Maybe you have read about the murder in Jerusalem of Richard Lakin, 76, an American idealist who moved to Israel in 1984 and became active in the peace movement there and then was shot and stabbed by young Palestinians on a Jerusalem bus two weeks ago, succumbing to his wounds on Tuesday. The Hartford Courant says Lakin “spent a lifetime trying to bring people of different religions and races together.” The New York Times has a moving report from Lakin’s funeral saying he was a civil rights activist in the U.S. before moving to Israel to be a teacher.
Peace Now also has a report on the case, apparently based on a translation of a report in the Hebrew press:
Less than a day after Richard Lakin passed away Tuesday from the wounds he suffered in an attack by two Palestinians two weeks ago, thousands of right-wingers on the Internet celebrated his death. The flood of hate posts began after the right-wing Israeli rapper, ‘The Shadow,’ wrote on Facebook that the murder of Lakin, an activist with the ‘Tag Meir’ group, which visits Palestinians who were attacked by Jews, should be a wake-up call to left-wingers. “He needs to be buried in Gaza and people should shit on his gravestone,” posted one on Facebook over a picture of Lakin’s face. “Another dead terrorist,” wrote another. “So it turns out Arabs do good things sometimes.” “For me he is another terrorist.” “Since I really love the left-wing, I want to wish them the same thing,” others wrote.
The New York Times did not mention those Facebook posts in its piece on Lakin. It does, however, mention the Facebook posts by Palestinian youth inciting attacks on Israelis. Lakin’s “family is now suing Facebook over posts they say incite violence,” the Times reports. It notes that a Palestinian killed in the bus attack, Bahas Alian
had announced his plans on Facebook. While sitting vigil in the hospital, the family was incensed to find on social networks a re-enactment of the bus attack “to encourage others to take the same action,” [Lakin’s son Micah] Avni said, and “specific instructions on how to slice someone’s chest open and cut their intestines like what was done to my father.”
The Times elaborates:
“My father had been a great beneficiary of social media. He used Facebook and Twitter to express his thoughts on education and on peace,” Mr. Avni said. “He also became the victim of a tremendous amount of incitement and hate on those vehicles.”
Now, Mr. Lakin is the lead plaintiff in a suit filed this week in New York by a conservative Israeli antiterrorism group that seeks an injunction to force Facebook to block posts that call for violence against Jews.
If you read this article, the people you come away judging are the Palestinians. If you read the Peace Now report, you see that there is actually plenty of hatred to go around. This is a pattern: Once again, the New York Times is covering up the frightening fascistic trends in Israel, deceiving Americans about the nature of that society.
P.S. When is the Times going to do a long profile of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun’s family? She was the 18-year-old daughter of a leading Palestinian doctor shot at a checkpoint in Hebron. We know her family would talk to the Times. They talked to Allison Deger.
Lakin lived in the East Talpiot/Armon HaNetziv settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. It doesn’t mean he deserved to die, but neither was he the saint of peace that is described in all the liberal press coverage. It also hints at what many Israelis really mean when they talk about two states and “coexistence.” Like the “two-state solution” that was organized for the Navajo, the Seminole or the Sioux in North America.
Interesting note: the background pic in the facebook photo headlining this article of the Kuffiyah-wearing and yarmulke-wearing boys was actually of two Jewish boys. No Palestinians, but only the appearance of coexistence for public consumption.
I have no idea if the late Mr. Lakin knew this at all.
No matter: he did not deserve this. But neither did the Palestinians who suffered as a result of his settlement. It sounds like he was doing more towards reconciliation than most and deserves commendation for that at the very least.
I agree 110% with the above comment: How can a peace activist live on occupied land in a neighborhood where most of the streets are named after Zionist terrorists who drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into exile??? Does anyone not see incongruous hypocrisy all over this? How could he preach anything or pretend to be part of the solution living in settlement units on OCCUPIED land stolen and taken away from others by violent force?
I mean I don’t want to denigrate the man now that he’s deceased but you can’t preach without moral INTEGRITY. It’s ludicrous; come on! Who was he trying to kid; when Zionism is totally against a bi-national state. I’ll assume it was only his conscience he was really trying to kid; I don’t care how many peace symbols he doodled!
Pardon the analogy, (it’s only symbolic) but I couldn’t think of another that really captured the height of such hypocrisy.: If you’re a priest living with prostitutes in a brothel, don’t be surprised if you’re mistaken for a jon or worse yet — their pimp!
And like JK; I don’t advocate violence; but I’m also nobody’s fool. If you want respect; respect yourself. I could never respect myself, let alone preach anything or feel I had the moral authority to do so if I lived in Lakin’s neighborhood.
Phil and James thank you for continuing to point out the NYBloodyTimes “patterns” of mass deception.
Senseless killing
@JeffKlein
” It also hints at what many Israelis really mean when they talk about two states and coexistence.”
I agree. I sense a deep Biblical longing for a return to the” peaceful apartheid” of yesteryear (well of last year if truth be told ).