Two Palestinians, apparently acting alone, kidnapped three Israeli teenagers who were trying to hitchhike at night from a settlement near Hebron. The objective was probably to use them as hostages for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
The action went awry when one of the three succeeded in calling the Israeli police emergency number from his mobile phone. The kidnappers, assuming that the police would soon be on their tracks, panicked and shot the three at once. They dumped the bodies in a field and fled. (Actually the police bungled things and only started their hunt the next morning.)
All of Israel was in an uproar. Many thousands of soldiers were employed for three weeks in the search for the three youngsters, combing thousands of buildings, caves and fields.
The public uproar was surely justified. But it soon degenerated into an orgy of racist incitement, which intensified from day to day. Newspapers, radio stations and TV networks competed with each other in unabashed racist diatribes, repeating the official line ad nauseam and adding their own nauseous commentary -- every day, around the clock.
The security services of the Palestinian Authority, which collaborated throughout with the Israeli security services, played a major role in discovering early on the identity of the two kidnappers (identified but not yet caught). Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, stood up in a meeting of the Arab countries and condemned the kidnapping unequivocally and was branded by many of his own people as an Arab Quisling. Israeli leaders, on the other hand, called him a hypocrite.
Israel's leading politicians let loose a salvo of utterances which would be seen anywhere else as outright fascist. A short selection:
Danny Danon, deputy Minister of Defense: "If a Russian boy had been kidnapped, Putin would have flattened village after village!"
"Jewish Home" faction leader Ayala Shaked: "With a people whose heroes are child murderers we must deal accordingly." ("Jewish Home" is a part of the government coalition.)
Noam Perl, world chairman of Bnei Akiva, the youth movement of the settlers: "An entire nation and thousands of years of history demand: Revenge!"
Uri Bank, former secretary of Uri Ariel, Housing Minister and builder of the settlements: "This is the right moment. When our children are hurt, we go berserk, no limits, dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, annexation of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), execution of all prisoners who have been condemned for murder, exile of family members of terrorists!"
And Binyamin Netanyahu himself, speaking about the entire Palestinian people: "They are not like us. We sanctify life, they sanctify death!"
When the bodies of the three were found by tourist guides, the chorus of hatred reached a new crescendo. Soldiers posted tens of thousands of messages on the internet calling for "revenge," politicians egged them on, the media added fuel, lynch mobs gathered in many places in Jerusalem to hunt Arab workers and rough them up.
Except for a few lonely voices, it seemed that all Israel had turned into a soccer mob, shouting "Death to the Arabs!"
Can anyone even imagine a present-day European or American crowd shouting "Death to the Jews?"
THE SIX arrested until now for the bestial murder of the Arab boy had come straight from one of these "Death to the Arabs" demonstrations.
First they had tried to kidnap a 9-year old boy in the same Arab neighborhood, Shuafat. One of them caught the boy in the street and dragged him towards their car, choking him at the same time. Luckily, the child succeeded in shouting "Mama!" and his mother started hitting the kidnapper with her cell phone. He panicked and ran off. The choking marks on the boy's neck could be seen for several days.
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