The affair of a sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl has raised major issues for public discussion, but it seems that one aspect of the story must not be mentioned: if the girl was in fact attacked by a Palestinian man, which is not certain at this point, was it an ethno-religious attack?
Army Radio host Razi Barkai rejected any connection between the ethnicity of the suspect and a possibly racist motive for the alleged act, and added, "It isn't the Palestinian people that is raping the Jewish people." Anyone who dared mention the possibility that the crime could have been perpetrated from ethno-religious motives was labeled as a racist, or as a hypocrite who only cared about the rape because the suspect was an Arab. But categorically rejecting the possibility that the attack had an ethno-religious element to it whitewashes the historical truth. Yes, there is such a thing as a sexual assault perpetrated out of nationalist or racist motives, and sadly, that phenomenon is deeply rooted in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
To understand just how deeply rooted, we must go back to the time of the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem. An article that ran in the Maariv daily before the 1967 Six-Day War, before the Jews were to perceive themselves as occupiers, described the leader of the Arabs' rise to greatness in the riots of 1920: "Responsibility for bloodshed, acts of rape and pillaging, were the first chapter in the public career of Hajj Amin, who became a 'national hero' in the eyes of the Arab youth in [pre-state] Israel."
In the riots of 1929, Arab rioters raped members of the Jewish community in Hebron, and that culture of battle led to a Jewish response later one. It is sufficient to touch on the response of the Haganah fighters' response to the rape of two Jewish women, which was commemorated in a popular song by Haim Hefer, "We castrated you, we castrated you, Mohammed!"
According to Middle East researcher Dr. Mordechai Kedar, the Arabs see Zionism as founded on "pillaged ground," and so the rape of Jewish women could be seen as justified, as it took place on stolen land. This did not cease to be the norm after the state of Israel was established; in 2012, a rape victim from Tel Aviv was recognized as a victim of terrorism after her claim the attack had been ethno-religiously motivated was initially scoffed at by law enforcement officials.
In his book "The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam" Douglas Murray describes the West's denial of the religious characteristics of acts of rape by Muslims. He writes that when a group of nine Muslim men were convicted of sex trafficking in children ages 11-15, the fact that the gang members had been careful to choose non-Muslim girls as their victims were only occasionally raised in court and even less often in the media.
The fact that in Israel it is also verboten to even speak of the possibility that a sexual assault might have been ethno-religiously motivated indicates that the denial has affected us, too. We should remember what Zionist activist Yitzhak Tabenkin wrote after the Six-Day War: "We must see with open eyes … that in Arab countries and in many other places there are forces that threaten to bring disaster upon us. The moment they are given a chance, they are willing to do to the Jews everything the Germans did under Hitler."
The suspect in the current case might be innocent, and his conviction in the court of public opinion without a trial is inappropriate. But we do not have the privilege of shutting our eyes to the different aspects of the reality of this violent conflict.
