Naivety Shattered
German tourist who was almost lynched: ‘It definitely CHANGES MY MIND about the Palestinians.’
Surprised by anger - Palestinian youth at a prior incident in the Shechem (Nablus) area.
Gerald Hetzel was a young German tourist innocently trying to visit ancient archaeology, and unprepared for a visceral hatred about to rock his world. He and a fellow German friend were driving an Israeli rental car into Shechem (Nablus) when young Palestinians zeroed in on them. Thinking they were Jews, the hooligans attacked them and their vehicle. A lynch mob gathered with worrying speed. Several Palestinian policemen on the scene seemed powerless to prevent an impending double murder. The tourists were lucky to escape down side alleys. This is part of Gerald’s testimonial responses to the Israeli news outlet Kan 11:
“We felt very, very afraid. I felt really, really endangered… [I] did not know if I would get out of there alive because they had so much hate against us…
“I was a few times in Judea and Samaria – to Ramallah also, with rented cars; and I never had any issue there.
“So I did not expect this to happen, that we were literally attacked by a mob of young angry people… And we tried to explain in English that we are tourists, that we are from Germany, we are both not* Jewish – so we are not a target for them.
“But they didn’t understand. They didn’t even listen really to us. They just screamed at us, and they started first to bump with their fists against our car, and then they took some traffic signs and rocks that they were throwing against us…
“It definitely changed my mind about the Palestinians
because so far I had much better experience with them. And it just
showed me that kind of out of nowhere they can attack you. And they were
so triggered by this really, really small Israeli flag on the car that
they decided to attack us. And I don’t know if they wanted to kill us,
but we definitely had this impression.”
One sub-text is that if they had been Jews, maybe some violence would have been expected or even acceptable in Gerald’s mindset.
How painfully poignant that these young tourists got such a bitter, stark taste of being treated as if they were Jews – of feeling for a few harrowing minutes what it would have been like to have been born as descendants of Jacob – still under fire, 79 years after the Holocaust.
This narrowly-averted murderous lynch provides yet more sobering confirmation that the mainstream European and global news media have grossly misrepresented the Palestinian cause.
How many others like Gerald have allowed themselves to be convinced of the following:
- That the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is morally, culturally and religiously symmetrical?
- That ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria is logical?
- That the Palestinian narrative and modes of operation are reasonable!?
__________________
Hate Is the Enemy of Peace, and the Palestinians Have It in Spades
Attack on German tourists highlights institutionalized Palestinian Jew-hatred that makes real peace impossible.
Most Palestinians have come to view hatred of the Jews as a way of life
There never can be genuine and lasting peace in the Holy Land so long as one side hates the other with every fiber of their being. A signed piece of paper simply won’t change that. And the Palestinian Arabs have demonstrated time and again that their hatred of Israel and the Jews is as deep as it is intractable.
“I really felt the hate from their eyes, and from the way they were acting,” said one of two German tourists who were mercilessly attacked by a Palestinian mob after entering the town of Nablus (biblical Shechem) in Samaria on Saturday.
“I’ve never encountered a situation like this. It was a very, very dangerous situation, and we really thought they wanted to kill us,” continued Gerald Hetzel in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News.
Hetzel and his traveling partner were in a rental car when they entered Nablus. Local Palestinians saw the yellow Israeli license plates and light skin color and assumed they must be Jews.
It didn’t take long before just the hint of Jews present whipped bystanders into a violent frenzy.
“They were bringing stones and a traffic sign and throwing everything against the car. After one or two minutes they pulled out a knife and stabbed the wheels of the car, and also threatened my friend,” recounted Hetzel.
The tourists eventually escaped with the help of an Arab Israeli man.
Hetzel said the experience had forever altered his view of the conflict.
“It definitely changes my view on the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority,” he explained. “They told me if they meet a Jew on the street, they want to kill him, just like this. And I think it’s a big problem they have so much hate in their education.”
What Hetzel heard from local Palestinians and experienced at their hands is nothing new. In casual conversation and Arabic-language media interviews, average Palestinians will freely and regularly acknowledge their desire to murder every Jew in accordance with what the Koran teaches, and to themselves die as martyrs in the struggle against Israel.
The trouble is that international peace brokers aren’t interested in the reality on the streets. Which means they aren’t really interested in peace. Not genuine peace.
There are plenty of Palestinians who don’t hate the Jews. We know and have interviewed them. They are sick of conflict and understand that coexistence and cooperation benefit everyone. Some have come to appreciate, even love (!) Israel and what it stands for. But for every Palestinian who thinks this way, 10 more believe it to be their undying duty to hate and harass the Jews.
This is the result of centuries of Islamic teaching, amplified in the past 25 years by venomous Palestinian Authority indoctrination that permeates local media, online forums and even elementary school classrooms.
Examples of this indoctrination and incitement are too numerous to list. For those wanting to investigate, Palestinian Media Watch is a good place to start.
The bottom line is this: When the Palestinian Authority itself has so ensured that a majority of its people will never accept any agreement it signs with Israel, how is peace possible? What is their real agenda? And what is Israel to do?
The last is not an easy question to answer from a worldly point of view. For us as believers, the answer is obvious. Trust in the Lord. But try telling that to the masses who are currently protesting because they fear the make-up and policies of the current religious-minded government led by Benjamin Netanyahu will turn Israel into a theocratic state. They don’t want God having the final say over anything, even as their own human efforts to solve this and other pressing issues come to naught.
No comments:
Post a Comment