Olmert's Hebron "Pogrom" In Context

In responding to the violence in Hebron, Olmert raises the level of the rhetoric:

"We are the children of a people whose historic ethos is built on the memory of pogroms," Olmert said. "The sight of Jews firing at innocent Palestinians has no other name than pogrom. Even when Jews do this, it is a pogrom.

"As a Jew, I am ashamed that Jews could do such a thing."

In particularly, there is film of 2 Israelis opening fire on 2 unarmed Palestinian Arabs.

David Hazony supplies the missing context:

The film is much more complicated than that. Here is the lengthy version as it appears on YouTube; on TV it was much shorter. The “unarmed” Palestinians are shown hurling rocks at the Israelis. And they greatly outnumber the two Israelis on the scene at the time of the shooting. Most of what they are doing is screaming at each other, when one of the Israelis pulls out a handgun, keeps screaming, and when three much larger Arabs get too close, he shoots two of them. The third one hurls him to the ground and starts beating the daylights out of him. End of clip as shown on TV. As for the YouTube edition, the rest of the clip is understandable bedlam, in which I for one lose the ability to tell who is shooting, who is throwing rocks.

At the same time, the question needs to be asked: what were they thinking?

This scene takes place on a patch of ground beneath an Arab home, and begins with the Israelis brandishing their weapons. What exactly are the Israelis doing there with guns? What exactly did they expect would happen next? In this kind of theater, all the plays have one act only: Guns are used very soon after they appear.

The situation becomes fodder, not only for Palestinian Arabs and terrorists--but also for an Israeli Prime Minister who is still trying to leave office with something to show for it.

Technorati Tag: Hebron.