Ya’alon: Bereavement not equal for Israelis and our enemies

Weighing in on public debate over grief, defense minister says the Jewish state strives for life while the ‘opposing society wishes for death’

BY TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon drew a distinction Tuesday between the grief experienced by Israelis, who he said were a life- and peace-seeking people, and by enemies who “yearn” for death and self-destruction. His comments came amid a raging public debate over bereavement and as a five-month-old round of violence that has left some 200 people dead on both sides of the conflict refuses to die down.

“Our grief is that of a society that wishes to live, a society that educates our boys to life, to be humans, to behave as human beings, to strive for peace. This is our society,” Ya’alon told a conference with members of Yad Labanim, an organization of bereaved Israeli families. “And opposing us is a society that yearns for death, as we can see around us in the happiness of a boy in becoming a martyr — a society that does not respect anything.

“Our society chooses life and does not seek out wars, but strives for peace and sees war as [a] necessary [evil],” he continued. “On the other side of us is an element that desires death and causes devastation, not only against us but against itself.”

The defense minister’s comments echoed remarks by Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich on Monday. He seemed to be take aim at radio presenter Razi Barkai, who sparked outrage earlier this month when he compared the grief of families of Palestinian attackers and their Israeli victims.

“There is a difference between our grief and their grief,” Alsheich said at an event for bereaved families in Eilat.

“Our enemies chose to sanctify death; the message they preach is that life is meaningless and that pressing a button or pulling out a knife, you will be transported to a better world. This is the antithesis of Israeli values,” Alsheich continued, without naming Barkai.“It’s impossible not to tell the difference between the grief we see in your faces and the grief we’ve seen expressed by some of our neighbors in recent years,” he said.

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 I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? 


― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice