There was a pogrom in Maghar

By the time these lines are printed, a few days after the events in the Galilee village of Maghar, there may be a need to remind most readers of what happened there. This past weekend, there was bitter strife in the village sparked by rumors that a Christian resident had posted falsified pictures of Druze young women in the nude on the Internet. Eventually it was determined that no such thing ever happened and that it was a false rumor spread by a 16-year-old Druze boy in response – he claimed – for having been cursed online by Christian villagers.

By the time these lines are printed, a few days after the events in the Galilee village of Maghar, there may be a need to remind most readers of what happened there. This past weekend, there was bitter strife in the village sparked by rumors that a Christian resident had posted falsified pictures of Druze young women in the nude on the Internet. Eventually it was determined that no such thing ever happened and that it was a false rumor spread by a 16-year-old Druze boy in response – he claimed – for having been cursed online by Christian villagers.
I visited the village the next day to see for myself and to better understand what happened there this weekend. To my amazement, I learned that the “bitter strife” included the throwing of detonators and firecrackers in the middle of the Christian neighborhood, the burning of cars, homes and stores belonging to Christians, and the mass flight of Christian families prompted by fear of their Druze neighbors.
Eight people were injured in the riots. Miraculously, no one was killed. There is only one name for events of this nature, one that is well known to every Jew – pogrom. The Druze residents of Maghar committed a pogrom against their Christian neighbors in the name of respect for women. This happened in response to a rumor, a blood libel spread by a teenager.
No one took the trouble to check the facts. It is possible that no one was even interested in verifying the existence of the supposed photos. The rumor alone was ample pretext for the assault on the Christian villagers, simply because they were Christians. Can it be that in Israel, the state of the Jews – a people with much experience with persecution and pogroms in the name of religion – there could be such a thing as violence committed in the name of religion? The weekend of violence in Maghar answered this question.
The disgrace did not end with the violence. It continued with the apathetic reaction of the police, who failed to intervene as they should have. They did not quell the violence or protect the Christian residents.
The disgrace continued the next day when the media, whose function it is to reflect reality and place urgent social problems on the public agenda, described the events as if they had occurred in some foreign country, with emphasis placed on the teenager and his concocted story, and not on the violence or the religious aspect – the real background to the incident. How would the media and the political establishment have reacted, what would the Israeli agenda look like had the people under attack been Jews?
The fact that the Israel Police did not prevent property damage and that citizens were compelled to flee their homes and stay away for of fear of the assailants even after the riots had ended is evidence of an operational breakdown. The fact that the Ministry of Education and the political establishment did not address the subject the next day is evidence of a moral breakdown.
Just two weeks ago, the media focused for several days on a punch that was or wasn’t given to a referee in a soccer game between Bnei Sakhnin and Hapoel Haifa. The story was extensively covered, and not only in the sports pages. Radio and television programmers found the time to report on the incident at length, and showed the pictures so that we could judge for ourselves what happened there. They debated whether raising a hand against a soccer referee was equivalent to raising a hand against a judge in court.
Is it possible that we follow a double standard for violence and react differently when it is carried out against minorities? As someone who served as the mayor of a mixed-population city and dealt with the relations between various ethnic and religious communities, I am furious at the intolerable ease with which Israeli society and the Israeli media relate to violence committed in the name of religion among the minorities living in its midst. It is unacceptable for there to be popularity rankings for violence, with violence in sport receiving special treatment as opposed to violence toward parents, security guards, school children, women and minorities.

The writer is a Member of Knesset representing the Labor Party and the former mayor of Haifa.

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