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12.09.04, 11:56
My beloved son Arik, my own flesh and blood, was murdered by Palestinians. My
tall, blue-eyed, golden-haired son who was always smiling with the innocence
of a child and the understanding of an adult. My son. If to hit his killers,
innocent Palestinian children and other civilians would have to be killed, I
would ask the security forces to wait for another opportunity.
My beloved son Arik was murdered by a Palestinian. Should the security forces
have information of this murderer's whereabouts, and should it turn out that
he was surrounded by innocent children and other Palestinian civilians, then –
even if the security forces knew that the killer was planning another
murderous attack and they now had the choice of curbing a terror attack that
would kill innocent Israeli civilians, but at the cost of hitting innocent
Palestinians, I would tell the security forces not to seek revenge.
I would rather have the finger that pushes the trigger or the button that
drops the bomb tremble before it kills my son's murderer, than for innocent
civilians to be killed. I would say to the security forces: do not kill the
killer. Rather, bring him before an Israeli court. You are not the judiciary.
Your only motivation should not be vengeance, but the prevention of any
injury to innocent civilians.
Ethics are not black and white – they are all white. Ethics have to be free
of vengefulness and rashness. Every act must be carefully weighed before a
decision is made to see whether it meets strict ethical criteria. Our ethics
are hanging by a thread, at the mercy of every soldier and politician.
It is unethical to kill innocent Israeli or Palestinian women and children.
It is also unethical to control another nation and to lead it to lose its
humaneness. It is patently unethical to drop a bomb that kills innocent
Palestinians. It is blatantly unethical to wreak vengeance upon innocent
bystanders.
It is, on the other hand, supremely ethical to prevent the death of any human
being. But if such prevention causes the futile death of others, the ethical
foundation for such prevention is lost. A nation that cannot draw the line is
doomed eventually to apply unethical measures against its own people. The
worst in my mind is not what has already happened but what I am sure one day
will. And it will – because the political and military leadership does not
even have the most basic integrity to say: "we are sorry". We lost sight of
our ethics long before the suicide bombings. The breaking point was when we
started to control another nation.
My son Arik was born into a democracy with a chance for a decent, settled
life. Arik's killer was born into an appalling occupation, into an ethical
chaos. Had my son been born in his stead, he may have ended up doing the
same. Had I myself been born into the political and ethical chaos that is the
Palestinians' daily reality, I would certainly have tried to kill and hurt
the occupier; had I not, I would have betrayed my essence as a free man. Let
all the self-righteous who speak of ruthless Palestinian murderers take a
hard look in the mirror and ask themselves what they would have done had they
been the ones living under occupation. I can say for myself that I, Yitzhak
Frankenthal, would have undoubtedly become a freedom fighter and would have
killed as many on the other side as I possibly could. It is this depraved
hypocrisy that pushes the Palestinians to fight us relentlessly – our double
standard that allows us to boast the highest military ethics, while the same
military slays innocent children. This lack of ethics is bound to corrupt us.
My son Arik was murdered when he was a soldier by Palestinian fighters who
believed in the ethical basis of their struggle against the occupation. My
son Arik was not murdered because he was Jewish but because he is part of the
nation that occupies the territory of another. I know these are concepts that
are unpalatable, but I must voice them loud and clear, because they come from
my heart – the heart of a father whose son did not get to live because his
people were blinded with power.
As much as I would like to do so, I cannot say that the Palestinians are to
blame for my son's death. That would be the easy way out, but it is we,
Israelis, who are to blame because of the occupation. Anyone who refuses to
heed this awful truth will eventually lead to our destruction.
The Palestinians cannot drive us away – they have long acknowledged our
existence. They have been ready to make peace with us; it is we who are
unwilling to make peace with them. It is we who insist on maintaining our
control over them; it is we who escalate the situation in the region and feed
the cycle of bloodshed. I regret to say it, but the blame is entirely ours.
I do not mean to absolve the Palestinians and by no means justify attacks
against Israeli civilians. No attack against civilians can be condoned. But
as an occupation force it is we who trample over human dignity, it is we who
crush the liberty of Palestinians and it is we who push an entire nation to
crazy acts of despair.
Yitzhak Frankenthal is the chairman of the Families Forum. This is an edited
version of a speech he made at a rally in Jerusalem on Saturday July 27 2002.
