http://www.timesofisrael.com/when-a-palestinian-teen-shed-the-last-traits-of-humanity/
When a Palestinian teen shed the last traits of humanityWhat brought a 16-year-old West Banker to such vicious depths as to murder the sleeping Israeli man-child in the adjoining seat on a bus on Wednesday? The drip-drip poison of incitement
I cannot get the vision of Eden Atias, stabbed again and again and again, and bleeding to death in his blue fabric seat on a bus at Afula bus station on Wednesday morning, out of my head. And I’m sure I’m not alone in the abiding sense of horror and despair.
A young man, conscripted into the Israeli army just two weeks earlier, fast asleep in his seat on a bus inside Israel, knifed over and over by a Palestinian teenager so consumed, so spilling over with hatred as to have truly lost “the image of God.”
All killing is foul, all terrorist murders indefensible. But this assault is particularly depraved and depressing. For it sickeningly demonstrates an atmosphere and a mindset evidently prevalent, among at least some Palestinians in the West Bank, that leaves no room for optimism in the short-term. And it underlines the nature of the task ahead if there is to be any substantive change for the better in the medium-term.
Human nature is flawed. We all grapple with what seem to be instinctive tendencies to be selfish, materialistic, suspicious of the unfamiliar, resentful of others who we think have it easier or better than we do. Some of us deal with these unpleasant aspects of our personalities better than others. In the best of us, good wins out over evil more often and more completely.
But even in the most stained and weak of characters, there are limits to the horrors and the wrongs that our flaws will push us to commit. At some point, other, better instincts kick in. Many folks drive irresponsibly; some cheat on their taxes; fewer carry out robberies and assaults. Most people recoil at the idea of taking a human life.
Almost nobody, no matter how flawed, how skewed, how filled with hatred, sinks so low as to take a life in cold blood.
A bloodstained bus seat where soldier Eden Atias was stabbed to death by a young Palestinian man on a bus at the central bus station in Afula (photo credit: Avishag Shaar Yashuv/Flash90)