On the Scene of the Itamar Massacre

Two days ago I was in Itamar, in the disputed territories of the West Bank less than 48 hours after the brutal terrorist attack that took the lives of five members of the Fogel family. I was there as a media fellow with Act for Israel.

Red police tape surrounded the modest family homes that were the scene of the horrific attack which saw a mother, father and three children, the youngest three months old, killed with knives in the middle of the night.

Palestinian terrorists are suspected of killing

a family of five in this house last Friday night.

[Photo: 2011 Jennie E. DeVore]

The major media made an immediate hash of the story. The Los Angeles Times hinted that the attack was motivated by revenge – as if the claimed trigger of Israeli residents setting fire to Palestinian cars would go unnoticed in a land with the highest per capita infestation of international journalists in the world – and, as if “revenge” justified the killing of Jewish babies asleep in their homes. Other papers were similarly challenged in their attempts to appear “balanced.”

As a U.S. Army intelligence officer (now in the retired reserves), I was interested in seeing how one or more people could scale a smart security fence undetected, climb into a house, kill a family, then exfiltrate the scene of the terror attack undetected. I suspected that the attackers had to be very, very lucky or simply lucky and very well trained.

Count me as unsurprised at the unconfirmed word from WND that two officers in the U.S.-funded and trained Palestinian Authority security forces have been arrested by Israeli authorities for providing logistic and planning assistance for the terrorist attack.

After Friday night’s terror attack, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fingered constant and embedded Palestinian Authority incitement for encouraging the terrorists. It’s hard to believe that constant Israeli attempts for peace can bear any fruit when even the “moderate” and “responsible” Palestinian Authority on the West Bank (vs. the formally terrorist HAMAS in Gaza) trains Palestinian children to hate the Jews.

Yet, cooperation and coexistence would appear the commonsense course of action for Palestinians – especially when comparing their standard of living and human rights to the Arabs living neighboring lands such as Syria.

Palestinian leaders need to do right by their people and, as Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Monday during a private briefing, announce their recognition of Israel’s right to exist in Arabic to their own people and children. Only such a recognition can begin the process of changing their “…entire culture, for peace and reconciliation…” Ayalon said.

This task will be far more difficult than finding the Itamar massacre’s killers – but it is the only way Palestinians may someday enjoy a stable, prosperous state.