Israeli leaders' threats are not simply stoking an ugly mood on the street. The huge muscle of the Israeli security apparatus is flexing at their behest too. That was given graphic illustration in video footage of armed police in Jerusalem relentlessly kicking and punching a child -- a 15-year-old American relative of Abu Khdeir -- as he lay cuffed and helpless on the ground.
The cabinet is plotting a more subtle revenge. It plans to build new settlements -- violence against Palestinian life on the little slivers of territory left to them -- specifically to honor the three teenagers. Guarded by the army, settlers have already set up a new encampment in the West Bank.
The army, meanwhile, launched a series of strikes on Gaza, culminating in a new large-scale attack dubbed Operation Protective Edge. It has also revived a policy of demolishing the homes of relatives of Palestinian terror suspects. Backed by the courts, soldiers blew up the family homes of two men it accused of being behind the teenagers' abduction.
As Human Rights Watch warned, Israel's recent actions -- mass arrests; armed raids; the killing of Palestinians, including minors; lockdowns of cities, house demolitions; and air strikes -- amounted to "collective punishment," international law's euphemism for revenge, against Palestinians.
In the face of the enduring violence of Israel's occupation, and the licence it provides soldiers to humiliate and oppress, ordinary Palestinians have a stark choice: to submit or resist. Ordinary Israelis, on the other hand, do not need to seek revenge on their own account. The Israeli state, military and courts are there every day doing it for them.
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