The new year has only begun, but unfortunately, Jews are reliving the same old story. International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked last Friday, is meant for the global community to mourn the six million Jewish lives we lost at the hands of the Nazis. Yet on Friday evening, we were mourning seven souls murdered in a terror attack in Jerusalem by the same antisemitism that drove the Holocaust.
Jewish people can’t seem to catch a break. Israelis dealt with two back-to-back terror attacks in less than 24 hours, a painful reminder that the same Jewish hate that existed in the 1930s still exists today.
My line of work requires me to be fully up to date with the daily activities in Israel and the rest of the neighboring region. In the last month, we have seen many escalations and incidents of rogue terror attacks, attempted shootings and car rammings that the IDF had to thwart. Media outlets reported these Palestinian deaths but failed to disclose their true nature. Terror groups like Hamas or Islamic Jihad later took responsibility for the attackers.
Palestinian kids carry "goodbye letters"
At the same time of these attacks, a friend of mine asked me if I had any information about the story circulating on social media on how Palestinian children have their “goodbye letters,” letters which Palestinian children carry in their pockets in case they get killed by IDF forces.
I was shocked to see this because without knowing about these goodbye letters, I had read and reported about what looked like a death letter from a Palestinian teenager. Omar Khamour was a 14-year-old Palestinian killed in clashes with the IDF during a raid in the West Bank where 19 Palestinians were arrested. Palestinian media disclosed Omar’s will, where he revealed his association with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group.
He wrote, “I fulfilled my dream of becoming a martyr.” Hours after Omar’s will was published, the PFLP confirmed that Omar was one of their own.
At this point, almost nothing shocks me. Not that a 14-year-old child can be a member of the PFLP, nor that the media would spin a story about goodbye letters.
Tensions rising, circling back to IDF's operation in Jenin
AS TENSIONS in the region continue to rise, it circles back to the IDF’s operation in Jenin on Thursday, January 26. The reports of what happened during the counterterror operation sound like a full-on battle. Anyone familiar with the Jenin refugee camp knows it’s a hub for conducting terror plots and that the IDF must operate there to regularly stop planned attacks against civilians.
In the aftermath of Thursday’s operation, the IDF stated they had no choice but to enter Jenin because they knew a local wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad had planned an imminent attack. They called it a ticking time bomb and said, “If we didn’t act, they would have.”
The local wing of Islamic Jihad reported that they shot at Israeli troops and detonated explosive devices in the area.
In the end, nine Palestinians were left dead, seven of whom were terrorists. Unfortunately, one of the Palestinian civilian victims was an elderly Palestinian woman whose granddaughter watched her get shot because she peered her head through the window.
Yes, what Israel needs to do for its security (and the aftermath of an operation like this) is not pretty. These operations are necessary for our security but we cannot deny the gravity of what it means for innocent civilians to lose their lives in the process.
Certain media outlets, NGOs and public figures have painted these events as a morally equivalent exchange of fire between IDF troops and Islamist groups. Mariam Barghouti even tried to justify the terror attack by claiming it happened in an illegal settlement.
Let’s make one thing clear: You cannot compare a counterterror operation intended to save lives to a terrorist who murders innocent civilians in a synagogue. When the media and the public ignore this and try to create false parallels between this and terrorists who want nothing more than to see us dead – which they did – we have a problem. Anyone trying to draw a moral equivalency between the two is part of the problem.
As an Israeli, I’m deeply saddened by the weekend events. Some of those killed were trying to save the lives of the other victims before the terrorist shot them dead, too. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, who are suffering tremendously now.
The media must do better than how they have been reporting these deaths. Israelis and Palestinians are real people, not just numbers in media reports. Neither of us deserves to die and neither of us deserves to live under violence. The media cannot minimize our deaths like this.
One thing I wish the media made very clear is that whether it’s Pittsburgh, Poway, Colleyville or even Jerusalem, Jewish people cannot safely pray in their houses of worship without the fear of antisemitic violence.
The writer is a social media activist with over 10 years of experience working for Israeli, Jewish and cause-based NGOs. She is the co-founder and COO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm specializing in geopolitics.