Michael Lesher and I have both written articles challenging the ‘terror’ narrative regarding the recent truck-ramming of Israeli soldiers in East Jerusalem: Lesher in Times of Israel here and me on Mondoweiss here. From different angles, we were essentially suggesting that the rather uncritical label ‘terror’ does not seem to take into account the whole setting of an occupied person, targeting soldiers in occupied territory – which seems to rather squarely render it an act of resistance to occupation, not terror. We both noted that Netanyahu’s claims of ISIS connection are but dark hints with no visible factual grounds, apparently conjured for the purpose of posing this case as an “unprovoked” act of hate detached from the local reality of occupation and related to a global terror threat.

As you may imagine, such challenging can attract heated debate and insults. Yesterday I was called a “*f-ing heartless idiot*” in comments, whereas Michael seems to be getting a whole lot more. I will not indulge too much in the comments such as “disgusting human being”, “demented buffoon”, “twisted mind”, “vile”, “sub-category of human”, “sick” and so on. These are Israeli or Israeli supporters, which seem to be extremely offended by our suggestions. It would appear that by questioning the whole label of ‘terror’, we’ve both touched a raw nerve. The question is what that nerve really is, and why it’s so offensive.

We’ve both made our points, and there’s no need to repeat them. Yet I would like to open this up even a bit further for even more critical thinking:

Both Michael and I, independently, have not even questioned the issue of whether this even was an attack in our respective articles. Such a question can definitely be asked – as it is possible that the ramming was caused by a loss of vehicle control, due to a whole range of reasons. For example, on the 18th of June, an Israeli Jewish driver suffered a heart attack at the wheel, and crashed into a Tel-Aviv café, killing two and injuring six (he later died). Immediately following the crash, bystanders pulled the unconscious driver from the car and began beating him, believing that he was a Palestinian who had driven into the restaurant on purpose, according to the restaurant owner’s wife.“The restaurant was filled with white dust. At first, I thought it was maybe a terror attack,” Shosha San told Israel’s Channel 10. “They thought that the driver was not a good person, they beat him,” she said. “He was unconscious.”

So, the Jewish Israeli driver was believed to be a “not good person”, and therefore was to be beaten, possibly to death, whilst he was unconscious. But later everyone realized he was a “good person”. So – no reason to worry guys, false alarm, just a sad case of a “good person” who had a heart attack (let’s not even consider that he might have been killed by those who beat him), no evildoers here, it’s all good.

But with Fadi Qunbar? Oh no, he backed the car after running the soldiers

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read full article at source: http://mondoweiss.net/2017/01/israel-wants-terror/