Abbas: “We Welcome Every Drop of Blood Spilled in Jerusalem.” By Tzipi Hotovely. Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2015.
Hotovely:
Palestinian leaders have created a culture of death that is motivating the latest violent terrorism.
Palestinian leaders have created a culture of death that is motivating the latest violent terrorism.
The
latest surge of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis has come in the
immediate wake of explicit calls by the Palestinian leadership to “spill
blood.” This well-orchestrated campaign of violence follows many years in which
Palestinian children have been taught to idolize the murder of Jews as a sacred
value and to regard their own death in this “jihad” as the pinnacle of their
aspirations.
Such
violence has deep roots. It goes back to the rampages at the behest of Haj Amin
al-Husseini, a Muslim activist and at one point grand mufti of Jerusalem, in
the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. It continued with the fedayeen Palestinian militants in the 1950s and ’60s, and evolved
into the terrorism of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Fatah under
Yasser Arafat and now Mahmoud Abbas. Anyone who claims that Palestinian terror
against Jews dates only to 1967, or is a response to Israeli settlements,
should become more informed of the conflict’s history.
Yet the
apathy shown by the international community to the death-culture fostered by
Palestinian elites, and the unbalanced manner in which subsequent violence is
often treated by the international media—as if there is any kind of symmetry
between terrorists and their victims—is doing long-term, and possibly
irrevocable, harm to generations of Palestinians.
A few
recent examples underscore the depth of the problem.
Mr.
Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, said the following on Palestinian
television on Sept. 16: “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.
This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of
Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.”
Two
weeks later, on Oct. 1, Palestinian terrorists murdered an Israeli couple,
Eitam and Naama Henkin, in cold blood in front of their four children, who
ranged from 9 years old to 4 months.
Days
later, with the Henkin children still in mourning, PLO official Mahmoud Ismail
went on official Palestinian television, PBC, and proclaimed their parents’
murder to be a fulfillment of Palestinian “national duty.” He was one of
several Palestinian officials who condoned the murder.
Such
statements strike a resonant chord among generations of Palestinian children
who have been taught that Jews are the descendants of “barbaric monkeys” and
“wretched pigs” (a phrase from a poem repeatedly recited on PBC television, to
the applause of children.) They have been taught that “armed conflict” (a
common Palestinian euphemism for the murder of Jews) against “the so-called
State of Israel” is both a religious duty and an act purportedly legitimized by
the United Nations—a falsehood repeated in a number of 12th-grade Palestinian
textbooks.
The
Palestinian Authority also pays handsome stipends to terrorists and their
families, which serve as a powerful incentive to carry out acts of terror.
Is it
surprising, then, that Mr. Abbas’s explicit call for “blood on its way to
Allah” has resulted in a surge of stabbings and other attacks against Israelis?
Is it any wonder that viewers of official television recently were treated to
the sight of a Palestinian boy, dressed up in battle fatigues, telling a
smiling talk-show host of his wish to become an engineer “so that I can build
bombs to blow up all the Jews.”
The
unending stream of blood-drenched caricatures and video clips that circulate
virally through Palestinian social media is a telling indication of how
profoundly the worship of violence is entrenched in Palestinian society. So are
the many schools, city squares and sports tournaments named for
arch-terrorists.
The
cultivation of this culture of death is having devastating effects. As
Palestinian terror touches more Jewish families, Israelis, especially of the
younger generation, are increasingly resigning themselves to the fact that
Palestinian society is guided by a dramatically different set of values.
Israeli
society and Jewish tradition sanctify life. Palestinian society glorifies
death. Israeli children grow up on songs of peace and the biblical vision of
“nation shall not lift up sword against nation.” Palestinian children are
taught to hate.
Yet
there is no international outcry. No indignation at the exploitation of
Palestinian children from all the nongovernmental organizations and U.N.
agencies that profess to monitor human-rights abuses.
This is
tragic because the international community could make a practical difference.
About a third of the Palestinian Authority’s budget is financed by foreign aid.
This money is intended to develop Palestinian infrastructure and foster
economic growth, but it is being misused by the Palestinian Authority to
promote the murder of Jews and to sow destruction within Israel. The
international community can wield its influence toward a cessation of
incitement.
Turning
a blind eye to the enormous harm that the Palestinian leadership is doing to
its own people—by raising successive generations of children on blind hatred of
the Jews and Israel—is dooming these children to a bleak future. This ought to
be a compelling reason for the international community to seriously rethink the
strange tolerance it exhibits toward the Palestinian death-culture.
Changing
this culture of death is no less important for the Palestinians than for
Israel.
