Palestinian terror doesn’t distinguish between its victims – analysis

“Kill them all and let God sort ’em out” isn’t politically correct unless we’re talking about Palestinian terror.

Pesach Benson, World Israel News

Tomer Morad, Eytam Magini and Barak Lufan weren’t “occupiers,” unless that word refers to Jews living anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Killed in a hail of bullets on Thursday night, the only thing they were occupying were seats in Tel Aviv’s Ilka Bar.

Wrong place, wrong time.

Amir Khoury, Yaakov Shalom, Avishai Yehezkel, Dimitri Mitrik and Victor Sorokopot weren’t necessarily “Zionists” in the classic sense of the term.

Khoury was an Arab-Israeli policeman who heroically gave his life to end a terror rampage in B’nei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city more known for religious scholarship than blue and white flags. Yehezkel took a bullet protecting his two-year-old son in a stroller.

Mitrik and Sorokopot weren’t even Israeli nationals. The two Ukrainian Jewish laborers had overstayed their tourist visas and were working illegally in construction. They were “occupying” two chairs outside a grocery store.

Again, wrong place, wrong time.

The terrorists in both attacks, Ra’ad Fathi Hazem and Dia’a Hassan Hamarsheh, were Palestinian Arabs from Jenin. They were following in the footsteps of similar terror rampages carried out by Arab-Israelis in Beersheba and Hadera.

Laura Yitzhak, Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky, Doris Yahbas and Menahem Yehezkel were all in the wrong place at the wrong time in Beersheba. Border Police officers killed while responding to the Hadera attack were Yazan Falah and Shirel Aboukrat, of Druze and French-Jewish descent respectively.

The only difference between the first and second pairs of attacks was that Muhammad Abu Al-Kiyan and cousins Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariah expressed solidarity with Islamic State, which is abhorred even by many Palestinians. Islamic State wants to build a religious caliphate spanning international borders.

Nevertheless, they killed Israelis, earning Palestinian praise.

Terrorists attack people in all of Israel — “from the river to the sea,” as the Jewish state’s enemies say — because they are victims of opportunity and nothing more.

It matters not whether the victims are Jewish, Arab, Christian, Druze, Israeli nationals or foreigners, men, women, secular or religious, old or young. If not for the quick response of security personnel, there’s no question the death toll from these four recent attacks would be far worse.

The idea of “wrong place, wrong time” is part of the fear the terrorists hope to spread. Anywhere, anytime, a Palestinian terrorist might appear out of nowhere with a gun or a knife, or behind the wheel of a car. There’s nothing particularly ideological about locations like a Hadera bus stop, a Beersheba mall, a random street in B’nei Brak, or downtown Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff.

Terrorists don’t screen potential victims’ Zionist credentials with attention to detail, just as the Nazis didn’t care how observant or even how Jewish their victims were. One Jewish grandparent was enough.

Nor do they limit their attacks to the side of the Green Line where “settlers occupy their land.” For all Israelis, including left-wingers in Tel Aviv who may even march for “Palestinians rights,” are “occupiers” who must be killed.

Hamas rockets fired from Gaza are just as indiscriminate.

Russian forces in Ukraine have yet to learn that “Kill them all and let God sort ’em out” isn’t politically correct unless we’re talking about Palestinian terror.