|
|
||||
|
|
||||
| Home | Contents | Site Map | Links | Search |
March 19, 2004 - Reflecting the worst of liberal European values, last week the London Guardian published this response to the terrorist massacre in Spain:
Spain emerged from its first day of mourning with dignity. If cities across Europe were waking up to the fact that they were as much in the crosshairs of an attack on this scale, as New York or Washington were, the Israeli mass circulation Yedioth Ahronoth could not restrain itself: "Welcome to the real world", it declared unsubtlely.
But which real world? The world in which neighbourhoods are razed, water supplies cut off, children shot, in thinly disguised acts of collective retribution?
The last line grotesquely exaggerates measures that Israel has had to take to stop bands of murderers from crossing its borders and killing its citizens. What is perhaps most reprehensible is the implication that the State of Israel murders children. The Government of Israel has not intentionally harmed a single child, and despite all of their slogans Israel's critics have not produced any evidence to the contrary.
The intentional murder of children is, however, a Palestinian trademark. The incidents are too numerous to mention. The murder in Metzer of two children in their bedroom with their mother trying to protect them is representative. It's clear that Palestinian terrorists love to kill Israeli children. But it is not as widely publicized that apparently they love to kill their own children as well.
Does this statement sound extreme? Consider:
On Monday, March 15, Abdallah Quran, a Palestinian boy between 10 and 12 years old (reports vary), carried three bags into an Israeli checkpoint near Nablus. He was detained by an officer, who asked to inspect the bags. Two of the bags contained clothing. But the officer noticed something strange in the third one: a box with three white wires sticking out and a metal plate with bullets attached. She immediately called for assistance.
The reinforcements who came to help evacuated the site and then detonated the object. The explosion left a huge crater in the road and scattered hundreds of nails and bolts. The boy had been carrying a 10-kilogram bomb in his schoolbag.
|
|
|
Abdullah Quran, left, with two of his school friends outside his home in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus. (Canadian Jewish News)
|
|
Abdallah did not know what he was carrying. He agreed to deliver the package when terrorists from Fatah Tanzim promised him a large sum of money. The terrorists, however, did not reveal their full plan to him. Along with the bomb in the schoolbag the terrorists had planted a cellular phone, rigged to set off the bomb when dialed. From a hiding place the terrorists watched the checkpoint, and when they saw the boy had been detained they dialed the number of the cell phone. Only a technical error prevented the bomb from exploding and killing the boy along with whoever might have been near him at the time.
"The boy didn't do anything to us," said the Israeli battalion commander. "He is a cute boy with a stocking cap who looks like any kid next door in Israel. Our problem is not with the boy but with those who sent him and used him to fool us. It must be the same Tanzim people who just a month and a half ago smuggled an explosive belt from Nablus inside the dress of a mother of seven children."
So who is really out to kill the children?
Abdallah is of course just one example. However, the Palestinian Authority has an organized program of teaching its children the love of death. Its schools have become virtual training grounds for child sacrifice. Palestinian Media Watch has published an extensive report documenting the indoctrination of children in hatred for Israel and the desire to die as a shahid (usually translated "martyr," but the term "suicide fighter" is more accurate). This indoctrination is pervasive throughout Palestinian society, expressed in school textbooks, classroom instruction, religious education, and TV broadcasts. PMW has put together a video, available on its web site, drawing exclusively from Palestinian educational videos and TV broadcasts to show this instruction in hatred and suicide in action.
Here are some examples from the video. From a broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV, June 9, 2002, an interview with two 11-year-old girls, Walla and Yussra:
Host: You described shahada ["martyrdom"] as something beautiful. Do you think it is beautiful?
Walla: Shahada is very, very beautiful. Everyone yearns for shahada. What could be better than going to paradise?
Host: What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people, or shahada?
Walla: Shahada. I will achieve my rights after becoming a shahida.
Yussra: Of course shahada is a good thing. We don't want this world, we want the Afterlife. We benefit not from this life, but from the Afterlife.... The children of Palestine have accepted the concept that this is shahada, and that death by shahada is very good. Every Palestinian child aged, say 12, says "Oh Lord, I would like to become a shahid."
This is followed by illustrations from a Palestinian music video, shown repeatedly to Palestinian children over the past two years, portraying death as both heroic and tranquil. This is meant to indoctrinate the children out of their natural fear of death. The video was broadcast as many as three times a day. Its hero is a handsome young schoolboy who becomes a suicide fighter and leaves a farewell note to his parents:
|
||
|
Broadcast by Palestinian Authority.
|
Do not be sad, my dear,
And do not cry over my parting,
Oh my dear father,
For my country, I sacrificed myself.…
How sweet is shahada
When I embrace you, Oh my land!…
My beloved, my mother,
My most dear,
Be joyous over my blood
And do not cry for me….
