Blind evil

Of all the grave and ugly developments on the fringes of settler society, none is more frightening than acts of Jewish terror, whose perpetrators attack Palestinian targets, primarily schools in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, without hindrance. One or more cells, comprised of Israelis living either in the territories or west of the Green Line, has for the past two years succeeded in making a laughingstock of the Shin Bet security service and the police, and assaulting Arabs. These attacks would be disturbing even if the targets were chosen at random. But the targets are chosen carefully - and, abominably, they are children. Even worse, these attacks target children while they are in school. So blindly evil is the fire of vengeance that burns in these Jews that they seek the lives of children where they can be found in the greatest quantity - while they are studying.

It is true that these attacks usually fail, but they should be dealt with as if they had succeeded - as if they had killed Palestinian children. In light of the impressive successes of the security services in foiling Palestinian terror attacks over the last two years, the failure of the Shin Bet's Jewish department demands a more convincing explanation than those that have so far been offered. It is admittedly difficult to penetrate a small, tightly knit organization of Jewish zealots, but this task should not be beyond the powers of those who have so successfully penetrated Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Tanzim - and what human agents cannot accomplish, electronics should be able to fill in the gaps.

The available resources are limited, but they are allocated on the basis of a strict order of priorities. Some new items have been added to the national priority list in recent years, such as international organized crime rings that are trying to set up branches in Israel. In the same way, Jewish terror should be elevated to the top of the intelligence priority list, and the best brains and the maximum resources should be assigned to this task.

If the Shin Bet needs administrative tools to foil Jewish terror and to arrest the suspects, the prime minister and the attorney general must supply such tools. Israel cannot permit itself to demonstrate governmental impotence in the face of the murder of innocents, children as well as adults; it must prevent the wanton criminals among its citizens from wreaking their will. The despicable murder of Israeli children does not justify the lawlessness subsumed under the rubric, among others, of "avenging the children."