Monsters in the Middle East

When you consider the Arab-Israeli conflict, consider also who it is that the Israelis are having to deal with. If you are heartened by democracy spreading in Arab countries (if in fact that happens), consider who it is will be voting for governments in those countries.

Glen Beck describes the murder of Israeli settler family Uri and Ruth and their three children Yoav (11), Elad (4), and Hadas (3 months) (thankfully three children escaped) by a Palestinian terrorist.



Here is an interview with the Vogels a year ago.



Here is the Fogel family playing in their home.



Here are the surviving children with their grandmother, if your heart can stand it.



My column today, "Middle East Murder," addresses an aspect of this. I should have titled it "Middle East Massacre."

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal has a fine column on the subject, "Are Israeli Settlers Human?" (You may have to Google the title to get at the column.)

A few years ago, British poet and Oxford don Tom Paulin offered a view on what should be done to certain Jewish settlers. "[They] should be shot dead," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them." As for Israel itself, it was, he said, "an historical obscenity."

Last Friday, apparently one or more members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the terrorist wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's "moderate" Fatah party, broke into the West Bank home of Udi and Ruth Fogel. The Jewish couple were stabbed to death along with their 11-year-old son Yoav, their 4-year-old son Elad and their 3-month-old daughter Hadas. Photographs taken after the murders and posted online show a literal bloodbath. Is Mr. Paulin satisfied now?

Unquestionably pleased are residents of the Palestinian town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, who "hit the streets Saturday to celebrate the terror attack" and "handed out candy and sweets," according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. The paper quoted one Rafah resident saying the massacre was "a natural response to the harm settlers inflict on the Palestinian residents in the West Bank." Just what kind of society thinks it's "natural" to slit the throats of children in their beds?

The answer: The same society that has named summer camps, soccer tournaments and a public square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian woman who in March 1978 killed an American photographer and hijacked a pair of Israeli buses, leading to the slaughter of 37 Israeli civilians, 13 children among them. ...

The mystery of iniquity.