Cut down in their prime

Oh to be in 19th century England, when songs about young people cut down in their prime were about sailors contracting syphilis from “flash girls” on the corner, and not being killed by knife-wielding Palestinians. Alas, for a second straight day, Israeli front pages are filled with heartrending pictures of a young fatality, this time a soldier, and the tearful reaction of his comrades at the scene in the West Bank.

Much is made not only of the death of Ziv Mizrahi, but also of his family connection to his uncle, Alon Mizrahi, who heroically tried to block a suicide bomber from entering a Jerusalem café in 2003, getting killed in the process.

“Double tragedy,” reads the headline on Yedioth Ahronoth, with pictures of both Ziv and Alon, while Israel Hayom makes much of the fact that Mizrahi lived on a street in the West Bank settlement of Givon named for his uncle.

“Every memorial day, every attack would remind him of his uncle,” a friend tells Yedioth. “He was very emotional and would speak about him every memorial day. In the settlement they have youth centers that Alon’s father renovated in his memory, and now he is part of this attack.”

In Israel Hayom, which pulls at the heartstrings with a front page picture of the soldier’s mother’s frantic texts to him after hearing of the attack, Ziv is remembered as an intelligent young man who was also friendly with neighbors, and not just from his settlement.

“I didn’t teach him to hate, but the opposite,” his father tells the paper. “He had Palestinian friends. Area residents who he would socialize with. He would take his car to get washed by a friend in the village next door, but he also knew where to draw the line and to be careful.”

Discussion about where to draw the line in responding to the wave of attacks also garners much discussion in the papers. Haaretz reports that the defense community is considered deporting families of attackers to Gaza, in hopes of adding another deterrent element.

The plan, which would still need an okay from the attorney general, won’t apply to all attackers but just those whose families knew in advance he was planning an attack, likely a high hurdle for any prosecution to jump.

“If there’s a mother that knows her son is going to kill, and doesn’t do anything with it – then the family knows what its fate will be – deportation to Gaza,” a defense source tells the paper.

Israel Hayom’s Haim Shine seems to think many families will soon be headed to Gaza, painting all Muslims as bloodthirsty savages who glorify death and counseling that the answer is more firepower.
“A culture that sanctifies life, that places highest understanding and the desire of people to progress in life and be happy, is not capable if understanding the zealotry of Islam, jihadi and modern, that only wants to kill as many people as possible, even if it costs their lives,” he writes.

“Who can understand a father that is proud of his young daughter – as terrorist who went to kill Jews – and was turned into a glorified martyr in his eyes? What cultured person can understand a mother whose two sons were killed right after a stabbing attack, and who wishes that her other children follow in their way? This is the murderous barbarism Israel deals with everyday.”

The daily attacks, which included Monday a scissoring by some teen girls who ended up just hurting a old Palestinian man, leads Yedioth political reporter Sima Kadmon to cross the line from correspondent to opinionator and pen a depressing commentary headlined “Who’s next in line,” arguing that what’s needed aren’t more guns but different nameplates in the halls of power.

“Today it’s clear that for terror there’s no litmus test: kid, girl, soldier, old man, worshiper and even Arab – the victim of mistaken identity. And on the side of the attacker, like their victims, there have the same wide profile: kid, youthful girls, adult woman or father to children,” she writes. “What we see is that the rightist government that promised us security can’t provide it to us. It hasn’t acted in a more stable or fitting way than any other government in situations like this – aside from the possibility that a different government maybe would have explored other options for emerging from the situation.”

In a sign that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may actually be doing something Kadmon so badly wants, Haaretz reports that the Israeli leader has turned to US Secretary of State John Kerry, in Israel Tuesday, with a compromise agreement that will allow Israel to keep building in large settlement blocs, with Washington’s approval, in exchange for steps toward the Palestinians.

Kerry, the paper reports, was unimpressed.

“Kerry and his people were somewhat disappointed by Netanyahu’s proposals. The secretary of state wants Israel to take steps that will demonstrate its commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and that will signal a change on the ground from a one-state reality to a two-state reality,” the report reads. “An example of what the Americans are looking for would be increasing the powers accorded the Palestinian Authority, particularly in Area C. These areas, which constitute the main land reserves in the West Bank, are now under total Israeli control.”