WarSclerotic

The Jewish teenagers who murdered Muhammed Abu Khdeir just before dawn last week are despicable creatures.

The pop sociologist arguing, with some level of probability, that the parents and/or teachers were ultimately the ones responsible for the perpetrators’ arrant lack of humanity can’t even mitigate our revulsion in the slightest.

On Sunday, Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett suggested that if the Knesset goes ahead and passes a law prohibiting government pardons for murderers, these killers should be the first to suffer the heavy price. The Jewish nation will not impose on foreign killers what it does not enforce, first and foremost, on its own kind.

Official Israel, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu down, responded appropriately to the crime. In particular, reactions from the Right were very important, with an emphasis on their rabbis (whose voices we are still waiting to hear). The family of Naftali Frenkel, the teenage boy who was murdered by Palestinians, set the good example by sending its condolences to the Abu Khdeir family.

Against this backdrop, the recent politicking comes off as pretty repulsive. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday demanded an international investigative commission. But why? To clarify why the Palestinian perpetrators danced over the Jewish teens’ blood?

Why did Abbas and his cohort issue such limp condemnations, contrary to the Jewish leadership’s explicit statements, and then upon hearing of Abu Khdeir’s murder crawl out of their skins rattling sabers left and right?

Condemnation doesn’t equate consolation. It is a tool used to gauge how leaders relate to murder. Israeli Arabs in the Galilee may have admitted to murdering Shelly Dadon, but what sort of official reaction, if any, did we hear from Balad or the heads of the Arab municipalities? A whimper and nothing more.

On the contrary, a good chunk of the Israeli Arab community has been busy fanning the flames of a third intifada. They set junctions on fire and hurl stones. Masked marauders wander from place to place whipping up a frenzy against Israel, apparently assuming that because of the Or Commission, which examined the Arab riots of 2000, the police would resist fulfilling their roles fully and show a lax response. Police Commissioner Insp. Gen. Yohanan Danino ought to make them face their miscalculation.

The police have a difficult mission ahead of them. They must determine how to uphold the right to protest and overlook minor infractions while simultaneously preventing serious violence from suffusing the public sphere and reaching unlawful levels.

The sickly murder of three Jewish teenagers doesn’t greenlight revenge or price-tag attacks or incitement under the banner of “death to Arabs.” The base killing of a Palestinian teenager does not justify incitement against the state’s existence or throwing stones at the police, drivers and innocent citizens. We cannot allow the behavior of both Jews and Arabs to become all mixed up over this.

There are enough hot-tempered individuals roving the public sphere. The stormy debate is Jewish-Arab, but it also exists among certain sectors. Jews may be more vocal, but there also is not much agreement among the Arabs. Outside Israel, some Muslim leaders continue to pour oil on the fire imported by three sad years of an Arab Spring.

On Sunday, British magazine The Economist devoted its edition to “The tragedy of the Arabs — a poisoned history.” It isn’t just our neighbors paying the price, but Israel as well. There’s nothing we can do except grind our teeth, demonstrate measured power and mark a border in bold between what’s allowed and what’s not.