What people value: compare and contrast
** Posted by Phineas
Some of the most profound lessons are taught through irony, that striking contrast between what we would expect to happen in a sequence of events and what really does happen. Last week, the Fogel family was nearly wiped out, parents and children —an infant!— slaughtered as they laid down for the evening by Muslim jihadists of the Palestinian Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.
Then, yesterday, a Palestinian woman rushes to the gates of the village where the Fogels’ relatives were sitting shiva and begged for help to save her baby. Did the Israelis, still in mourning for the dead and still angry over the atrocity, do the predictable thing and turn her away?
No, in fact:
Just as IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz arrived in Neve Tzuf to offer his condolences, a Palestinian cab raced towards the community’s entrance. In it, soldiers and paramedics discovered a Palestinian woman in her 20s in advanced stages of labor and facing a life-threatening situation: The umbilical cord was wrapped around the young baby girl’s neck, endangering both her and her mother.
The quick action of settler paramedics and IDF troops deployed in the area saved the mother’s and baby’s life, prompting great excitement and emotions at the site where residents are still mourning the brutal death of five local family members.
And so a people whose culture values life —“l’chaim!” “To life!”— rush to save the life of a mother and child, even though they come from their enemies and even though they themselves are still reeling from what happened.
Meanwhile, a people whose culture values death over life pass out sweets to celebrate the successful murder of a mother and her children.
Quite a contrast.
via The Jawa Report
(Crossposted at Public Secrets)