How To Plan A Riot (or Pogrom)

At Acre (Akko in Hebrew).



First, let's get the opening salvo:

Speaking to Channel 2 News, Jamal denied he had intended to provoke local residents, saying he had driven with his 18-year-old son and the son's 20-year-old friend carefully and quietly from the Old City to the Ben-Gurion neighborhood, three kilometers away, to pick up his daughter from her fiancée's home.

But police dismissed Jamal's claims.

"This was a provocation. An Arab driver arrived in a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur with blaring music, and refused to leave when asked to by local residents. We believe he was intoxicated. This was a deliberate act," Galilee Police spokesman Ch.-Supt. Eran Shaked said.

Add a bit of incitement together with an outrageous Nazi comparison:

Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al) on Thursday responded to violent clashes between Jews and Arabs in the northern city of Acre, calling the violence a "pogrom perpetrated by Jews against Arab residents."

"The police displayed helpless discrimination in its treatment of the assault on Arab residents," Tibi said.

The riots erupted before dawn Wednesday when an Arab resident of the mixed town drove his car into a Jewish neighborhood during the holy day of Yom Kippur, during which even secular Jews refrain from driving out of respect. Jewish rioters alleged that the man defiantly played loud music, and proceeded to assault him, sparking large scale clashes between Jews and Arabs in the area.

Israeli Arab MK Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash) said the incident had less to do with Yom Kippur than a deliberate "escalation of racist speech" ahead of Israeli municipal elections next month.

"We see a great danger in these attacks. They are similar to the pogroms that Jews were exposed to at the hands of the Nazi gangs in Germany," Barakeh told reporters.

Mix in a bit of mendaciousness by starting with the famous Arab tactic of "it started when he hit me back" when the original entrance by a car is ignored:

Jewish residents in the mixed town within Israeli boundaries pelted Ahmed Shaban's car with rocks and besieged his house. Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, Abas Zkoor was among the victims. He placed full responsibility on the Israeli Internal Security Minister and the police.

He said, “About 15 people were in the Shaban house and soon hundreds of young Jews whose eyes were filled with hatred and racism were throwing stones at houses throughout the neighborhood and smashing cars, including my own.”

But most importantly, forget that the drive-in could have been purposeful:

Knesset Member Abas Zkoor (United Arab List – Ta'al) sent a letter to Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter asking him to increase Traffic Police presence at major intersections in the Negev and Galilee regions on Yom Kippur for fear that Arab-Israeli vehicles will be stoned by Jews. "We respect those who fast on Yom Kippur, but we want to avert a disaster," the Arab legislator told Ynet on Tuesday.

"The Arab-Israelis occasionally need to use their cars to reach hospitals and run errands on Yom Kippur, and they are fearful that children will hurl stones at them at the intersections," Zkoor said. "Such incidents may increase the hatred - and this would be a shame."

Now, ask yourselves, if the Arab MK warned publicly, why didn't that Acre Arab heed him and not drive into a Jewish neighborhood the way he did? They don't listen to their own lawmakers? Or did they listen too well?

Especially after last year when Tal Zino was killed by an Arab driving a vehicle:-

A year after she was killed by a quad bike driving through her town on Yom Kippur, Tal Zino's parents are breaking their silence: 'The Arab drivers came here to provoke Jews on the holiday, our daughter was the victim of the first vehicular terror attack.' Attorneys for Assad and Muhammed Shibli however, say their clients were tried by the media and fault the police investigation

Or could it have linked to the failure of the annual October protests recalling the Arab riots of eight years ago (note Zkoor remarks)?

Even though tensions were exacerbated this year with the decision not to indict the police officers involved in the shooting that led to the deaths of 13 Israeli-Arab protestors in October 2000, only several hundred people gathered in the town of Sakhnin on Saturday afternoon to mark the anniversary of the events.

Earlier this year crowds of thousands took to the streets to demonstrate after the cases were shut. Some attributed today's sparse attendance to the heat, others to the hour, and then there were those who said people have just had enough...

...MK Abas Zkoor (United Arab List – Ta'al) was also in attendance. "When a Jew kills an Arab, he gets a commendation. But when an Arab kills a Jew like in Shfaram, he gets indicted," said the MK, referring to the charges brought against Israeli-Arabs who killed Jewish terrorist Eden Natan Zada after he opened fire on civilians in a crowded public bus.

"This proves that there is a difference between Jewish blood and Arab blood. Unfortunately, even today, eight years on, Arab blood is forsaken. While Arabs are indicted, the Attorney General closes cases for murderers of shahids (martyrs)," he said.

And see Suzzane's comment here.


Photos here.