At the moment it happened, the murder of eighteen-month-old Ali Dawabshe, and later his father, by Israeli settlers in a firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma seemed to shake the foundations of the Israeli occupation itself. Anguished cries for accountability rang out worldwide as Israeli politicians declared they would crackdown on Jewish terrorism and Israel supporters warned the legitimacy of Zionism itself could hang in the balance if the perpetrators were not brought to justice. More than a month later Israeli authorities have failed to produce a suspect directly linked to the attack. Dan Cohen spent an afternoon around north Tel Aviv’s picturesque beachfront asking Israelis for assessments of the government’s handling of the firebombing. The coastal city is often portrayed as the counterweight to the dominant right-wing – as Israel’s bastion of liberalism and intellectualism. But the Tel Avivians he talked to were largely disinterested, and some had long forgotten about the attack.
