Tel Aviv — Why Are You Silent?

When a teenager was stabbed to death in a pride parade in Jerusalem and an Arab infant was killed in an arson attack in the same week last August, Tel Aviv erupted in outrage.  The first attack was carried out by a Jew, the second suspected to be carried out by ‘Jewish youth’ but is unproven and still remains unsolved. Thousands of people filled Rabin Square and Gan Meir, all of whom had thrust themselves deep into the throes of sorrow, outrage, mourning, breast beating, and soul searching.  It was Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av all rolled into one that day in August in Tel Aviv.

Fast forward to October during Chagim, and what started as a bloodbath in Jerusalem is rapidly spreading to all parts of the country.  Parents are gunned down and killed in their car in front of their children.  Arabs shoot and wound a child and a teenager while in their sukkahs. Rabbis and husbands and fathers are stabbed and murdered in front of their families.  Teens are knifed and critically wounded.  Border guards are injured by Arab firebombers.  Babies are wounded by Arab rock throwers.  Jewish motorists are ambushed.  IDF soldiers are stabbed.  Students are stabbed and clinging to life.  All this gut wrenching horror in the space of a single week.

Where are you Tel Aviv?  Why are you silent?  Where is the outrage?  Where is the outcry?  Where are the rallies?  Your fellow humans are bleeding.  Your fellow Jews are being hunted and butchered like animals.  Speaking of animals, you managed to squeeze in a rally for the rights of animals after a dog shelter was torched in northern Israel, where ten thousand of you showed up just two days after the Henkin murders — the parents who were shot to death in front of their children. Your silence is a piercing stab in the heart (forgive the pun) to the people of Israel.

Do you only react when four-legged creatures are murdered?  Do you only react when Arabs are murdered?  Do you only react when Jews commit the murder?  Do you only react when it suits some sort of blind agenda?  Tell me — I want to know.  Where are you?

Why do we expect more than silence from the world when silence is what we get from Tel Aviv?  Maybe if Tel Aviv cared enough to react — the world would too.  If you think no one notices, we do.  Everyone does.  The whole world is watching.  Your fellow Jews are watching.  All of humanity is watching.

So Tel Aviv, where are you?  Why are you silent?