep their suspects’ identities a
closely-held secret for two weeks.</p>
<p>While Netanyahu and his top deputies blamed the entire
membership of Hamas for the kidnapping, the Shin Bet gag order
suppressed all information relating to the identities of the
suspects until 26 June. As far as the Israeli public knew, the
kidnappers could have been anywhere in the West Bank, in any
schoolhouse or coffee house or hen house where anyone remotely
affiliated with Hamas congregated.</p>
<p>Having manipulated an exceptionally suggestible population
through the careful management of information, the military had
all the political latitude it needed to rampage through cities
far from the scene of the crime.</p>
<p>During a raid of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/birzeit-university">Birzeit
University</a> near Ramallah, <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/06/nighttime-israeli-university.html">Israeli
troops seized hundreds of Hamas flags, carting them away in
trucks</a> as though they had obtained valuable evidence. <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/01/us-palestinians-israel-strike-idUSKBN0F638Q20140701">When
the army bombarded the Gaza Strip</a>, the only justification
it needed was that the besieged coastal territory was governed
by Hamas.</p>
<p>A poll released on 2 July revealed that <a
href="http://hamodia.com/2014/07/03/poll-jewish-home-party-gains-likud/">76
percent of Jewish Israelis approved</a> of the army’s actions
and expressed overwhelming support for the Shin Bet.</p>
<p>In the near term, the gag order had produced its intended
result.</p>
<h2>Rogue element</h2>
<p>Though Qawasmeh and Abu Eishe were widely identified as veteran
members of Hamas’ military wing, they comprised a rogue element
that likely acted without the knowledge and against the wishes
of Hamas leadership.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/qawasmeh-clan-hebron-hamas-leadership-mahmoud-abbas.html">According
to Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar</a>, members of the
Qawasmeh clan of Hebron have earned a reputation for attacking
Israeli civilian targets during ceasefires between Hamas and
Israel.</p>
<p>While an extended family of over 10,000 can hardly be blamed
for the actions of some of its members, it is notable that
attacks carried out by fighters from the family were privately
criticized by top Hamas leaders, as Eldar explains. Hamas
leadership regarded the operations as self-destructive acts of
freebooting and often paid for them in the form of Israeli
assassinations. In each case, the violence shattered ceasefires
and inspired renewed bouts of bloodshed.</p>
<p>“The same is true now,” Eldar writes. “Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer
Abu Eishe have taken Hamas to a place where its leadership never
intended to go.”</p>
<p>Hamas leadership has yet to take responsibility for the
kidnapping and likely had no knowledge of its planning. As <em>Haaretz</em>
military correspondent <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.603017?v=C471B57C976541877D9D2D62F3C76C6D">Amos
Harel notes</a>, “So far, there is no evidence that Hamas’
leadership either in Gaza or abroad was involved in the
kidnapping.” Harel adds that the fallout of the kidnapping
“effectively froze the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation.”</p>
<p>Why would Hamas leadership have authorized an operation that so
clearly threatened to unravel the movement’s political
achievements, wrecking the vaunted unity deal and leaving Abbas
without rival in the West Bank?</p>
<p>The Israeli government’s propaganda blitz drowned out sobering
questions like these. In turn, the gag order obstructed the flow
of information that would have complicated the propaganda.</p>
<p>Determined to reframe the international media’s narrative
around Israel’s plight at the hands of Palestinian terrorism,
Netanyahu went on the offensive.</p>
<h2>#BringBackOurBoys</h2>
<p>On 17 June, the same day <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israel-orders-dismantling-camera-captured-murder-palestinian-boys">the
Israeli army forcibly confiscated CCTV cameras in Beitunia</a>
that captured footage of its soldiers killing two unarmed
Palestinian boys during a Nakba Day protest, Israeli Ambassador
to the United Nations <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W7CFUij8og">Ron Prosor
appeared behind a lectern at the UN Mission</a> in New York
City.</p>
<p>“It has been five days since our boys went missing,” Prosor
thundered, “and I ask the international community, where are
you? Where are you?!”</p>
<p>Referring to the Fatah-Hamas unity government, Prosor added:
“All those in the international community who rushed to bless
this marriage should look into the eyes of the heartbroken
parents and have the courage to take responsibility by
condemning the kidnapping. The international community bought in
to a bad deal and Israel is paying for it.”</p>
<p>Beside Prosor stood a large placard displaying the smiling
faces of the three missing teens beneath a hashtag reading
