You know, where I live on the side of a bus that I saw yesterday, it’s a sign that says uh free mental health care services for victims of crime. And they show, you know, a stock photo of two people who are supposed to be the crime victims. And their faces are very tortured. And it really kind of upset me, these pictures. I didn’t know if they were real or stock.
I assume they were stock, it just, their look, it really, it took me to a level of understanding that crime is not something in the abstract. It is something that people experience in a very real way. And in many ways it can destroy them, sometimes to the ultimate point of destruction. I bring this up because a lot of people are upset that Ben Gvir, Israel’s national security minister or whatever the formal title is literally popped a bottle of champagne on the passing of the new law that makes the death penalty the default for residents of Israel as opposed to citizens. So it will disproportionately affect Palestinians. It makes it the default for deadly terror attacks. And many people, including Jewish people, are expressing shame, outrage, and all sorts of emotions saying that this is inappropriate. But I don’t think that Ben Gavir is a bloodthirsty guy who’s genocidal, who wants to hurt Palestinians at all. I don’t think he particularly cares about them. I think what he does care about is the safety and security of the residents, the good law abiding residents and citizens of Israel. And when you have a culture where the people who carry out these terror attacks are financially rewarded, when you have a culture that praises the killing of Jews and Israelis that are not Jewish, that hands out sweets, that glorifies this, that puts children forward to k—, okay?
The happiness is that innocent people will not have the expressions of those people I saw on the bus. That’s all.
Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal 