https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/23/in-israels-chaotic-violence-cases-of-mistaken-identity-can-be-deadly/
In Israel’s chaotic violence, cases of mistaken identity can be deadly
By Adam Taylor October 23 at 12:00 AM
Fellow community members attend a memorial ceremony for Habtom Zarhum,
an Eritrean migrant who was mistaken for a gunman at a shooting attack
earlier in the week in Tel Aviv on Oct. 21. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)
Over the past month, Israel has been shocked by a wave of violence
that has seen dozens of assaults, many of which have resulted in
deaths. While the violence seems to have been sparked by a relatively
complicated dispute about religious sites in Jerusalem's Old City, the
core conflict would appear to break down to a familiar binary – Arab
Palestinians versus Israeli Jews.
A number of incidents, however, suggest it isn't always quite that simple.
On Wednesday night, for example, a Jewish Israeli citizen was shot to
death by Israeli security forces. Over the weekend, an Eritrean
bystander was shot by a security guard and then beaten on by an
Israeli mob as he lay dying. The week before, an Israeli Jew stabbed
another Jewish man in a supermarket. That same day a Dutch Christian
woman had been stabbed at a bus stop by two Arab men.
There have been other, unconfirmed reports of Jews attacking Jews or
Palestinians attacking Palestinians.
In many of these incidents, exactly what happened is a little unclear.
The Israeli man shot dead on Wednesday is reported to have acted
suspiciously before he was shot, apparently asking a pair of soldiers
for their identification cards and telling them "I am ISIS," referring
to the Islamic State extremist group. However, many media outlets are
describing it as a case of mistaken identity: The Jerusalem Post notes
that the man killed by Israeli security forces was initially placed in
a black body bag, a type reserved for terrorists. When it was revealed
that he was Jewish, he was moved into a white body bag.
In a region where the dividing line between peoples seem so set, cases
of mistaken identity might be surprising. But things are not always so
clear cut. For one thing, there are plenty of foreigners in Israel who
are neither Jewish nor Arab. They can easily end up in the middle of
violence whether they are Eritrean refugees like Haftom Zarhum, the
bystander killed at a bus station in the southern city of Beersheba on
Sunday, or European immigrants like Marike Veldman, the Dutch woman
who survived a stabbing in East Jerusalem last week.
And even inside the traditional Jewish-Arab cleavage, there are
complexities. While most Arabs live in the Palestinian territories,
Arabs also make up around 20 percent of Israel's population. Among
that population, there are Christians, Druze, Bedouins and more.
Increasingly, there are Jewish Israelis who live in East Jerusalem and
the Palestinian territories. Within the Jewish community in Israel
there are all sorts of different divisions. Many Israeli Jews are of
Mizrahi ancestry, meaning they can trace their lineage to
Muslim-majority countries.
These factors exist every day in Israel and the Palestinian
territories – there have been some cases of mistaken identity that led
to deaths before these latest attacks began. However, the new wave of
unpredictable violence has added an extra dose of chaos and paranoia
to the mix, with attacks occurring with little planning and
retaliation swift and brutal.
It's prompting soul searching. Many Israelis were shocked after video
appeared showing Zarhum, the innocent Eritrean man shot by a security
guard after being mistaken for an accomplice in an attack, being
beaten as he lay injured on the ground. “Even if it was the terrorist
himself, by the way, after he was shot, after he was neutralized and
lying on the floor, you need to be an animal to torment him,” Yaakov
Amidror, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, told Israel Radio.
Veldman, the Dutch woman stabbed in East Jerusalem last week, has
lived in the city for decades running a foster home for Arab children.
She told YNetNews that she understands the frustrations of those who
stabbed her because she sees the prejudice her own children suffer
from. At the same time, she said she couldn't help but now be afraid
of Arabs. "I have a lot of Arab friends, but it will take me some time
to trust them, and I need to heal," she explained.
Uri Rezken is the Israeli man stabbed in a Haifa supermarket last week
after his attacker mistook him for an Arab. “I felt four stabs and I
heard someone say: ‘You deserve it, you deserve it. You are bastard
Arabs,'" he told the Guardian. He says it doesn't matter what his
attacker thought he was, at the end of the day it was still a crime.
“It does not matter if an Arab stabbed me or a Jew stabbed me, a
religious, orthodox or secular person. I have no words to describe
this hate crime.”
For those living through the violence, it makes an already chaotic
situation that much more unpredictable, but there's not much they can
do. One man living in the Israeli city of Raanana is taking his own
precautions, wearing a T-shirt that explains he is a Yemenite Jew.
Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post.
Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and
Columbia University
Received on Fri Oct 23 2015 - 21:47:51 EDT