#BringBackOurBoys. Israel’s propaganda blitz was approaching its
apex.</p>
<p>For days, leaders of Israel’s trained online propaganda
brigades — from the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/idf-spokesperson">Israeli
army spokesperson’s unit</a>, to the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jewish-agency">Jewish
Agency</a>, to the Prime Minister’s Office — <a
href="http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/israelis-start-bringbackourboys-campaign/">flooded
social media with the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag</a>. Mimicking
Michelle Obama’s promotion of the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag
that aimed to raise awareness of the kidnapping of Nigerian
schoolgirls by Islamist militants, <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Sara-Netanyahu-joins-Bringbackourboys-campaign-for-kidnapped-Israeli-teens-359971">the
Israeli prime minister’s frowning wife, Sara, posted a
portrait of herself</a> on Facebook holding a card that read,
#BringBackOurBoys.</p>
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<img typeof="foaf:Image"
src="cid:part48.06090308.05020609@comcast.net" alt=""
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<p>Right-wing protesters shout anti-Palestinian slogans
during a rally outside the Israeli prime minster’s
residence in Jerusalem, 5 July. Demonstrators hold up
posters depicting the three murdered Israeli teens which
read “United to bring them home.”</p>
<span class="credit">(<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/faiz-abu-rmeleh"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Faiz Abu Rmeleh</a> / <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/activestills"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ActiveStills</a>)</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>The social media campaign reverberated throughout Jewish
communities across the US, as <a
href="http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2014/06/23/with-yellow-ribbons-the-bring-back-our-boys-campaign-spreads-in-baltimore/">synagogues
around the country displayed yellow ribbons</a> in a carefully
coordinated show of solidarity with the missing teens. In New
York City, <a
href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/181935">local
politicians appeared at pro-Israel rallies</a>, while American
diplomats from US Ambassador to the UN <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/samantha-power">Samantha
Power</a> to Ambassador <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/susan-rice">Susan
Rice</a> competed with one another <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/expressions-condolence-identify.html">to
deliver the most emotional tribute to the kidnapped teens</a>.</p>
<p>Rachel Frenkel, the mother of the kidnapped Naftali Frenkel,
was <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Brothers-Keeper/WATCH-Rachel-Fraenkel-speaks-to-UN-Human-Rights-Council-360357%E2%80%9D">junketed</a>
by the Israeli government to the UN Human Rights Committee in
Geneva, Switzerland to plead for international help in rescuing
her son.</p>
<p>The entire propaganda campaign was set into high gear despite
Netanyahu and his inner circle’s knowledge that the teens were
almost certainly dead. And it was enabled by the Shin Bet’s gag
order, which even foreign correspondents like <em>The New York
Times</em> Jerusalem bureau chief <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jodi-rudoren">Jodi
Rudoren</a> honored. The Israeli government refused to allow
the facts from interfering with what seemed like a political
opportunity.</p>
<p>Behind the pitiable image it affected before the world, Israeli
society seethed with bloodlust. A spontaneously-created <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/kill-palestinian-every-hour-says-new-israeli-facebook-page">Facebook
page</a> calling for the execution of one Palestinian prisoner
for each hour the teens remained missing, while another called
“The People of Israel Demand Revenge” garnered more than 35,000
“likes” from mostly young Israelis in just a few days.</p>
<p>Manipulated by a high-level campaign of deception and
disinformation into believing that “their boys” were still
alive, the Israeli public was about to receive shocking news.</p>
<h2>A shallow grave</h2>
<p>At 6am on 30 June, the bodies of Frenkel, Shaar and Yifrach
were found in Halhoul at the northern entrance to Hebron in the
occupied West Bank. They lay in a shallow grave on property <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.603017?v=C471B57C976541877D9D2D62F3C76C6D%E2%80%9D">owned</a>
by Marwan Qawasmeh, one of the two men suspected in their
kidnapping and killing.</p>
<p>The bodies were discovered not by the Shin Bet, but by a team
of volunteers from the Kfar Etzion Field School who led soldiers
to the location. For its part, the army had been too busy
invading Palestinian homes in areas as far away as Nablus to
effectively comb the property of a suspect less than 10
kilometers from the site of the kidnapping.</p>
