Saturday, March 4, 2006
The opportunistic reaction to the nut-ball couple and their daughter who made a ruckus in the Church of the Anunciation in Nazareth must almost be seen to be believed. Projection from traitorous MK's, rioting locals...even Islamic Jihad is getting into the condemnation game. "[T]he attack [i]s a result of the hate culture which Israel feeds to its people." This, my friends, is chutzpah. And it's a little difficult to blame the incident on anti-minority discrimination when the wife's a Christian, isn't it?
Protesters carry banners saying 'Israel breeds hate'
Police assessed that the motive for the church attack was the decision by a Jerusalem social welfare agency to remove the couple's third daughter from their home because they were deemed unfit to be parents, while Havivi's daughter, Leila, admitted to police that, "the motive behind our actions was economic."
She added that her father specifically chose a church so as to shock the world and to bring attention to the family's economic distress...
According to this AP story (which, btw, was singular for its lack of solid info while it spun to blame the event on Israeli racism before edited):
Police said the couple had previously threatened to attack churches, and also spent time in the Palestinian territories, including a visit to the late Yasser Arafat's headquarters. Israeli media reported that the young woman with them was a daughter, though it was not known how many children they have...
See? It's dead Arafat's fault.
It's early yet, but it certainly appears from all accounts this was a deranged couple and their adult daughter acting in a manner that by definition no one could predict -- that is, insanely. Sad to see rabble-rousing and race-baiting isn't confined to the PA side of the Green Line. No one was killed or seriously hurt in the church incident. Hopefully no one will be from the goings-on afterward.
Update: Meryl and Laurence are all over this here and here.
Also see Daniel in Brookline, here.
Update2: Ranting Sandmonkey does his thing, here.
Power Line has a good post on this, although I did send them the following note:
It might seem like a nit, but actually, the wife was Christian, which makes their daughter also likely Christian.
This is an important detail it would be easy to overlook in the twisted and labored reporting that you so correctly point out has been happening since the story broke -- the AP's has been particularly bad. There are a lot of interesting factors here, among them the lengths to which the press goes to hammer events into precast molds as well as the lack of agency women are given for their own actions in Middle Eastern affairs, even by the reporters who tell their stories.
They have some photos and commentary from a Christian perspective worth reading. (Edit: They have corrected the entry.)
The Christian Arabs have no problems protesting the "Israelis" but the Muslims who try to build a Mosque on a holy site or who take over the Nativity and shit all over it or who riot throughout the West Bank and threaten and burn down businesses.
It's like the abused kid who seems closer and more affectionate towards the abusive parent in public.
Yes, around Christmas time the lament from the Christian quarters was that Bethleheim was getting to be Christian-rein, but it was not the fault of the Muslims, harassing Christians at every turn, but of the Israelis' crackdowns that was ruining the tourist trade.