Talking About Duma (Dedicated to Lara from Peace Now)

I am quoted in the Jerusalem Post in a story by Eliyahu Kamisher so:

According to Yisrael Medad, a longtime resident of Shiloh, located around six kilometers from Duma, “no one talks about Duma – we are just looking ahead.”

That's it.  That's all.

I spoke to him for at least twenty minutes.  Oh well.

Peace Now's Lara Friedman, based on that, wrote:

Just a year post-triple murder, @ymedad tells JPost: "no one talks about Duma – we are just looking ahead”

Actually, what was quoted was a very small part of our telephone conversation (and Lara, being so sophisticated and knowledgeable could have surmised that).

I spoke to him and told him of our opposition to the violence that has been perpetartedand that the very first people who complained about the so-called "price-tag" policy years ago were members of the Yesha Council including Dani Dayan and myself. We pleaded with law enforcement agencies to rid us of this stain. I told him how we in Shiloh caught a Mevasseret Tzion kid breaking windows of parked Arab cars at Shiloh and complained to the police.

I actually told him that we do discuss Duma and the fact that the trial is dragging on and despite Moshe Yaalon's statement that he knows who did the bombing, the lack of a clear verdict, unfortunately, assists those who believe in conspiracy theories. I also pointed out that the previous week another firebomb was thrown there causing people to ask if either a Jewish terror group is still active or perhaps there is some truth to the claim that it isn't clear what is happening, and had happened earlier, regarding perhaps internal feuding there.

We do "talk about Duma" but we don't let it interfere with our goal of leading our lives as normally as possible, not allowing people like Lara to sabotage Zionist achievement or others to besmirch our enterprise by the acts of the few, if they are indeed guilty (and I hope the court clears that up soon).

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UPDATE

Lara has now tweeted:

@ymedad corrects the record: a year later he DOES talk about Duma murders. Read for yourself.

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The House in Duma

Several Hebrew-language articles (here by Sarah Beck and now here by Ayelet Kahane) and English ones (here and here)  have addressed the common assumption of the police, the IDF and, most importantly, the media, that the torching of a house in Duma in which resulted in the deaths of two people, an infant and the father, was the work of Jews, most probably "hilltop youth" who were engaged in a "price tag" action.  In the Los Angeles Times, all of Israel was blamed.

Sandy Tolan, associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, whose book has been sharply criticized and who accuses Israel of apartheid wrote

The fire in Duma cannot be seen as a random event. Rather, it is the outcome of decades of Israel's expansionist policies in the West Bank. 

Kahane's column

includes a photo of the location of the house which is deep in the village:

The question raised is why would Jewish youth infiltrate a house not on the edge of the village but prefer to walk several hundred meters, past many houses with dogs and residents, to commit their heinous crime?

So, far, four fires have occurred at Duma all involving the Darawshe Dawabsheh family which raises a curious problem: who, or what, is responsible for all these flames?

P.S.   And read this.

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Is This Another Arab Fiction? UPDATED

It's being reported:

NABLUS, (PIC)-- Tens of extremist Jewish settlers on Monday raided the village of Doma to the south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus and opened fire in the air according to local sources. No injuries were reported.

The sources said that around 20 cars laden with extremist settlers, believed to be from the nearby Magdoleme settlement, raided the village of Doma, broke into the mosque and assaulted the Imam who tried to block their entry at the door.

Locals added that the IOF troops took their time to arrive at the scene.

The Ministry of Awqaf in the Gaza government has warned a few days ago that the extremist settlers might commit massacres at West Bank mosques.

"Doma" is Duma, behind Shiloh, east of the Allon Road.



"Magdoleme" is the Migdalim community. (It's in the middle of this topographical map).

Anyway, I asked our security chief and the incident never took place.

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UPDATE

It seems that there was an army exercise that evening and it involved the Hareidi Battallion who were on an all-night hike with quiet stops in Arab villages. Since they are all religious, the Immam probably (purposefully) mistook them for "settlers" when they took up positions near the mosque. The group walked through several villages and assumed battle positions for a short while to provide them with hands-on experience in a real situation.