#0202_A_View_From_West_Jerusalem
Response to Thursday, 7.2.19, Murder of Young Woman Ori Ansbacher Z'L
“Yesterday, I received a message about a protest in Tel Aviv that was being arranged by the ‘Dereh Haim’ organization following the horrifying murder of the young woman, Ori, from Tkoa, may she rest in peace. The message said that a motorcade drove throughout Tel Aviv with huge signs on which the photos of those murdered in the latest terror attacks were pasted, alongside a call to act against Abu Mazan who funds the murderers.
You know how it is when you’re sent a message via WhatsApp from the Kindergarten teacher, or when friends tag you on Facebook, and you immediately zoom in to see if you look your best, or at least ok, or to make sure that your son is still the cutest at the kindergarten? So after I received that message […] that is exactly what I did. I checked to see whether our murder victim, my brother-in-law Adiel Kolman, was still the most handsome of the latest terror murder victims; that his eyes still shine, and his sweet smile still covers his face, in that same photo that passed on to the media on the night of the murder. When we didn’t yet understand anything. And there, he’s still there, happy and radiant, I can relax.
To be honest, until now I didn’t look into the story of the murder of Ori Ansbacher RIP, simply because it was enough to hear the general outlines in order to understand that it was simply too much for me. That it is too horrifying and too painful. That I can’t hear stories like that. But what that photo, from the protest, did, was make the obvious connection between all of those terror attacks. This isn’t a standalone story about a girl that was murdered by a monster. We have too many of those terrible stories. Too many bodies.
Because here lie our bodies. A long row stretching in Rabin Square. And here lie our tears in the face of the portraits of our loved ones. We aren’t breathing. Our faces have changed.
We hear again and again about the ‘lone attacker’ that sets out to commit a terror attack, and it’s almost impossible to stop him because he doesn’t belong to a terror organization, but at the same time, we hear of the circles of support for terror. If the lone attacker is characterized as ‘lone’, then his family certainly isn’t alone any more. Condemnation of the murder on the Palestinian street is something you can’t dream of, and neither from the [Palestinian] leadership. The family’s status improves because of the Jewish blood that was shed for the sake of the sanctity of Al-Aqsa and the important war of jihad, the family’s financial condition improves dramatically because of the Shahids’ Allowance, and in case the IDF wishes to demolish its house, it will receive legal support from the radical left’s organizations. The lone terrorist’s family certainly isn’t alone in the struggle.
And here lie our bodies. Another one, and another one. He was a father of four, she an innocent teenager that had not yet gotten a taste of life, he was a Druze soldier, she a mother to a toddler. What wrong did they do, what wrong did we do. We aren’t breathing.
‘We did not betray’ say the dead in Guri’s original poem, and in our case, in a war that seems to have no end in sight, our dead understand that they don’t have to apologize. They look at us, with a look that sees the world from beginning to end, and wait to hear whether we haven’t betrayed them, whether we are not betraying ourselves. Wondering if we’ll be able to look them in the eye with confidence, whether we will be able to say in a clear voice, full of authority, that we prevented the next murder, that we did everything we possibly could to prevent this row from lengthening.
Look, look at the photos. Here lie our dead in a long long row. Our faces have changed, death looks out from our eyes, we aren’t breathing. This is enough."
▶️ Source: Batel Kolman, West Jerusalemite Columnist and Poet
#Attack
https://bit.ly/2BxGa8V
https://www.facebook.com/1675349376080655/posts/2310809149201338
