Since the wave of blazes that rushed through Israel throughout the latter part of November, 2016, rightwing Israelis were condemned as racist for dubbing those event the “Arson Intifada.” There were four indictments of Arabs who set fires to Jewish property, including one well-organized attack that began with setting fire in an open field near a fire house in Haifa, so that firefighters were busy when the blazes were erupting elsewhere.
Still, the fact that only four Arabs have been indicted became the source of leftist scorn against Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan (Likud), accusing him of racism for daring to blame the Arabs as a whole for just four Arab arsonists.
Now it appears that the reason so few Arabs have been indicted for nationally-motivated arson is because the military prosecution is reluctant to add the nationalist item to the list of indictments. In other words, by treating those fires as having been merely criminal, and trying Arab defendants for intentional damage to property rather than terrorism, the IDF prosecution – which gave us the Elor Azaria manslaughter conviction for killing a terrorist – is able to maintain that clean record for the Muslim-Arab-Israeli community – and reality be damned.
A case in point was reported by Israeli news media on Sunday, when three Arab youths from the village of Deir Abu Mash’al, near Ramallah, in the Palestinian Authority, were indicted for fires set to the Jewish community of Halamish (a.k.a. Neveh Tzuf), in the southwestern Samarian hills to the north of Ramallah, som six miles east of the “green line.”
The fire in Halamish destroyed dozens of homes. Residents had to be evacuated for fear for their lives. Halamish is a Jewish community near the Arab village where the arsonists live. Why else would they set fire in the Jewish community if not for nationalistic reasons?
Arson crimes are committed for one of two reasons: for profit – someone pays the arsonist to do his thing – or for revenge. The Halamish fire did not result from someone carelessly tossing a lit cigarette in a garbage bin, it was a well orchestrated blaze. So why did the four Arab youths do it if not as an act of terror and hate?
Not on planet IDF prosecution, where only Jewish soldiers commit crimes and all the Arabs are just too nice to harbor hatred in their hearts.
Shouldn’t someone tell Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) at this point? We hear he wants to become Israel’s Defense Minister.