Justice for Itamar?

Magnes Zionist explains why there can never be justice in the case of the Fogel family members killed in the Itamar settlement now that two people have been arrested in connection with the case:

 I am puzzled by the silence of the decent folk here. Even if one is convinced that the Itamar murder suspects actually committed the murder – and given the justice system on the West Bank, that is hardly to be taken for granted – the manner of apprehending the suspects clearly involved massive violations of their due process, not to mention collective punishment of innocents.

Would we tolerate this sort of "investigation" if it were conducted against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship within the Green Line? And if a serial killer was discovered in Tel Aviv, would we tolerate the police going to a neighborhood where the murdered was known to have lived, rounding up people with no criminal record, or with no reasonable tie to the murders, arresting them in the middle of the night, at times, and questioning them, taking from men and women DNA samples forcibly, and damaging their property – so as to apprehend murder suspects? Would we tolerate this in murder cases where settlers are suspects?

Even if the murder suspects get a fair trial – and knowing West Bank justice, the likelihood is low -- we already know that justice will not be done in the Itamar murder case.

Mondoweiss has a useful roundup of news of the arrests.

Melanie Phillips plumbs the depths of "depravity"

She's utterly bonkers. I first noticed this in The Independent today:

What desperate moments for all among us who revere Melanie Phillips and the rigorous self-restraint she brings to her work. In the coming days, the Metropolitan Police must decide whether to prosecute her over a classically thoughtful posting on her Spectator-hosted blog.

No one could argue with Melanie's outrage at the brutal murder of a family of West Bank settlers. What roused Muslim lobby group Engage to write to the Press Complaints Commission and Trevor Phillips, as well as the law, was her wontedly subtle extrapolation from the specific to the general... the extension of one horrendous crime to "the moral depravity of the Arabs"; one reference to Arabs as "savages"; and another to "the moral depravity of the Arabs".

So I hurried home to do a quick post but first I checked Mad Mel's blog at The Spectator for the quotes in context.

1. Today the massacred Fogel family was buried in Jerusalem. And as anticipated, the moral depravity of the Arabs is finding a grotesque echo in the moral bankruptcy and worse of the British and American ‘liberal’ media
2. So to the New York Times, it’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised ‘peace prospects’ -- because the Israelis will quite rightly never trust any agreement with such savages -- but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for making peace elusive. Twisted, and sick.
3. Graphic pictures of the bodies of the slain Fogel family are circulating on the net and on YouTube. The relatives of the massacre victims have made them publicly available in order to show the world the full horror of the Arab barbarism in Itamar.  

It looks like The Spectator is going to tough this out for now. The editor, Fraser Nelson, is trying to make out that the references were only to the unidentified killer or killers. I think most reports assume that one person acted alone but here's Nelson:

It’s a funny old world. I have now been contacted by two journalists informing me that Bedfordshire Police are investigating The Spectator. Why? Because of the Melanie Philips blog where she referred to the “moral depravity” of “the Arabs” who killed the Fogel family in Israel.

She cannot possibly have been referring only to whoever killed the people at Itamar. This looks like a Kilroy-Silk moment for Mad Mel and let's see if she/they get away with it.

But, back to The Independent:

Some will wonder about the public reaction were a parodist to rework this piece by substituting "Arabs" with "Jews", and perhaps they have a point. 

But then of course, they'd never get away with it.

Where is Itamar?

I saw the print edition of the Jewish Chronicle yesterday, the day after it came out and it had several pages of comment and reports on Itamar. The front page carried the headline "Why no outrage over West Bank family slaughter?".

The negligible coverage in the international media of the terror attack in Itamar last Friday night, in which five members of one family died, has enraged the authorities in Israel.

Well I seem to have left my copy at my mum's (ok, my mum's copy at my mum's) so I looked at the JC on line and on the home page, at the time of writing, there is not one report or link to a report on Itamar.  It's not that they don't have the reports but they have to be searched to find them and then you will find 15 reports that appear to have been filed in time for publication in print.  So we must express "outrage over West Bank family" but not for long.  It could be some webmaster oversight or it could be that some of the responses from zionist sources are too repugnant even for the JC or it could be that new information has come to light that undermines some of the hypocritical and racist outpourings.