Whodunnit?
Were the young men at the “hate dance” at the now infamous wedding invited guests?
Did Jewish extremists crash the now infamous wedding party and hoist guns, a firebomb and knives while stabbing a picture of the Arab baby who died in last summer’s arson-murder attack in Duma?
Or perhaps the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) staged the whole event?
The answer to these questions may depend on whether you believe that the Shin Bet prevented at least one of the suspects in the case from praying with tefillin and lighting Hanukkah candles. The Shin Bet has vehemently denied the allegations, which have not cropped up since, indicating they were entirely false.
It may depend on whether you believe the Shin Bet tortured the suspects, whatever “torture” means.
The latest counter-charge in what has become one of the ugliest Made in Israel sagas since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin alleges that undercover cops crashed the party and staged the hate dance.
That would answer several questions, such as:
How did the “guests” bring in knives and semi-automatic rifles into the wedding hall?
Why was the fate dance filmed?
How did the video get into the hands of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon?
The conspiracy theory, with plenty of reminders of the assassination of Rabin that was preceded by Shin Bet agent Avishai Raviv being filmed with a picture of Rabin in an SS uniform prior to Rabin’s murder, spread like wildfire Sunday.
The owner of the wedding hall reportedly claims that several men in civilian clothes and with security IDs entered the wedding hall towards end of the wedding party.
The entire dance appears to have lasted about a minute or two, with the most horrid scenes being repeated several times in the media.
The father of the groom insists that the “guests” were not invited and that he was in another part of the hall during the hate dance.
On the other hand, a bunch of screwballs sometimes crash a wedding party at the end, do their shtick and leave.
If the conspiracy theory is true, why would the Shin Bet go to such extreme means to discredit the guests? Is the Shin Bet so ticked off at being defamed by allegations of torture and banning prayer that it has to go such extremes just to “get back” at them?
Or perhaps the Shin Bet staged the hate dance so it would have a legal reason to demand the list of guests, giving them on one page the names of what may be the vast majority of some imagined nationwide Jewish terror cell that indeed is damaging the country and could incite a full-scale Palestinian Authority war if not snuffed out to the core.
There also is one side-effect to the latest conspiracy theory. Countless residents of Judea and Samaria have roundly criticized spreading the allegations, not because they are true or false but because they divert attention away from the number on task in Judea and Samaria, and that is to weed out the extremists who are growing under the feet of normal people.
Whatever your answers to the questions, remember one thing: Those who shut up are those who probably are the ones who can be believed.