ATZUM mourns with every decent person the murder of the infant Ali Dawabsheh and decries the arson which destroyed his family home and severely injured three of his family. With every decent person, and with all force words can muster, we call upon the State of Israel and its enforcement agencies to find the terrorists who perpetrated this murder. We urge the police, army and intelligence services to apply to them, and to their families if complicit, and if they be minors, to their instigators, the same standards of arrest, interrogation and lengthy imprisonment applied to all terrorists, for this terror threatens the fabric of Israel society no less that that which claims the lives of its Jewish citizens.
We mourn too the death of Shira Banki (zihrona livrakha) and hope and pray for the healing of body and soul of those gay pride participants stabbed on the streets of Yerushalayim by a proponent of ultra-Orthodox sinat hinam/senseless hatred. We urge the State of Israel redouble its surveillance of those individuals, and the organizations which advocate and support their hate and violence, and apply to them the same standards of restraint and sentencing brought against all who murder and who urge violence against citizens of the State.
For today we have only words. Tomorrow and beyond, every decent person will ask how to translate those words to deeds in demanding justice be served.
Rabbi Levi Lauer
Founding Executive Director of ATZUM
