Predictably perhaps, Ron Cahilli of Haaretz sees the soldier Elor Azaria, convicted for shooting dead a Palestinian terrorist lying on the ground, as a Mizrahi victim of years of establishment incitement against the Arabs. There is no attempt to see Azaria’s hatred of Arabs in the context of centuries of Jewish fear and mistrust in the Morocco of his antecedents.
Elor Azaria: son of Moroccan Jews
Azaria is the child of the new Israeli right, one which looks Mizrahi and is characterized as devouring Arabs, while being subjected to years of incitement by politicians. He’s not the successful and enlightened child of upscale Rehavia or some kibbutz, one who voted for left-wing Meretz and galloped through the streets of Tel Aviv in that wondrous summer of social protests in 2011, enjoying a tailwind from mainstream media. He is the child of poorer neighborhoods, in this case one in Ramle, in which the blogger-rapper “The Shadow” and the extremist and racist La Familia group are more popular than that “transvestite,” Bibi.
Azaria is not a child who attended some elite school, one whose treatment by the courts we’re all too familiar with, a propos equitable treatment by law enforcement and the justice system, with one reminded of the problematic statement by former Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak (“This court is a family, one can’t bring in someone who isn’t part of it”).
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