Opinion

Murder of an Arab boy

Scarcely one week after the bodies of three Israeli boys were discovered, 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Kheidar was brutally murdered.

Israeli authorities say several Jewish extremists it now has in custody killed the Arab youth in revenge for the earlier killing of the three Jewish boys.

So what we have is a case proving both sides equal in barbarity, right?

Not quite: While there is no moral difference between Palestinians and Israelis who murder innocent teenage boys, everything else underscores stark differences.

Those who kidnapped the Israelis, for starters, were from Hamas, part of the Palestinian unity government. And the Palestinian mother of one Hamas suspect in the of killing the Israeli boys says she’d be “proud” if her son did it.

In sharp contrast, the still-mourning parents of one of the murdered Israeli boys reached out to the Palestinian boy’s family to express their condolences.

Across Israel, there has been a chorus of denunciations over Abu Kheidar’s murder, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to bring the Palestinian youth’s killers to justice.

So let us grieve for the dead boys, Israeli and Palestinian alike, whose lives were robbed from them and their families.

But let us not forget the terrible reality of the Holy Land, where the murder of the innocent is treated as a high crime in one world and an act of patriotism in another.