Jewish Israeli Schadenfreude at the Death of Palestinian Children

A tragic bus crash  this morning near Ramallah in Palestine left up to nine children and a teacher dead. The bus crashed into a lorry on the Jaba road, the resulting fire on the bus injured many more children.

The death of children is always tragic and especially in such a horrible way, however, some Jewish Israelis are actually celebrating those deaths as we can read from posts on this screenshot of the Facebook page of the Walla Israeli news website.

The translation from the Hebrew reads as follows:-

Benny: Calm down, they are Palestinian children.

Tali: It seems like they are Palestinian children.. Thank God..

Tal: Thank God they are Palestinians

Ajala: Great, less terrorists!!!!

Eliya: Only Palestinian children were injured – about ten.

Itai: Thank God its Palestinians, let it be such bus every day.

Aleyah: calm down, Its a bus with Palestinian children, lets pray there will be deaths, or at least severe injuries, this is great news to start the day with.

End of translation.

Please note each one of the racist and hateful comments.

I understand that these hateful comments have now been removed from Facebook and also some people have posted comments saying they were horrified at the racism exposed.

An interesting aside is the B.B.C. version of the story, which mentioned that although the truck that hit the bus had Israeli number plates, the driver may not have been Israeli. The B.B.C. no doubt would be afraid of implying any such thing for fear of falling victim to claims of anti Semitism. At the time of writing this the story has been updated to point out that the driver was in fact an Israeli Arab. I wonder when we ever found it necessary anywhere else to wonder or comment on the nationality or ethnicity of drivers involved in crashes?

To view what was making the Jewish Israelis rejoice you can watch the following, the more harrowing scenes have been pixelated but it still very upsetting.

Surah 3 verse 20

إِنْ تَمْسَسْكُمْ حَسَنَةٌ تَسُؤْهُمْ وَإِنْ تُصِبْكُمْ سَيِّئَةٌ يَفْرَحُوا بِهَا ۖ وَإِنْ تَصْبِرُوا وَتَتَّقُوا لَا يَضُرُّكُمْ كَيْدُهُمْ شَيْئًا ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ بِمَا يَعْمَلُونَ مُحِيطٌ If good befalls you, it grieves them, and if an evil afflicts you, they rejoice at it; and if you are patient and guard yourselves, their scheme will not injure you in any way; surely Allah comprehends what they do.

Posted by Laura Stuart on February 16, 2012. Filed under Jewish Matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.