Anti-Semitic Hatred for Kids . . . and Adults. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, July 8, 2013.
Why is the peace settlement that’s so obvious, so elusive? By Richard Landes. The Augean Stables, July 11, 2013.
Palestinian Authority Uses Young Girls to Promote Hatred and Demonization of Jews. By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik. NJBR, July 8, 2013.
Tobin:
Prior
to his wife’s illness, the assumption was that Secretary of State John Kerry
would be returning to the Middle East this week for another round of shuttle
diplomacy aimed at reviving the peace process between Israel and the
Palestinians. But whenever Kerry does get back to wandering between Jerusalem
and Ramallah, the same obstacles that have prevented peace will still be there.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas knows that if he does as Kerry bids
and negotiates with Israel and signs an agreement ending the conflict, he will
be running up against the Palestinian reluctance to recognize the legitimacy of
a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn. But while the media
continues to focus on the deadlocked talks about talks, they rarely devote much
energy to determining what exactly is driving the Palestinian culture of
rejection.
Part of
the answer to that puzzle is supplied from those who, unlike the mainstream
media, do pay attention to what is written and broadcast in the official
Palestinian media run by Abbas’s PA. Those wondering why anyone would think
Palestinians would reject peace offers including an independent state (as they
have three times since 2000), could do no better than to view this PA TV
excerpt brought to our attention from Palestinian Media Watch in which two
little Palestinian girls area asked to a hateful poem that refers to Jews in
the following manner:
“Most
evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs,” condemned to
“humiliation and hardship.”
It also
went on to say the following about the Jewish presence in Jerusalem:
Jerusalem
vomits from within it your impurity
Because
Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate
And
Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure.
It is
shocking that the official media of the group that Kerry considers a partner
for peace would be broadcasting hate and using children to do it. But, of
course, as anyone who follows the PMW Website regularly knows, there is
actually nothing unusual about the PA acting in this manner.
The PA
media has broadcast a steady diet of hatred against Israel and Jews since its
inception after the Oslo Accords brought it into existence with numerous
examples of them employing children and broadcasts specifically aimed at
youngsters to do so. One of the great tragedies of the last 20 years has been
the way Israel’s supposed peace partners have sowed the seeds of future
conflict by inculcating their youth with doctrines that treat Jews as subhuman
monsters with no rights or claims upon the land that both sides claim as their
own.
There
will be those who will argue that similar hatred exists among Israelis as
occasional incidents inside the green line and so-called “price tag” attacks on
Palestinians in the territories indicate. But the difference between the two
sides is actually illustrative of the way Israel has embraced hope for peace
while Palestinians have not.
The
point is hatred of Jews by Palestinians is something that is officially
endorsed by the Palestinian Authority while hatred of Arabs is incessantly
condemned by the Israeli media and the government. Jewish prejudice against
Arabs exists but only as the actions of a minority while mainstream Palestinian
culture endorses hate. While Israeli schools adopted curricula seeking to
promote “peace education,” the Palestinians schools still use textbooks that
are filled with the same kind of vile delegitimization seen on PA TV.
But
such hatred isn’t limited to just the Palestinians. As the Elder of Ziyyon blog
reports today, the American website Mondoweiss seems to be competing with the
PA in the effort to delegitimize Jewish rights.
In the course of a blog post alleging that Jewish settlers were
infringing on the rights of Arab worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in
Hebron, Mondoweiss editor and contributor Annie Robbins made the following claim in response to a comment from a reader who pointed out that the Tomb is
an ancient site of Jewish worship that even predates the Holy Temples in
Jerusalem:
allegedly.
there’s no proof that was the location of some grand temple. maybe lots of
jewish stuff retroactively lands itself right underneath islamic structures.
did you ever think of that? jealous much?
For
anyone commenting on the Middle East to not know that the Muslim Conquests
involved the planting of mosques on top of the holy sites of other faiths in
places like Turkey, India as well as Israel is to demonstrate historical
illiteracy on an Olympic scale. The line that separates stupidity from
religious prejudice in such assertions is nonexistence since the only possible
motivation for these statements is malice rooted in anti-Semtic hatred.
But
while we know that Mondoweiss represents the views of denizens of the fever
swamps of the left, it is important to remember that it is quite common for
Abbas to make similar statements denying any Jewish connection to Jerusalem or
the existence of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah or the temple. So long as
hate speech is mainstream among the Palestinians, peace with Israel is not
something that can be conjured up by a hard working secretary of state.
