It's the Jews Stupid!

Friday April 26, 2002 03:39

by Allison Nazarian - Journalist

In memory of the suicide bombers victims.

Friday afternoon, Soheila Hoshi, 47, a mother of four children ages nine to eighteen, completed her weekly shopping at Jerusalem’s colorful outdoor market known as Machane Yehuda. She was a regular at the market, picking up last minute fruits, vegetables and goodies for the family meal.

As Soheila waited for the bus, a young Palestinian who fancied herself a martyr positioned her body deep in the throng of people walking and waiting on the sidewalk and detonated a belt of explosives strapped to her waist. In blowing herself up and unleashing a combination of nails, screws and explosives that get more sophisticated with each passing attack, she also permanently tore apart six innocent shoppers and injured scores more. Soheila, who was standing close to the bomber, was so disfigured that the forensic specialists could not make a positive identification of her body until after the Jewish Sabbath, which ended at sundown the following day, using blood samples from family members.

Soheila is my husband’s first cousin. She left Iran as a young woman for Israel to fulfill a dream of living as a Jew in Israel. She immigrated alone, leaving behind parents who to this day, amazingly, still live in Iran. Soheila went on to marry and have four children. At some point after meeting my husband, I first heard her name in connection with another horror: cancer. This woman, then in her early 40s, was very sick and no one knew if she would live. Miraculously, though, she managed to lick that enemy into remission. This always-cheerful religious woman was not so lucky on Friday.

In a way, though, the details are not so important. For if she had woken up 20 minutes earlier on Friday morning or lingered at one more fruit stand in the market, this woman may well have been spared and another blown to bits in her place. Soheila was just one of tens, hundreds, thousands, who have been murdered over the past 19 months, and before that over the past nine years, and before that in 1973, 1967 and 1947 when war-loving neighbors on all sides attacked Israel. Before that, just 60 years ago, there were six million Soheilas murdered in Europe – the same ‘civilized’ place whose people were the first and thus far the most efficient in condemning Israel over the past few weeks.

Make no mistake about it, since September 28, 2000, over 450 innocent men, women, children and unborn babies (the population equivalent of some 23,000 or so Americans) have been killed by bombers and shooters for one reason: Because they were Jewish (Although, not all of the victims have been Jewish or Israeli. Friday’s bombing in Jerusalem took the life of two Chinese workers who were likely in Israel to earn some money to send to their families at home). Arafat and his henchman are not looking only to end what they call the occupation or to drive the Israeli Defense Forces out of the areas that they controlled autonomously following agreements known by names like Oslo. This isn’t about Muslims wanting to live in a neighborhood where Jews live. No, that would be too simple. This is not an uprising or a simple intifada as the news networks so neatly categorize it. Behind the violence against Israelis is a desire, one that has not been hidden or even blurred, to rid the Middle East and the country known as Israel – a name that to my knowledge is not even acknowledged or uttered in the streets of Jenin or Ramallah or Tulkarem – of its Jewish presence. In Nazi times it was known as “Judenrein,” or free from Jews; today, it’s called “jihad” or “holy war,” and it just isn’t any different.

Why should any American care about any of this, especially if they didn’t know Soheila, or if they’re not Jewish or if they don’t consider themselves a supporter of Israel? Because the moment Americans hesitate before going to a mall or their children’s birthday parties or the local pizza place, the moment these hideous excuses for “freedom fighters” infiltrate nice, free, quiet lives and blow themselves up on Main Street, USA – and they will - the moment Americans see the wreckage of body parts, groceries that will never make it to the table and abandoned cell phones that ring incessantly because their owners were just blown apart at our bus stops and meeting places, then this will become something that we will want to destroy and eradicate without nuance and without delay. Maybe then we will thank the Israelis for doing much of the world’s dirty work, the job that not one other nation in the world – including the United States – has yet dared to undertake. Maybe then, and only then, we will pay honor and respect to the memory of Soheila and all the others in the only way befitting these innocent souls who are no more.