Article "Israel's death festival"

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Israel's death festival
Such unabashed glee is disrespectful and dangerous
Daphna Baram
Friday November 12, 2004
The Guardian

On November 5 1995, I went as usual to my office in East Jerusalem [...]. I worked for the human rights advocate, Lea Tzemel. Lea and myself, two Jewish Israeli women working in a Palestinian neighbourhood, were already a familiar part of the street's scene. But this morning was different. When I went into the corner shop to buy cigarettes, the owner, Izzat Fraytah, greeted me with a grave face. "My condolences," he said. It took me a few seconds to realise he was conveying his sympathy for the death of the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who had been assassinated the night before by a rightwing radical.
Izzat was a sympathiser of the Islamist opposition organisations, and an opponent of the Oslo accords signed two years earlier by Rabin and Yasser Arafat, but his feelings were genuine. "It's a sad day for you," he said, "and for us." [...]

I was overwhelmed by their decency, and embarrassed. I knew what a bitter enemy Rabin had been to the Palestinian people. [...]

All these memories came back to me as Yasser Arafat lay on his deathbed, unaware of the glee expressed by most Israelis. [...] Inbal Gavrieli, member of the Knesset, shouted at Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of the Knesset, that Arafat was "a dog". Many Israeli politicians followed suit with insults directed at the dying Palestinian leader. [...] A festive atmosphere has taken over the country.

"Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth," says the Old Testament, but too many Israelis are blinded by hatred and self-righteousness to remember these beautiful words. The consequences of Arafat's death festival will haunt us for years. And for this cruel folly Israelis and Palestinians are likely to pay in the currency of innocent blood.