In the wake of a deadly Palestinian attack on a crowded mall in Tel Aviv, some Muslims and Arabs publicly criticized the killing.
Palestinian lawmaker Ayman Odeh condemned the "horrific attack on civilians," saying "My heart goes out to the families. Harming innocents is always condemned; there is no and there can be no justification for shooting civilians in the street."
Although there were reports that Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank had celebrated the assault, others chose to speak out against it.
#Saudi member of the Journalists Association criticized after calling #TelAviv attack "terrorism & thuggery" https://t.co/3VTY6miWFB
— SaadAbedine (@SaadAbedine) June 9, 2016
Ismaeel Malik, an American Muslim living in Saudi Arabia, posted a news story about the shooting to Facebook, writing: "An innocent civilian is an innocent civilian. May Allaah have mercy on those mourning a death this Ramadaan."
Tomer Eliasi, a Jewish resident of Tel Aviv, responded to Malik, asking if Malik also spoke this same message in Arabic, to Muslims and Arabs. Malik responded, "Yes…but not because I owe it to you, rather because it is my duty in God."
Two Palestinian gunmen from Yatta, a city near Hebron, snuck into Israel on Wednesday and traveled by taxi to Tel Aviv, where they dressed in suits and entered the Sarona mall and opened fire on shoppers.
The killers left four dead and over a dozen wounded. It was one of the deadliest attacks to occur since October, when the latest wave of violence in Israel-Palestine began.
John Elias Dabis, a Palestinian-American peace activist, told Al Bawaba, "Violence brings more harm to our people, it does zero good to our cause."
Ahmed Maswadeh, a law student at Birzeit University in the West Bank, said on Facebook that "everytime such an attack occurs i feel hopeless, pissed, [and] annoyed." Maswadeh lamented that some Palestinians feel that being oppressed justifies any action against the "oppressors."
"I am not choosing sides nor willing to let nationalism go over my humanism, I want to let the people know that standing against the attack doesn't mean forgetting about your own pain and oppression. Stand against the attack, speak out loud and don't follow the extremist incitement on social media!" Maswadeh said.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which has been the de-facto government for West Bank's two million Palestinians since the time of the Oslo Accords, condemned violent attacks on civilians but did not specifically mention the Tel Aviv shooting.
-HS
