world » commentar y An Endless Spiral Of Violence? T he Palestinian terror attacks are end- Another worshiper was comatose until he less, a friend moaned recently. died of his wounds a year later. But the wave of attacks lacks not That was a terrible month when it came just ending but also a definite starting point. to the toll of Palestinian terrorism: Dalia For some, the latest mini-intifada Lemkus, 26, of Tekoa was stabbed began on Oct. 1, 2015, with the hei- to death at a bus stop near the nous attacks in which Rabbi Eitam entrance to Alon Shvut; Sgt. Almog Henkin and his wife, Na’ama, were Shilony, 20, was stabbed and killed killed in front of their four young at Tel Aviv’s Haganah train station; children in a roadside shooting. Border Police Inspector Jidan Assad Others consider that it started and 17-year-old yeshivah student two days later in the Old City of Shalom Aharon Badani were both Jerusalem when Aharon Banita- killed by a Palestinian ramming a Liat Collins Bennett, 22, was stabbed to death car into a crowd near a Jerusalem Jerusalum Post on his way to the Western Wall light rail station. Opinion with his wife and two young chil- In October 2014, Chaya Zissel dren; Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, a father of seven, Braun, aged three months, was killed in a was killed as he came to the family’s aid. similar attack at the same place, when a car Others start counting from the death of driven by a Palestinian threw her from her Alexander Levlovich, 64, in Jerusalem when stroller as the terrorist rammed into a crowd. rocks were thrown at his car as he drove Karen Jemima Mosquera, 22, of Ecuador, home from a Rosh Hashanah meal with his died of her wounds a few days later. family. Before that, there was Operation There have been more than 30 deaths as a Protective Edge, the war in Gaza, in which result of Palestinian violence in the last five 64 Israel Defense Forces soldiers and six months, a recent victim being IDF Reserve civilians were killed by Hamas, including a Capt. Eliav Gelman, who died on Feb. 24 4-year-old boy killed when a mortar shell hit as the result of an attack at the Gush Etzion his home. junction. And before that, in June 2014, there was But starting the list of violent incidents the kidnapping and murder of the three last September is artificial. Ask the fam- teenagers Eyal Yifrach, Gil-Ad Sha’er and ily of Malachi Moshe Rosenfeld, 26, fatally Naftali Fraenkel. That was preceded by the wounded in a drive-by shooting near Shiloh death in May of Shelly Dadon, killed by an on June 29 or of Danny Gonen, 25, killed 10 Arab taxi driver on her way to a job inter- days earlier in a shooting attack after visit- view. Passover 2014 will be remembered for ing the Ein Buvin spring near Dolev in the the death of off-duty police officer Baruch Binyamin Region. Mizrahi, on his way to a Seder night meal. Shalom Yohai Sherki, 25, run down and Permit me to skip naming victims — the killed at Jerusalem’s French Hill junction in information is available on the Foreign April was a victim of the same terrorism. Ministry website that notes that “1,303 peo- And Purim in Jerusalem last March was ple have been killed by Palestinian violence also marred by a ramming attack on border and terrorism since September 2000.” policewomen at the same spot, fortunately LONG HISTORY without fatalities. There were five fatalities, four rabbis and a But why stop there? There was also the first intifada (1987-1991) and the victims of the Druse policeman, who rushed to help when 1993 Oslo Peace process and many — too two Arabs armed with butcher knives and many — before those waves of violence. a gun attacked a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Sadly, a look at the list of names, places Har Nof neighborhood in November 2014. 30 March 3 • 2016 and dates of death shows that this is not something new. This isn’t about the (care- fully maintained) status quo of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Temple Mount. It predates “the settlements” and the 1967 Six-Day War. It started before the birth of the State of Israel in 1948. There were waves of Arab violence in the 1930s and 1920s and long, long before that. Daniel Pipes notes some “milestones” in what is now known as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including incidents such as the Oct. 2, 1938, massacre in Tiberias (part of the 1936-1939 “Arab Revolt” in British Mandate Palestine) in which Arabs killed 20 Jews, among them 11 children. The 1929 massacre of Jews in Hebron (where Jews had lived for generations) took the lives of 67 members of the community. According to Pipes, in 1920 there were 142 pogroms and 36 lesser “riots” against the Jews, incited by Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. The first attack by Arabs on a Jewish com- munity in this area took place in 1886 in Petach Tikvah, he notes. His time line begins in June 1834, in Tzfat. “[The] First recorded attack on native Jews in Israel by Muslims ... the massacres and mass rapes went on for 33 days.” It was repeated in 1838. EDUCATING YOUTH That’s why I laughed when a friend told me last week that when his first child was born in the early 1990s, he genuinely believed that there would be no need for him to serve in the IDF when he reached the age of 18. By the time my son was born in September 2001, well into the second inti- fada, I don’t think many people had illusions that peace would break out. When I saw the cover of the latest edition of the Jerusalem Report with its headline “What’s radicalizing Palestinian youth?” I couldn’t help but snort: “Palestinian adults.” IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot trig- gered a debate when he said, “When there’s a 13-year-old girl holding scissors or a knife and there is some distance between her and A Magen David Adom ambulance in Israel the soldiers, I don’t want to see a soldier open fire and empty his magazine at a girl like that, even if she is committing a very serious act. Rather, I want to see that soldier use the force necessary. I think that our soldiers are professional enough and moral enough to do that.” I salute him. Neutralizing need not mean killing. One of the characteristics in this latest phase of Palestinian violence is the young age of many of the perpetrators, as young as 11 in one (non-fatal) stabbing incident. Some of this can be attributed to the culture of martyrdom and incitement in the Palestinian territories. Partly, it is the result of even more incendiary propaganda and hate by Islamic State, which distributes its message of death and destruction via slick, sick videos on the social media. Last week, in a particularly deadly string of attacks even by Syrian standards, more than 150 people were killed in Damascus and Homs. ISIS released footage of a boy, not yet a teenager, bidding his father good- bye before driving an armored truck laden with explosives into Syrian forces, assured of a martyr’s death and jihadist’s paradise. That is why Eisenkot’s message is so important. The last thing Israelis should want is for its youth to focus only on suffer- ing, victimhood and venting frustration. The violence stretches back so far it has no beginning. Neither is there an end in sight. We, therefore, will go on being judged by our response. It has to be moral and fair, not because of what the world thinks of us but because we have to live with ourselves. And we intend to carry on living here. * Liat Collins is the editor of the International Jerusalem Post and has won acclaim for her environmental report- ing and coverage of Israeli diplomacy and the Knesset.