Jack Engelhard
Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie, has been republished to meet readers’ demands. His other major works include Compulsive: A Novel, his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir Escape from Mount Moriah, plus Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist. His website: www.jackengelhard.com
They say he was “completely normal,” that is, “until he went crazy” on Tuesday, pulled out a gun and shot to death three Israelis who were serving as sentries for Har Adar. That’s a (99.3 %) Jewish town northwest of Jerusalem unaccustomed to headlines.
The people there are blessed with peace, prosperity and good relations with their Arab neighbors. At least they were…
They were until a Palestinian Arab who was having troubles at home, took his troubles to Har Adar.
The locals knew him. They knew him as someone who fixed things for them around the house. That’s quite common. Arabs from nearby Muslim communities are frequently emplyed as laborers for domestic and construction work and there are no headlines to tell the story of the harmony that so often exists between Jews and Arabs within the Jewish State of Israel.
That is so until, in the words of the Israeli who employed the terrorist before she knew what lurked in his heart – until one of them “goes crazy.”
Up to that moment, whether by gun, by knife, by firebomb, by car ramming, by plane hijacking, by rocks, by stones, they are “completely normal.”
They all seem to fit that description. Those Boston Marathon bombers were nice boys and the Fort Hood shooter was a good guy.
Everyone said so before they went crazy.
That is precisely what concerns the people of Har Adar, of all Israel, of America and of the entire world, namely – who’s next?
No one anywhere in the world has the answer. Completely normal people seem to go bonkers for no excuse, no reason.
Most, for some reason, are Muslim. We’ll let others explain why this is the case. But in Israel one man may partly hold the key.
Abbas – through his leadership in the PA (the Palestinian Authority) – is directly responsible for the slaying at Har Adar.
Mahmoud Abbas is his name and why this leader of the “Palestinian people” has not been arrested is a confounding mystery.
Abbas – through his leadership in the PA (the Palestinian Authority) – is directly responsible for the slaying at Har Adar.
Only days before the attack he called for “Days of Rage.” The terrorist responded with deadly gunshots and Abbas is still a free man. Baffling! Back in July, also “Days of Rage,” and this time three members of the Solomon family were murdered as they sat down for a Sabbath meal and to celebrate the birth of a grandchild.
Abbas does everything except pull the trigger and walks the streets untouched and unscathed.
Or is such blood-thirty incitement likewise “completely normal?” We know the Europeans.
The Muslim mayor of London Sadiq Khan says that Islamic terrorism is what everyone should expect nowadays….and following the Manchester Massacre in May (29 dead, 59 wounded) the BBC’s Katty Kay told American television that “Europe is getting used to attacks like this. We are never going to be able to wipe it out.”
But that’s Europe. Those people are suicidal. We are Americans. We are Israelis. We’ve got brains. We’ve got muscle and we love life.
The massacre at Har Adar took place just as US envoy Jason Greenblatt arrived in Israel for another round of “peace talks.”
Those are always sure to last until someone completely normal goes crazy.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and the ground-breaking inside-journalism thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest is “News Anchor Sweetheart.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
