Sometimes things really are black and white. No shades of gray. No nuances. This is a story you ought to know, and share.
      

It is a microcosm of the conflict:  A good man was murdered because he was a Jew, living in the ancestral homeland. The morality play unfolded in December as you would expect-- Under Obama administration pressure, Israel dismantled a checkpoint to make life easier for Palestinians. This makes easier the desultory execution of a beloved rabbi; The rabbi's 16- year old son used his eulogy to urge Israeli youth not to retaliate for his father's murder.  Israeli Defense Forces eliminated the murderers when they refused to surrender. Then, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority described the rabbi's murderers as martyrs.
 
    

Random drive-by shootings for Palestine. This is their way. We are not like them. Dry Bones had a cartoon in The Jerusalem Post that said Peace will come when the Palestinians stop naming streets and schools after murderers. It is so true.

      In a bizzarre postscript to the Chai murder, the U.S. State

Department demanded an explanation from Israel, as to why the murderers were killed. No explanations were demanded about treating the murderers as heroes. Understand--there was never an issue about whether these thugs actually murdered Rabbi Chai in cold blood. Their families brag about what they did--murdering a father of seven. The media call the murdered Rabbi a settler, as though that justifies his murder. The top diplomats of the PA--Abbas and Fayyad publicly honor the memory of the murderers.

      We are far from real peace; very far indeed.

      It is important to point out that the murderers of Rabbi Chai were not from Hamas. These were Fatah members--the so-called moderates that Israel is supposed to negotiate with. I have written before that there is no difference between the factions, and now Abbas has said so explicitly. More importantly, Fatah has proven this by their deeds. Meanwhile, the extremists of Fatah's al-Aqusa Brigades, the group that planned and carried out Rabbi Chai's murder, continue to be trained by our own American General Keith Dayton. We wouldn't want to interfere with "the peace process," would we?

      A few weeks after publicly lauding the Chai murderers as "shaheeds," or holy martyrs, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad named the town square in Ramallah after another notorious terrorist who was responsible for murdering 37 Israelis, including 10 children, in 1978.

       Palestinians continue to glorify terrorist murderers as national heroes. It is a darkness that overshadows the Palestinian cause.
           In the hebrew language, Meir means one who brings light. Chai means life. Rabbi Meir Chai lived up to his name. As a popular teacher, he influenced hundreds, if not thousands of young people, bringing the light of Torah to Jewish youth living in Samaria. May his memory be a blessing, and his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

      There are many stories in the Arab-Israel conflict that involve shades of gray. The murder of Rabbi Meir Chai,  and its aftermath, is not one of them.