As the words "when I embrace you, my land!" are sung, the child is shown falling down dead and "embracing" the land.
The final screen of one Palestinian film encapsulates in one succinct phrase the message that the children are intended to learn. After a graphic portayal of scenes of blood and death, a screen appears with the legend: "Ask for death, the life will be given to you."
School textbooks are also used to turn children into self-destructive killers. One sixth-grade text, Our Beautiful Language, contains this poem:
The Shahid
I shall carry my soul in my palm
And toss it into the abyss,
destruction....
And then either life,
gladdening friends,
or death, enraging the enemies.
By your life! I see my death,
But I hasten my steps towards it.
The Palestinian cult of hate and death pervades religious instruction as well. The following is from a Friday sermon by Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Madi, broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV, August 3, 2001:
I was uplifted when a youth said: "Oh, Sheikh, I am 14 years old. I have four more years and then I will blow myself up among Allah's enemies, I will blow myself up among the Jews." I said to him, "Oh young child, may Allah let you merit shahada and let me merit shahada...."
All the weapons must be aimed at the Jews, Allah's enemies, the cursed nation in the Quran, whom Allah describes as monkeys and pigs, worshipers of the calf and idol worshippers.… Nothing will deter them except the color of blood in their filthy nation…unless we blow ourselves up, willingly and as our duty, in their midst….
May Allah make the Muslim rule over the Jew. We will blow them up in Hadera, we will blow them up in Tel-Aviv and in Netanya, so that Allah will make us masters over this riff-raff. We will fight against them and rule over them until the Jew will hide behind the trees and stones and the tree and stone will say: "Muslim! Servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him." We shall enter Jerusalem as conquerors, and Jaffa as conquerors, and Haifa as conquerors and Ashkelon as conquerors.…
Blessings upon he who educates his sons in the path of jihad and shahada!
Is it surprising that, as the PMW video reports, Palestinian polls show that 72% to 80% of Palestinian children desire death as suicide fighters? The video concludes: "This education is an indelible stain on Palestinian society, and places the Palestinian Authority among the greatest child abusers in history."
(Note on sources for Palestinian Public Opinion Polls:
"72% of the children sampled from all the districts of Gaza expressed the hope of becoming Shahids in the confrontations..." [’Sout Al-Nissa’ - Voice of the Women, Al-Ayyam, January 24, 2002]
"…79-80% of the children expressed willingness to be Shahids." [PA official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 18, 2002])
Can there be any doubt? This is not Israeli propaganda. All these examples of death education come directly from Palestinian sources, and there are many, many more just like them (please read the entire PMW report). Yet even now, when this cult of terror and death is spreading beyond the Middle East, the world still refuses to believe. The terrorists who killed 200 people in Madrid are grown-up versions of this hideous philosophy. This is not an Israeli problem, or a Jewish problem. It is a threat to the entire civilized world.
"You love life and we love death": thus states the Al Qaeda video claiming responsibility for the bombing in Spain. The words are not metaphorical.
Where are our priorities? The fence that Israel is building to keep out the graduates of the Palestinian death schools, and which would never have been built if it were not for this systematic terrorism, is attracting worldwide attention and uproar, even including trial by an international court. But the Palestinian death cult, its program of child murder, elicits hardly a word of protest. That is bound to change, once more people outside of Israel become victims of this death cult, which is not exclusively Palestinian but is part of the fabric of fundamentalist Muslim culture.
The Palestinian Authority is murdering the souls of its children, as a prelude to murdering their bodies. These children are born innocent, a threat to no one, but their innocence is quickly taken from them.
Palestinian society is programming these children to die in order to keep hatred going, to prevent peace from ever being attained. The Palestinians' own video shows it: children are taught that death as a suicide murderer is better than "peace and full rights for the Palestinian people." Where is the human rights community? Who will care about these Palestinian children?
Where is the outrage?
Or has the world's outrage already been spent protesting a fence?
"You love life and we love death."
"You" is not only Jews. "You" is you.
Sources:
Asher, Ittai, Amir Rappaport and Amit Cohen. "The sixth-grade Shahid." Maariv, March 16, 2004.
"A Story That Has to Be Told." Canadian Jewish News, March 18, 2004.
Dudkevitch, Margot. "Fatah Tries to Use 11-Year-Old Boy as Human Bomb." Jerusalem Post, March 16, 2004.
Glikman, Uri, Amir Buhbut and Maariv Online. "Tanzim Sent 10-Year-Old to Blow Up at Checkpoint." Maariv, March 16, 2004.
"Homage to the Dead." The Guardian, March 13, 2004.
Marcus, Itamar. "'Ask for Death!': The Indoctrination of Palestinian Children to Seek Death for Allah." Palestinian Media Watch.
Transcript of Purported Al Qaeda Videotape. New York Times, March 14, 2004.
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
Peace with Realism