A couple of weeks ago, an acquaintance called my attention to a cartoon published in the New York Times. It features a jack-booted, headless storm trooper wielding a sword in one hand and pushing a wheeled Star of David with pointed teeth with the other in pursuit of a tiny, huddled female figure clutching a bundle (baby?). Check it out. My acquaintance called this a Nazi cartoon, and I don’t think he’s far from the truth.
The image of Israel as a nation of baby-killers is not new. I’ve seen cartoons like this one before. But the news today of an Arab ax-murderer attacking children in a nearby settlement and fleeing the scene upon meeting adult resistance makes me wonder how it is that the most dedicated killers of babies and children–their own and others’–manage to escape the scourge of cartoons like this. Is it that they have dark skin? Is it that some of them live in poverty (though some are fabulously wealthy, too)? Is it that they belong to a religion most people don’t understand, but are somehow in awe of? Or is it because if anyone criticizes them or calls them on the carpet for their violent, backward, death-worshiping culture, they threaten lawsuits, pour into the streets and riot, and plot to attack more Western countries’ population centers?
I believe that most Arabs want to go to work, feed their families and live their lives with dignity. And most succeed in doing just that. But polls also show that most Arabs support violence against Jews, the overthrow of the State of Israel, and the establishment of a Muslim (if not necessarily Islamist) state here in its stead. The recent war in Gaza bought Hamas street cred they had formerly lacked in the West Bank, and may provide traction for them in future elections. This is the same war in Gaza that involved Hamas booby-trapping the homes of private citizens, firing rockets from launching installations located under hospitals and near schools and kindergartens, and dragging screaming children to the front to provide human shields for their own plainclothes militants. And the targets of those rockets and bullets from Hamas? Jewish citizens, including children.
Israelis do everything in their power to protect their children, and those of their enemies, even at the risk of their own soldiers. Consider this cartoon:
I’m not suggesting that the truth is really to be found on the political cartoon pages of America’s newspapers. But when a 13-year-old lies dead and a 7-year-old is injured, I find myself compelled to ask: Will the REAL baby-killers please stand up?
Shimshonit 
The blood libel is too deeply entrenched in Western thought. It’s days like this that I despair of anyone ever giving the Jews a fair break.
Thought of you guys when I heard the news this morning, and about your recent post about the self-defence class. Ein omer, v’ein dvarim, yet we need to say something.
Andrew: Thanks for your thoughts. The funeral was at 5:00 the same day in the Gush cemetery near Bat Ayin. I can’t even begin to fathom how Pesach is going to feel for that family this year. To do that to a family (and wish you did it to more) is subhuman. There is no other way to see it.