An Unspeakable Atrocity

Video Of The Week -  Rabbi Dee speaks from the heart -  https://tinyurl.com/yycmkx7u

For the full article by Melanie Philips go to - https://tinyurl.com/yxnphkwp

On Friday, as the rabbi drove towards Tiberias in northern Israel for a Passover break with his family, the car following him carrying his wife Lucy (Leah) and two of his daughters, Maia and Rina, was ambushed by Palestinian Arab gunmen and crashed into the barrier. The gunmen then approached the car and shot Lucy and her daughters at point blank range with 20 bullets from a Kalashnikov rifle.

This unspeakable atrocity has united Israel in horror. Once again, Israeli Jews have been murdered for nothing other than the fact that they are Jews living in their ancestral homeland.

Since September 2000, Palestinian Arabs have murdered at least 1420 Israelis. Over the past year, at least 30 Israelis have been murdered in such attacks. For months, there have been multiple attempted attacks against Israeli citizens almost every day.

For Anglo-Jews, however, the attack on the Dee family isn’t just close to home. It is home. Rabbi Dee was a community rabbi in Radlett, just outside London, from 2011-2014 when the family moved to Israel.

The atrocity was unspeakable. What makes it all the more unbearable is the reaction from so much of the west to such horror. The Dee family lives in Efrat and the attack happened in the Jordan valley, all part of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. Israeli Jews who are attacked in these territories tend to be dehumanised by western commentators as “settlers'“ in the “occupied territories” who were “asking for it”; or they are airbrushed out of media coverage altogether. 

This is even though the Palestinian Arabs have been murdering Jews in Israel and these territories for more than a century, decades before the so-called “occupation of the West Bank” after the 1967 six day war, and decades before the State of Israel even came into existence in 1948. The initial response of the UK government was shocking. As Israel’s former ambassador to the US Michael Oren tweeted in disgust: 

“The British government was “saddened to hear about the deaths of British-Israeli citizens and the serious injuries sustained by a third individual” and called on “all parties to de-escalate tensions”. No mention of Palestinians or terror, no outrage. The sisters merely “died” and a third person was somehow injured. The citizens are not really British but a  qualified “British-Israelis”. And “all” parties, including the Israeli victims, are urged to de-escalate”.

Shame on Britain. The dead were from a British family. You might have thought the British government would be outraged at the murder of three of its citizens. You might have thought that it would seek to hold the Palestinian Arabs to account for their incitement and complicity.

But of course, the British government is itself complicit in this and in all the other attacks on Israelis. That’s because it connives at the incitement to murder Israeli Jews by continuing to insist falsely that Israel is in “illegal occupation”; it continues to sanitise or ignore fanatical Palestinian Arab Islamic incitement to murder Israeli Jews and steal their land; it continues to refuse to exert any pressure on the Palestinian Arabs to cease its war of extermination against the State of Israel. Instead, it calls on both sides to “de-escalate” — an obscene moral equivalence between terrorists and terrorised, which means in practice telling Israel not to take the action that’s necessary to protect its people.

After the death of Lucy Dee, and doubtless aware of the gathering outrage over the British government’s initial response, the Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tweeted:

Tragic news that Leah Dee has also died following the abhorrent attacks in the West Bank. There can be no justification for the murder of Leah and her two daughters, Maia and Rina. We will continue to work with the Israeli authorities to end this senseless violence.

And to all of this sickening reaction by the British establishment, there has been (at time of writing) not a peep of protest from Britain’s Jewish leadership. But wait — a headline in Ha’aretz says:

British Jews Are Finally Speaking Out”… 

Oh dear, not against the appeasement of the terrorist Palestinian Arabs but against Netanyahu and the Israeli Far-Right. These cowardly people have been put to shame by a decent Muslim, Noor Dahri. He tweeted:

“I feel so sorry and have no words to express my grief. Two innocent British teen sisters were murdered by my co-religious people (Palestinians) in the name of my faith. My religion hasn’t permitted them to kill innocent people in its name at all. They don’t belong to my religious principles but unfortunately most of my Muslim followers (whom I know) are supporting them in killing Jews and call these acts resistance and reaction which I feel ashamed of them. I am so sorry but my unconditional support will always remain with you. Jews have absolute right in the holy land to celebrate and enjoy Passover with peace. Never feel weak because you aren’t born helpless. Never Again. May Allah rest victims in peace. Amen. “

Palestinian Arabs committed this vile deed. But they are consistently backed, encouraged, sanitised, excused and incentivised by many others who have accordingly kept this war of extermination going for the past century. Lucy Dee and her two daughters, along with Alessandro Parini, are the latest victims of it and they won’t be the last.

Remarkably, there have been no words of hatred from Rabbi Dee. No words of bitterness, no calls for revenge. Only an expression of trust that justice will be done; a reiteration of the balance within Judaism between justice and love; and the beyond-moving hope  — after his wife finally succumbed to her injuries — that by choosing good over evil we can all make the world a better place.

May the memory of Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee be a blessing.

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