A dark day in Rishon Lezion

October 18, 2009 - 3:11 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Life 

Three members of the Oshrenko family who were discovered dead on Saturday.

Three members of the Oshrenko family who were discovered dead on Saturday.

Sorry to be so gloomy lately, but the Israelity of Israel lately is getting a little too real for comfort. Back when buses were blowing up in the early 2000s, there was a real sense of alarm, but also a feeling that the situation could be resolved, whether through military or diplomatic means.

The security fence, for all its ugliness and negative implications, solved the problem for the short term. But the problem facing Israel today can’t be solved by a fence or wall – unless each Israeli builds their own and isolates themselves.

The news that greated people on Saturday, or Saturday night if they’re religiously observant, talked of police calling it the ‘worst crime’ in Israel’s history being committed. A day after her Revital Oshrenko celebrated her third birthday in her Rishon Lezion home with her family – grandfather and grandmother Edward and Ludmilla, both 56; parents Tattiana, 28, and Dimitry, 32; and 4-month-old brother Netanel – the whole family was stabbed to death and their apartment set on fire in an apparent effort to cover up the murders. Some of the victims were said to have been stabbed repeatedly.

Rescue services only discovered the bodies when they were called to the home after a report of a fire. While a gag order has been placed on the police investigation, family friends and acquaintances, including Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov and the mayor of Rishon Lezion, said that the family members were model citizens.

Suspicions are rampant that the murders were ‘business’ related, pertaining to restaurants and clubs catering to Russian immigrants that Dimitry owned and operated. The murder is just the latest in a series of sensationalist killings that have taken place this year in the country, where non-terror murders were once considered a rare occurrence.

I would kind of prefer it going back to the old ways – at least then you knew who the enemy was. I still feel safe here, walking around at night, or sending my children unsupervised on buses. But slowly, with Israel’s social fabric in danger of being ripped asunder, there’s a growing sense of lawlessness – when I’m out jogging at night now, sometimes I think twice about running past a group of teens gathered at a street corner – it’s a feeling that a security fence will be powerless to prevent.

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A bloody summer in Israel – who’s to blame?

August 19, 2009 - 9:27 AM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life 

poleceMurders take place everywhere, and thanks to Herzl’s wish that Israel develop a modern society like all other nations, we have our share of homocides. More than our share, if you’ve been reading the news the last couple of weeks.

Some of the lowlights – A 60-year-old man enjoying a walk near the beach in Tel Aviv with his family was accosted by a gang of youths from Jaljulya and beaten to death; Two dismembered female bodies have been found in seemingly separate incidents; and yesterday, a Jerusalem tenant who had been terrorizing his neighbors for weeks, stabbed and killed his landlord.

However, despite the gruesome horror that these murders evoke, and the increasing feeling that senseless, unmotivated murder is on the rise, the statistics show that there’s been no increase in murder this year over any other year.

According to the stats released by the Israel Police, who have been the targets of media scorn during the current murder spate, seventy-two people were murdered in Israel from the start of 2009 until August 15. During the same period in 2008, 73 murders were recorded, and 79 murders were recorded over the same period in 2007. In 2006, 92 people had been murdered by August 15.

In 2008, 122 people were murdered. While that represents a rise from 2007, during which 116 were murdered, 2006 saw 147 murders. In 2005, the total stood at 162, while in 2004, 168 murders were recorded by police.

So despite the sensational aspect of the August murders, we’re on par in 2009 for the decreasing annual rate of murders. What sets August 2009 apart, however, is that the media has chosen to focus on these hideous crimes because it’s a slow news month – not much happening on the Israeli-Palestinian front, either on the ground or at the negotiating table, impending conflict with Hizbullah is still on hold, and we’re not ready to attack Iranian nukes quite yet.

So what are you going to fill that air time and pages up with? According to the old newspaper adage, ‘if it bleeds it leads.’ What I find annoying besides the huge headlines and photos touting an escalation in violence, is the condescending attitude of the TV news broadcasters toward the police. ‘Why aren’t you doing more to prevent these murders,?” they accusingly ask top police officials, when the question is all wrong.

The real question is when Israeli society is going to change, and people are going to start educating their children to be non-violent. And when is the government going to allocate a budget to education that will prohibit the current norms of having 40 pupils in a classroom with one teacher? Those are the questions that should be asked, not what is the police doing about it? It’s time to take responsibility ourselves. And newspapers blowing things out of proportion with huge bloody photos doesn’t seem to be a helpful step in the right direction.

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Lessons from The Rabin Murder

November 4, 2008 - 12:35 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

Israel can surprise you – in the most surprising ways. One thing I’ve learned in some 15 years of living here – nothing, but nothing, is what it seems on the surface. There is little, if any, black and white in Israeli life – it’s a rainbow, with lots of shades of different colors in the mix. Take my Rabin experience, for example.

I was at home with my wife and some friends, watching a movie, when I heard the news – “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Not focusing too closely on the video (men will understand why), I overheard a couple of neighbors talking outside in the courtyard. Rather rare for a Saturday night, I thought, and especially those two, who didn’t generally fraternize, going on at length. Sauntering out of the room (I think it was around the time of the second wedding), I went out to the porch to find out what was going on.

Needless to say, we turned the movie off and watched the proceedings.

At the time, I worked for a publication owned by a major Israeli newspaper in Tel Aviv. You could count on one hand the number of observant people in this organization (to their credit, the very avant garde, very politically left people at this publication were extremely respectful to my religious principles – for example, they always made sure kosher food was served at staff meetings, etc.).

But not only was I religious – I was a “settler,” too, living in a community east of the green line. This, too, had never been an issue with these people, and my views on politics and Jewish life in Judea and Samaria were well-known. But now, with Rabin killed by a Jew wearing a kippah, and his alleged connections to residents of Judea and Samaria – this was different. With all the talk of how “the right and religious” were behind Rabin’s killing, I walked into the office that Sunday morning with great trepidation, ready for anything – dirty looks, insults, verbal confrontations, or worse.

But either the folks working at this publication were exceptions to the rule, or the very yellow character of the Israeli media had reared its ugly head again, with the tiny minority of loudmouths dedicated to ruining the fabric of Israeli society trumpeting ideas about putting right-wingers in internment camps in the Negev being given a solitary platform. Even the “star” of this publication, who today is famous for his American talk-show shock-jock style radio call-in program where he argues with everybody, and who has extremely left-wing views, didn’t speak to me any differently than usual (gruffly, like he talked to everybody). Astounded, I asked one of the editors of the publication what was going. Where was all the blame, the anger, the “we will not forgive and we will not forget” I was expecting? After all, I was a pretty convenient target!

He just looked at me like I was crazy – and asked: “Why would we want to do that to you? You may be a settler, but you’re ‘our’ settler!”

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