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The phased doctrine
By Doron Rosenblum
Tags: Israel news

1. If another ideological murderer has been discovered in your settlement or near where you live, your first and immediate reaction will be one of astonishment, incredulity, repulsion and sweeping condemnation. Express immediate profound and unqualified shock at the horrific deed, for which the dictionary does not have enough words of revulsion. Make it plain at once that there is no one in the settlement who is not stunned by the despicable act - an act that is simply unacceptable and incomprehensible, especially not in a peace-loving community like yours. Moreover, announce forthwith, with the concurrence of all the other settlers, that the miscreant is worthy of all denunciation and is immediately being spewed out of the settlement, without any "buts" or "tut-tuts." Because a murderer is a murderer is a murderer. Period. Not just a wild weed, but a spiny broom, a prickly burnet, a poison ivy who from the outset and in retrospect was as alone as a plum juniper in the desert.

2. Wait a fraction of a second before casting a giant shadow on the suspect's very sanity: "Before anything else, it's plain that this was the act of a madman." As simple as that: nutcase, weirdo, loony. You know, one of those guys who is preoccupied only with messianic and settlement affairs, who wallows in negative obsessions about the Oslo process, seculars, Arabs, leftists, gays and all that. The purists will add: "I would have him examined to see if he is fit to stand trial - but who am I to judge?"

3. Linger a little longer on the legal logic. As a civil citizen for whom the law is a beacon, do not be sparing with expressions like: "Naturally, if his guilt is proved" and: "There's no need to mention that these are only suspicions" and: "Everyone is innocent until proven guilty," etc.
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4. With the legalisms safely behind you, flash a bit of healthy human doubt, the street-smart savvy of a simple Jew: "We all remember that we had false accusations and blood libels in the past, so I suggest that we wait and see what the investigation turns up." Toss in a first dab of mystery: "There's more here than meets the eye," "We've seen this kind of thing play out before." Mention precedents: "We all remember how Dreyfus was 'investigated' too, and even accused. Not that I'm comparing." (And really, what is there to compare? The guy in that case was totally assimilated.)

5. At this point, carefully and almost imperceptibly, move to the dialectic stage. True, you began by sowing serious seeds of doubt about the suspect's sanity, but that does not contradict the fact that he is a normative fellow with wife and kids and did army service. The truth is that he's a type of undeciphered humanist. One time he helped a woman give birth. Another time he removed a thorn from the leg of the territorial commander. His neighbors even say that he often asked what's with Gilad Shalit.

6. At this point, after you've established that the man is a Jewish human being and not a monster, wonder out loud: "It would be interesting to know what led a person like this - moderate, quiet, peace-loving - to do what he did - if he did it." Leave the question hanging in the air for at least half a second, before adding: "There are situations ... I don't know ... that even Mother Teresa wouldn't have taken lying down ... Not that I am justifying the deed, but you have to ask what kind of situation prompts a sane, even saintly person to accumulate such a heavy load of anger and frustration. And I would expect all those who will soon hurl accusations and dance on the blood to ask themselves that question, too."

7. Congrats. At this stage you have left the defensive mode and moved to the offensive. Even before the enemy has opened his mouth, you have laid down the pontoon bridge and have transferred to his territory an implicit accusation about the deed itself, which was done in the past, and you have also blocked off arguments about the future. Now you have to consolidate the bridgehead: entrench yourself in the sand dunes of skepticism. Hint, without any connection to the timing itself: "You know, I'm not sure it's accidental, the timing of the announcement," "Interesting what induced the police and the Shin Bet to make public the 'results of the investigation' just now, with this timing."

8. Having fired a few tracer bullets, commence direct shelling of the target: "How is it that they always - completely by chance - 'discover' another 'murderer' in the 'territories' just as 'memorial day' for the Rabin assassination approaches?" And immediately, without losing momentum, move straight to: "... if that's the right name for this political festival of hatred and factionalism, which a minority of the nation has taken as its own and which takes place every year in the square." Keep striking while the iron is hot: "An assassination, by the way, about which quite a few open questions also remain, but I wouldn't want to go into that just now."

9. Well done. You have reached the convenient, almost pleasurable stage: symmetry. List a series of murderers and brutal crimes that have been perpetrated by the seculars / urbanites / Metropolitan Tel Avivans (many new names have recently been added to the regular reservoir of rhetoric, which until now consisted mainly of the slayers of the taxi driver Derek Roth and the killers of Asaf Streichman), create a direct symmetry between them and ideological killers from Abrushmi to Yigal Amir, and ask rhetorically whether anyone (that is, anyone apart from you) engages in slanderous generalizations and claims that they came from the secular, empty, assimilating, hedonistic public from Metropolitan Tel Aviv. Remember your built-in advantage over the residents inside the Green Line: They don't have a spokesman.

10. Count your achievements. Within minutes of the report about the event, you have succeeded in creating a screen of ambiguity and doubt over a snapshot of reality which at first looked razor-sharp: Despite the suspect's "confession," there is (in your eyes) no evidence, other than what the authorities planted or extorted or whatever; there are contradictory testimonies and there's more than one way of looking at this; and sheer vilifications; a dark conspiracy that was hatched in dark corners, prejudice, a contorted tale; there is some sort of mysterious Shin Bet, a kind of arm of a pathetic secular left, extinct but omnipotent, that stirs things up and creates a fiction to the effect that there are "rebels against the kingdom" or extremists or messianic settlers or fields of wild weeds; and there is no one (apart from you) to cry out again, "Srak, srak!" ("Blank, blank," shouted when Rabin was shot) in the knowledge that this is yet another provocation. And here, by the way, make sure to drop the name "Avishai Raviv," the double agent. It can't hurt. The intelligent public - those who don't buy the bluffs of the media - will already reach the unavoidable conclusion by itself, even in the present state of unknowing: Rabin did it.
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