<p>Hours after the discovery, Israeli forces detonated explosive
charges inside the Qawasmeh and Abu Eishe family homes. The
destruction followed an announcement that the army was
re-instituting its policy of punitive home demolitions against
the families of Palestinians accused of terrorism.</p>
<p>That afternoon, Netanyahu set the tone for the national
response, publishing remarks on his personal Twitter account
that he had just delivered in a cabinet meeting:</p>
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on Twitter</a></h2>
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on Twitter</a></h2>
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<p>Netanyahu’s comments perplexed outsiders, but for those
embedded inside the tight confines of Jewish Israeli life, they
carried a familiar resonance.</p>
<h2>From Kishinev to Jerusalem</h2>
<p>Netanyahu’s statement alludes to the final stanza of a poem by
the Hebrew writer Chaim Bialik titled “On The Slaughter”:</p>
<blockquote>Cursed be he who says: “Avenge!”<br>
Vengeance such as this, vengeance for the blood of a small boy,<br>
Satan himself has not devised-<br>
Let that blood pierce the abyss!<br>
Let that blood pierce the depths of darkness,<br>
Let it eat away the darkness and there undermine<br>
All the rotted foundations of the earth.</blockquote>
<p>In Bialik’s verse, a searing lament anchored in Biblical
language, the poet dramatized a brutal 1903 pogrom incited by
the Russian Tsar that left scores of Jews dead in the town of
Kishinev.</p>
<p>Bialik followed his first account of Kishinev with “The City of
Slaughter,” an incendiary work admonishing the victims of the
pogrom for their supposed passivity in the face of armed
marauders. (Reports of ferocious resistance by the locals was
conveniently overlooked.) The poem helped radicalize thousands
of young Jews across Eastern Europe, inspiring the formation of
self-defense committees and winning waves of adherents to the
militant philosophy of Zionism. Among those most influenced by
Bialik was Vladimir Jabotinsky, the right-wing Zionist activist
who would later become a political benefactor to Netanyahu’s
father, Benzion.</p>
<p>In his crude appropriation of Bialik’s verse, Benjamin
Netanyahu recast the Russian pogromist as a Palestinian
militant, drawing a seamless line between the Jewish nightmare
of pre-war Europe and the present-day Israeli experience. In
Netanyahu’s view, the “human animals” of Palestine had inherited
the genocidal spirit of the Tsar’s mobs and would repeat their
crimes unless Jews were prepared to fight.</p>
<p>Of course, Israeli Jews are the exact opposite of
turn-of-the-century <em>shtetl</em> dwellers girding themselves
against pogroms and ethnic cleansing. Unlike the persecuted
outclass of Eastern Europe, Israeli Jews comprise a nuclearized,
high-powered military that lord over an outcasted, largely
defenseless Palestinian population with full support from the
world’s lone superpower.</p>
<p>For his part, Netanyahu shares more in common with the Russian
Tsar who incited against religious minorities to deflect from
his political problems than he does with Bialik, the itinerant
scribe who channeled the pain of his society’s weakest members.</p>
<p>The exploitation of historical Jewish persecution has been a
constant feature of Netanyahu’s rhetoric, on bold display during
a nationally televised speech last October when he baselessly <a
href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172625">accused
the Palestinian national movement of a direct role in the
Holocaust</a>.</p>
<p>This time, amidst a dangerously pressurized atmosphere, his
demagogy helped set in motion a wave of vigilante violence that
threatened to engulf the whole of Israeli society. Then he
shrank from public view, maintaining a conspicuous silence for
several days while the extremist elements he emboldened took
control of the streets.</p>
<h2>“Murder, riots, incitement, vigilantism”</h2>
<p>As <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/jerusalem-lynch-mobs-attack-palestinians-after-israeli-teens-funerals">mobs
of Jewish youths fanned out across central Jerusalem</a> to
chant “Death to Arabs!” and search for Palestinians to assault,
<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-soldiers-celebrate-killing-palestinian-youth-revenge">active
duty Israeli soldiers took to Facebook to demand revenge</a>,
posting photos of themselves with the weapons they were aching
to use.</p>
<p>With <a
href="http://hamodia.com/2014/07/03/poll-jewish-home-party-gains-likud/">an
Israeli public opinion poll taken after the Israeli teens’
funeral</a> showing the far-right <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/habayit-hayehudi">Jewish
Home</a> party gaining ground on the right-wing <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/likud">Likud</a>,
Israeli political upstarts rushed to <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israelis-demand-blood-after-youths-bodies-found">issue
calls for blood vengeance</a> and the “annihilation” of Hamas.
