Some Israelis are happy that several nursery and primary school palestinian children died in a bus accident

On Thursday, February -16, a bus carrying Palestinian children from a primary school and a nursery from Shufat refugee camp (Jerusalem) hit an Israeli truck near the Qalandia checkpoint, at the entrance to Ramallah. As a result, 5 children and one teacher were killed and 40 others were injured, although at first it was believed that the number of victims had been higher.

Condolences ensued: embassies, organizations, governments and individuals, including many Israelis who sent solidarity messages in Palestinian news websites. Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed "sorrow" for what happened and said they would provide "the Palestinian Authority with any help required." But all these acts of good will were blurred by the comments that some Israelis posted on various websites. For example, on the Facebook page of the Israeli news website Walla News, these comments appeared:

And one can think, "Well, there are radicals everywhere, if it was the other way around, perhaps some radical Palestinian would have done the same." And it's true but, in my view, there is a difference: many of these comments, such as "Death to the Arabs, why do we help them?" "Can we send another truck?" Or "I would send a double trailer to get rid of all these shit" appeared on the Facebook page of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And his advisors (or himself) did not even bother to remove them. Now imagine the opposite case, with the page of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's full of comments against Israeli children killed in a traffic accident. Netanyahu would give a press conference to "show the world how terrorists the Palestinians are, who are allied with Iran and they want to provoke a new holocaust in Israel", and the whole world would condemn anti-Semitism.

And the difference is accepted as something normal. If the news on TV talk about a "Palestinian terrorist", nobody questions he WAS a terrorist (and maybe he was, but anyway we do not even doubt about it). But when a media outlet dares to step aside from the mainstream speech and accuses an Israeli soldier of being a terrorist, then we think, "Wait, wait, why do they call him a terrorist? What has he done exactly?”

I condemn anyone who uses terror and death to achieve his aims, here or in Honolulu, wherever he comes from. But precisely because of that, let's call things by their name, regardless of the background of the agresssor.

Recently, a journalism student asked me: "And how do you manage to interview terrorists?" And I decide to make a sociological experiment. I replied:

"You find the way, you swallow whatever he says so he speaks freely and then you can write it and show the public how he thinks.  Once I asked one if he believed that violence was necessary to achieve his purposes, and he said: "Yes, we need to use the language of weapons so that they can get the message clearly, that this is our land." I then asked: Is it necessary to kill children, women and innocent civilians? "And he said," Yes, they have to pay a high price to see that we are serious."

The student listened with disgust, and I said: "Appalling, isn´t it? A terrorist 100%." She nodded. Then I said, "Well, he was not a Hamas terrorist; he was an Israeli general in command of a tank division that participated in the 2006 Lebanon war and the masacre of Jenin Refugee Camp in 2002." She was then really surprised. Then I admited that some members of Hamas who I interviewed also expressed similar views (although I have to say that at least they tried to soften the message and give more arguments) But what matters is not who does it but what he does. And whoever does it, let's call things by their name and let's treat everyone the same way!