Akiva Eldar, columnist for Middle East paper Al-Monitor and former editorial writer for the far-left Israeli paper Haaretz, is taking Benjamin Netanyahu to task, comparing the Israeli prime minister to the biblical giant Goliath for his firm stance against Palestinian stone-slingers.

This equation is based on recent developments in Israel when Netanyahu told his cabinet, "Whoever tries to attack us, we will hurt him." It only took days for this remark to be turned into real action, easing the rules of engagement and allowing Israeli soldiers to open fire on stone throwers if innocent lives are in danger. And for that alone, Bibi becomes the terrible Goliath and the Palestinians become the brave young David in Eldar's interpretation.

"In the contemporary world," Eldar writes, "there is no symmetry between young men born under an occupation lasting almost 50 years and having lost all hope of freedom and armed soldiers born into a free country."
 
"The international community relates to a stone in the hand of the weak completely differently than a rifle in the hands of the strong," he adds.

Then Eldar rhetorically asks, "What should a Palestinian youth from East Jerusalem be feeling when he throws a stone at a Jew who chooses to set up house in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood?"

Eldar blames Netanyahu for continuing this "perpetual violence" against Palestinians, whom he views as the weak and occupied:

If the stone is the weapon of the occupied, Netanyahu’s use of the term “stone terrorism” attests to the weakness of the occupier…

Hour by hour, day in and day out, Israel hurts the pride of the Palestinians; it harms their land, their property, their freedom of movement and the lives of the millions of Palestinians under its rule. The murderers of a Palestinian family and the soldiers who shot Palestinian youths in the back are walking about freely.

For his final "proof" that Netanyahu is a modern-day Goliath, Edgar cites incidents that have regularly occurred involving "ultra-Orthodox Jews" making religious demands of its government to observe the Sabbath, etc., and when they didn't get what they wanted, they were the ones throwing stones. But there were no similar actions taken against them as are with the Palestinians:

All the while, not a single policeman dared point his weapon at one of the stone throwers. Not a single minister advocated prohibiting the promotion of judges deemed too lenient in their sentencing of the stone-throwing criminals among his people, as per Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan's proposal concerning judges dealing with Palestinian stone throwers. No prime minister threatened that if a Jew tries to hurt us, we will hurt him. After all, we are all sons of King David.