Celebration mood in the pro-Palestinian media: Five people were shot dead in the most recent terrorist attack on Tuesday evening in Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv. The killings already have an Arabic hashtag on social media: Operation Bnei Brak. Videos of the murder are posted underneath, and the perpetrator’s pictures are decorated with flowers.
Two foreign workers from Ukraine are among the killed passers-by. Her death is also celebrated by the pro-Palestinian extremists. Journalist and Middle East correspondent Seth J. Franthman considers this questionable. In the Jerusalem Post he analyzes why.
Franthman points to the reactions on social media when it became known that two Ukrainians were victims of the hate crime. A woman then posted the photos of the victims and described the act as a “heroic action”. Smileys mocking the deaths of the victims are posted in the comments, as well as clapping hands emojis.
Some of the Arabic comments on the murdered Ukrainians even refer to Zelenskyy and praise Vladimir Putin. A man celebrated the two’s deaths by posting smiling smiley faces and a heart with the word “Putin.” He has 1700 followers.
Franthman also points out something else: In all reports, the killed passersby – including the two Ukrainians – are referred to as “settlers”. That sounds absurd to western ears, after all only the Israelis living in the West Bank are considered “settlers”. “However, in the populist Palestinian media and among social media users, the term almost always refers to everyone living in Israel,” the Middle East correspondent points out. “The term ‘settlers’ in this context does not refer only to Jewish Israelis or Jews in general. It also refers to foreigners living in Israel or tourists.”
Thus, two Ukrainian victims living in Israel are seen as “settlers”. “To understand how low the populist, nationalist, terrorist and far-right Palestinian narrative has sunk over the decades, one need only realize that the assassination of anyone in Israel is acceptable, whether they are Jewish, Arab or Ukrainian is,” emphasizes Franthman.
The statements of terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad would also prove this. No one seems to care that two of the victims are Ukrainians and are undoubtedly innocent. The terrorists had apparently “usually usurped a genocidal ‘right’ to kill whoever they want – and then be celebrated as ‘heroes’. Murdering a human being indiscriminately is a new definition of ‘heroic’, but that’s what the years of justifying these crimes as ‘resistance’ has done.”
There is no conflict here. “It is also unclear why we say the perpetrators are part of a ‘militancy’, which would imply that there is a ‘military’ aspect to this. A man with a gun who kills an unarmed man sitting eating falafel is not involved in a ‘military’ action. He is committing a hate crime and a crime against humanity. We should consider this phenomenon a hate crime. The Ku Klux Klan lynching people was not ‘conflict’ and it was not ‘militancy’. It was a hate crime. And that’s essentially what’s happening here.”
