TIME did take the trouble to note the response of a relative of Naftali Fraenkel, one of the Jewish kidnap-murder victims.
“If a young Arab man was murdered for nationalistic reasons then it is a horrifying and disgusting act. There is no distinguishing blood from blood. Murder is murder, whatever the nationality or age may be. There is no justification, no forgiveness and no atonement for any murder,” the relative told the murderer.
The magazine report added, “Many if not most Palestinians refuse to say that the three Israeli teens were abducted at all and quoted one Arab teenager as saying, “It’s a lie. As soon as the two parties Fatah and Hamas began the reconciliation, Israel began to make up all kinds of things to ruin the unit.”
Arabs, as usual, have shot themselves in the foot.
Khudair’s body was found in the French Hill neighborhood, one of the stops for Jerusalem’s light rail system that serves Arabs as well as Jewish areas.
Even the left-wing Haaretz newspaper noted that “the light rail has become the most salient symbol of the city’s unification under the wings of normalization and technology” and has become “a shared space for Jews and Palestinians, contributing a great deal to a mixing of the population and bringing more Palestinians into the city center than ever before in the history of the united city.”
After the riots began on Wednesday following news of the murder, Arabs set fire to the light rail’s tracks, which include rubber, knocked over signal poles, set fire to electric boxes and scattered rocks on the tracks, forcing the light rail to shut down service to Arabs beyond French Hill.
Haaretz estimates it will take months before service can be restored to Shuafat, the focus of the riots, and Beit Hanina.
One third of all light rail traffic is by Arabs from Beit Hanina and Shuafat.