Unrest after Israel church attack

[cal04]

At least two Israelis reportedly set off firecrackers in the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth during a service late on Friday.
The incident caused panic among worshippers and sparked angry protests outside the church, where hundreds of people congregated.

Large numbers of police were present at the church, where the two attackers were said to be hiding from the crowds.

The church is one of Christianity's most important sites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4772364.stm

[pocket]

1. Israelies intolerant of other religions? Nawwww

.

[meti57b]

4. Israelis are tolerant of other religions. This is a case of a few nutjobs

just like everyone else has. What is the rush to make more out of it than what it is.

[eyl]

2. My first thought

when I heard this was that this was fairly straightforward (despicable, but straightforward) - a terrorist attack by Jews against an Arab Christian site. Later details, however, seem to raise some questions as to what exactly was going on.

The three attackers are a married couple and their daughter. The husband is a Jew; however, the wife is a Christian. Also, some years ago, the welfare services threatened to remove the couple's children from their home. In response, they tried to claim political asylum....in the Palestinian authority.

Some more details

[dusmcj]

3. false flag provocation op with a proxy ?

can't figure out a motivation though beyond the general value of fomenting chaos to justify "heightened security".

[cali]

5. Further reading clearly indicates

that this was not political Deranged man, wife and daughter with personal grievances of a non political nature.

[dusmcj]

6. perfect proxy

the deluded may be more easily swayed to perform actions which serve the purposes of others.

Not saying that that's how it is, just that the specific issues he had might make it more rather than less likely that he was doing something which some third party found useful. I'm not saying whether the third party arranged for him to do it; I'm also not saying whether, if the third party did do that, he was aware of it or not.

[Coastie for Truth]

8. ??

:shrug:

[dusmcj]

9. I'll try to illustrate

assume that a person A exists who has had ongoing conflict with some governmental authority or social group B let's say. To the point where that conflict has caused psychological problems, and the person is no longer able to approach their relationship to the opponents B and their conflict with them rationally - it's given rise to a set of reaction patterns in their psychic makeup (easy examples: people who hate governments, ethnic groups, races, blah blah blah. Sources of conflict do not have to be real in order for it to exist...). Assume further that that state of chronic conflict has made the person A labile, in the sense that their psychic state is easily perturbed and they are easily influenced into having their reaction patterns triggered, particularly by any stimuli associated with said conflict. (PTSD is all about this kind of phenomenology BTW - irrational psychological effects arising as the result of chronic stress. Although not about deliberately triggering those reaction patterns.)

Now assume that a third party C is aware of this person's condition and the specifics, including the opponent in their conflict and the specific putative origins of the conflict. And perceives potential benefit to themselves to be gained by triggering person A's reaction patterns related to party B. The crudest example is that person A might be prompted to commit an act of violence against party B.

So now party C takes up influencing party A. "Wow, those SOBs in party B are at it again. Here's their latest outrage. It's about time someone did something about them once and for all." A slowly warms to the subject. C works on A, pumping up A's emotional state and keeping A in the psychological space of their conflict with B. This is maintained until the subjective immensity of the conflict with B becomes so large for A that A must take some action, if only to relieve the pressure. Violence follows. The effects on party B, or on the collective condition of multiple parties, serve some purpose that C had, whatever that might have been, which C never revealed to A. Yet A effectively did C's bidding.

This is a flavor of agent provocateur, only with the specific characteristics that the aim of the provocation is not damage to its target (its target putting itself into a detrimental position is a secondary effect possibly irrelevant to the provocateur) but rather to a third party, and also that the target of the provocation has psychological debility which makes them easily influenced and malleable.

Psychopaths (and here that is party C first and foremost, A may only incidentally also be one) have always found a home in the halls of power as executive agents. The current flavor of this is the CIA's insightful proclamation that sometimes we have to do business with bad people because the world isn't a nice place. (I trust that the incisiveness of that observation isn't a measure of the overall intellectual capability and capital of the US intelligence community. It sounds more like something the Republican party might emit.)

[meti57b]

10. I think the simplest explanation ....

that fully explains the situation and hasn't been disproved, ... is the most reasonable explanation. They are just a couple of nutjobs.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[eyl]

7. Predictably but sadly, there are those rushing to fan the flames

without bothering too much about the facts

Israeli Arab Knesset members responded angrily to the Friday evening attack. "Such an act is proof of the fact that radical right-wing and settler terror groups feel they are free to perform their crimes, both in the territories and in Israel, against the Arab population," said Hadash Chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh.

Balad Chairman MK Azmi Bishara condemned the attack and said the motivation appeared to have been religious or nationalistic

There's absolutely no sign of a connection between these guys and any right-wing groups; I doubt anyone belonging to such a group would have requested asylum from Yasser Arafat.

Latin Archbishop Michel Sabah, the most senior Catholic figure in Israel, said the Vatican was following closely the events in Nazareth. Sabah said that the person who tried to perform the terrible deed was born and bred on racist views and wild incitement against Christians in particular and Arabs in general.

Sabah apparently missed that at least one of the perpetrators - who is the wife of one of the others - is a Christian.

Source

[Igel]

12. My first question was their intent.

Even if deranged, they probably had something in mind.

My guess: Scare the people inside. Big explosion, little explosion, nobody's going to pay that close attention. BANG! And everybody runs. Ha-ha.