Evil

Just after Havdalah my husband whispered to me that there had been a pigua (terror attack) in Itamar, home invasion. Very bad he said.


That's all he said, sotto voce, so as not to alert the kids.


When I found out the details myself all I could do was just watch my little ones safe in front of me and wonder how, how anyone, however angry or desparate or anything could take it upon themselves to deliberately murder tiny children in their beds, how someone could end the life of a tiny three month old baby for any reason under the sun.


This wasn't a bomb or a rocket or even a firearm, weapons which provide some modicum of distance, even of anonymity, from the victims. This was the up close and personal intimacy of a knife attack, of the killers hands on his victims, their lifeblood on his, as messy and involved as a murderer can get.


I look at the face of little 4 year-old Elad Fogel and I see my own little boy and my mind simply cannot comprehend how a person can hate an enemy so much that they could kill a tender child. I couldn't conceive of doing that to my worst enemy, but apparently my worst enemy has no problem doing that to me.


It is a small comfort that attacks like this are mercifully rare, with a lone Palestinian killer breaking and entering Israeli homes and murdering Israeli families asleep in their beds just because they are Israelis. It seems that even most terrorists balk at getting this intimate with their victims.


I don't care what grievances Palestinians may have, I don't care if they feel like they need to take up arms to achieve independence, that they feel like settlements are an affront which can't be tolerated, there is nothing that can rationalise, justify or explain this act, nothing. It is an act of pure evil.


Israelis want peace, yes, and most Israelis have been willing to go pretty far beyond their ideals in compromising for peace. Many Israelis believe that even if a deal can't be reached it is important to keep the channels open just on the principle that it's good to keep talking. There are some people though who you can't talk to though, and those Palestinians who have opted to support and celebrate the barabaric attack on the Fogel family are not people Israel can make peace with. I pray that they are not the majority. I pray that there are decent Palestinian people who are horrified by this atrocity.