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ayelet-shaked">Ayelet
Shaked</a>, a rising star of the right-wing Jewish Home party,
published a <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes%E2%80%9D">call</a>
for the genocide of Palestinians on Facebook that earned
thousands of “likes” from Israelis.</p>
<p>Rabbi Noam Perel, the secretary general of Bnei Akiva, the
world’s largest religious Zionist youth movement, upped the ante
on fanaticism when he called for turning the Israeli military
into an army of avengers <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/.premium-1.602675">“which
will not stop at 300 Philistine foreskins.”</a> Akiva’s appeal
alludes to the first book of Samuel, in which the biblical
character <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/king-david">David</a>
kills two hundred Philistines and brings back their foreskins as
evidence that he had done so.</p>
<p>Against the backdrop of fever-pitched incitement, a small car
entered the back streets of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/shuafat">Shuafat</a>,
a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, on 2 July. Behind
its darkened windows were angry young men hunting for Arab boys.</p>
<p>Following a botched kidnapping of a ten-year-old boy in the
same neighborhood the day before, <a
href="http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/regions/jerusalem/8245-jerusalem-over-170-palestinians-injured-in-day-of-clashes">a
group of men grabbed a 16-year-old named Muhammad Abu Khudair</a>,
threw him in their car and sped away. Abu Khudair was found dead
the next morning in the woods of Givat Shaul just west of
Jerusalem with burns over 90 percent of his body.</p>
<div id="file-27728" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg
media-element file-full" style="width:618px;">
<h2 class="element-invisible"><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/sites/electronicintifada.net/files/140707-arara-protests.jpg">140707-arara-protests.jpg</a></h2>
<div class="content">
<img typeof="foaf:Image"
src="cid:part79.00010706.07040605@comcast.net" alt=""
title="" height="412" width="618">
<div class="legend">
<p>Protesters in the Palestinian city of Arara in the north
of present-day Israel throw stones at Israeli police
during a demonstration following the murder of Muhammad
Abu Khudair, 5 July.</p>
<span class="credit">(<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/yotam-ronen"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Yotam Ronen</a> / <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/activestills"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ActiveStills</a>)</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>As they did after the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens,
the Shin Bet imposed a gag order on the investigation, seemingly
hoping to delay the news that Abu Khudair was the victim of
Jewish extremism. And as before, the police flooded Israeli
media with disinformation, this time <a
href="http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2014/07/02/israeli-police-plant-false-story-murdered-palestinian-boy-was-gay-flood-social-media-with-disinformation/">by
insinuating the murdered teen had been killed by members of
his own family for being gay</a>.</p>
<p><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-shows-faces-suspected-killers-palestinian-teen">The
Electronic Intifada has obtained CCTV footage</a> showing the
faces of the alleged killers of Abu Khudair just as they
abducted him. The video was concealed for several days from the
Israeli public under a new Shin Bet gag order. When the police
finally arrested the suspected killers of Abu Khudair, they
curiously <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/marginalize-muhammad-khudairs.html%E2%80%9D">staged</a>
a simultaneous press conference about an unrelated killing a
young Jewish woman, suggesting without any clear evidence that
she had been the victim of a Palestinian terrorist.</p>
<p>On 4 July, <a
hfref="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/kidnapped-palestinian-teen-was-burned-death-autopsy-shows">an
autopsy revealed that Abu Khudair’s killers had burned him
alive</a>. Protest and rioting spread from Shuafat across East
Jerusalem and into areas of northern Israel. Meanwhile, Jewish
nationalists took to Facebook to organize more lynch mobs.</p>
<p>Netanyahu surfaced briefly the day before at an Independence
Day ceremony at the US consulate in Jerusalem. With US
Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro seated by his side, the Prime
Minister was forced to confront the binge of racism that he
helped inspire.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Events/Pages/event4july030714.aspx">Speaking
in English for the consumption of his American hosts</a>,
Netanyahu declared, “Murder, riots, incitement, vigilantism —
they have no place in our democracy. And it is these democratic
values that differentiate us from our neighbors and unite us
with the United States.”</p>
<p>Outside, the chaos showed no sign of ebbing.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article has been corrected since
original publication to clarify that two popular Facebook
pages calling for revenge were created after the Israeli
teens’ disappearance; the article originally mentioned only
one page.</em></p>
<p><em>Max Blumenthal is an award winning journalist and
bestselling author. His latest book is</em> Goliath: Life and
Loathing in Greater Israel <em>(2013, Nation Books).</em></p>
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