Posted: 6/22/2016 4:45:00 PM
Author: Stephen M. Flatow
Source: This Op-Ed originally appoeared on the Arutz 7 website on June 22, 2016.
Rocks thrown at Jews are "non violent."
by Stephen M. Flatow
The writer, a New Jersey attorney, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1995.
When is the throwing of boulders "non-violent"?
When a Palestinian throws them, of course. Just ask Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.
The Palestinian attackers first spilled oil across the highway, hoping to cause cars to slide and crash.
A few years ago, Friedman included rock-throwing in his list of types of "non-violent resistance" that he hopes Palestinians will carry out. This week, on the highway known as Route 443, some Palestinians decided to throw some of those "non-violent" rocks, including some particularly large ones.
According to Israel Hayom, two passengers in an Israeli automobile were injured when "boulders smashed into the windows of their vehicle." Before throwing the boulders, the Palestinian attackers first spilled oil across the highway, hoping to cause cars to slide and crash.
Despite attempts by advocates of the Palestinian cause to depict rock-throwers as children engaged in schoolyard hijinks, the truth is that these rock-terrorists are more sophisticated than one might imagine--sophisticated, that is, in the art of murdering and maiming Jews.
Last year, when they targeted an Israeli school bus in Jerusalem, they attacked from two sides with different weapons: one hurled rocks at the windows, while the other threw bags of black paint at the front windshield, hoping to blind the drive and cause the bus to crash.
They also long ago figured out that a rock can cause a lot more damage if thrown at an automobile moving at high speed. In fact, that's how one Palestinian rock-thrower died by his own hand--one of the rocks he threw at an Israeli car near the city of Emanuel in 2009 bounced back and hit him in the head at an extremely high velocity, because of the speed of the automobile.
Surely many Americans Jews still remember how Palestinian rock-throwers murdered U.S. citizen Asher Palmer and his young son, Yonatan. By throwing the rocks from a fast-moving car at Palmer's car, which was traveling in the other direction, they doubled the impact of the rocks. That crushed the front windshield, causing the car to crash and killing both Asher and Yonatan.
But while many American Jews may recognize the name Asher Palmer, I doubt many have heard of Route 443. Stretching for some twenty miles, the four-lane highway is one of the most heavily-traveled routes from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In other words, it is part of the lifeblood of Israeli daily life. It is also one of the most frequently-terrorized roads in the country.
Last January, the Israeli police arrested a ring of 16 Palestinians who had carried out a number of rock or firebomb attacks against Israeli motorists along Route 443. According to news media reports at the time, several of the culprits had previously served prison sentences for terrorism--thus validating, once again, the charge by some Israelis that too many terrorists are receiving unduly brief sentences. The recidivism rate among released Palestinian terrorists is alarmingly high. This problem deserves to be re-examined, and soon.
In the meantime, Israel Hayom reports that "Since last fall, the number of rock throwing incidents has increased dramatically" along Route 443. This news will no doubt come as a surprise to American Jews, since the major American news media have completely ignored the story. Dozens, hundreds, even thousands of Palestinian rock-throwing attacks against Jews do not interest the New York Times or the Washington Post.
But since a Palestinian teenager was killed in the latest incident, we can count on the American news media to suddenly sit up and pay attention. And since the teenager allegedly was a bystander rather than a perpetrator (although it remains to be explained why he was in the vicinity of Route 443 at 2:00 in the morning, when the attacks took place), the U.S. media no doubt will be very interested.
Our own American legal system has already shown the way in dealing with rock-throwing. Not by ignoring it. Not by re-defining it as "non-violent resistance." But by treating it for what it is: attempted murder.
Three teenagers threw rocks at cars on the Capital Beltway in Washington, D.C., in 1990,. wounding thirty drivers or passengers, including a girl who suffered irreversible brain damage. The attackers were convicted of "assault with intent to murder" and each sentenced to 40 years in prison. An editorial in the Washington Post at the time correctly asked, "What's the difference between assault with a deadly weapon--a shooting--and assault with rocks that hit cars at potentially lethal speeds?"
