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Terror in Jerusalem and its wacky-talk aftermath

[additional-authors]
January 9, 2017

Terrorism hit Jerusalem yesterday, as it did hundreds of times in recent years. The attacker was a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, ” target=”_blank”>celebrated the great achievement of killing Israelis by driving a truck into them. The killer's sister praised his ” target=”_blank”>complicated. It is a case that the IDF handled poorly. It is a case that split the nation for no good reason. And now it is coming back to bite us – as it did yesterday, and still does today.

What is the supposed “Azaria effect?” It is the paralyzing impact the case against a soldier that shot an attacker supposedly has on other soldiers. Azaria, so the theory goes, killed the attacker and then was handcuffed, brought to trial, and convicted of manslaughter – and now his peers in uniform learned a lesson and are hesitant to shoot. That's why the soldiers were slow to respond yesterday. That's why they were late to shoot the truck terrorist.

Of course, there are not many similarities between the two cases – the attack in Hebron and the one in Jerusalem. Azaria killed the attacker long after the attacker was neutralized. He killed a man who was lying on the ground, wounded, defenseless. He killed a man that posed no danger to the people around him. In Jerusalem the attack was still ongoing when the terrorist was shot and killed. It was a clear-cut case of necessary response. One expects Israel's IDF officer-school cadets to know the difference. One assumes that Israel's IDF officer-school cadets had no doubt.

If some of them hesitated, it was not because of an imaginary “Azaria effect.” If they hesitated, it was because of other things. Shock, fear, confusion, to name a few. But all this is of little interest to the people that see a terror attack as an opportunity to pursue an agenda. They come from the right – as activists supportive of Azaria and of a no-questions-asked policy when a soldier kills and attacker, no matter how and when. They also come from the left – as proponents of a division of Jerusalem. Some of these political activists were using the attack to prove that Jerusalem will benefit from division. That getting rid of Arab villages and neighborhoods that were incorporated into the city after its reunification almost fifty years ago is the better policy for Israel.

Their argument this morning sounds like this: the attacker was from east Jerusalem. Had there been a wall separating his residence from the city, it might have been more difficult for him to drive his truck into the crowd in Armon Hanatziv, the neighborhood where the attack took place.

This argument is as honest as the one connecting the attack to the Azaria trial. It is an attempt to utilize a horrific attack to serve a political goal. Surely, there is a reasonable case to be made concerning the need to consider a change in Jerusalem's boundaries. It is mostly a case based on two arguments: The demographic future of the city – for those who want to ensure a Jewish Jerusalem. The political future of the city – for those who want to keep open the option of a Palestinian Jerusalem alongside the Israeli Jerusalem.

But a terror attack in Jerusalem does not support any of these arguments. As Minister Tzachi Hanegbi drily remarked this morning, ” target=”_blank”>Arara – an Arab village in Israel. Should Israel withdraw from Arara because an attacker was able to freely drive from his village to Tel Aviv? Should Israel evacuate every territory from which attackers reach Israeli targets?

The answer, of course, is no. Israel should not divide Jerusalem because of the attack yesterday – nor should it alter the IDF's ethical code because of it. If anything is in need of change, it is Israel's trigger-happy public debate. But unlike pointing a finger at municipal borders and ethical codes, that's a hard thing to do.

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