June 27th, '07
Bad Cop, Bad Cop

My oldest son just asked me an impossible question. Why, he asked, is Prime Minister Olmert planning to release 250 Palestinian security prisoners in hopes of maybe - maybe! - convincing the fractured Palestinian Powers-that-Be to release Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was kidnapped a year ago? As much as I try to be the voice of moderation within my own home (my husband, well, that's another story!), here I could only echo my son's incredulous tone.

Why indeed? Does anyone believe that yet another gesture will turn Mahmud Abbas - that Arafat crony who holds a Ph.D. in Holocaust denial and has proven himself, time and again, incapable of leading his country in anything other than corruption and conflict - into a peacemaker?

I am truly dumbfounded by what's going on. The Gaza strip has been transformed into a radical Islamist hellhole not long after Israel pulled out its 9,000 Jewish settlers, creating what is, in essence, the first fully independent Palestinian state. So what does Olmert think he's going to get by proclaiming - again - his support for a Palestinian state alongside Israel? Just where does he think this state will arise? Does the launching of this new Palestinian entity - as if we didn't have our hands full with the old one - require "cleansing" the West Bank of its Jews as well? And how in his right mind does he expect "moderate" Abbas to offer honest, effective leadership to his people when he's already failed so miserably? Given his track record, would YOU want this guy for a neighbor?

On second thought, would you want Olmert?

The indispensible Palestinian Media Watch now issues regular email communiques that are always worth reading and passing on. Here's part of the latest (be sure to visit their site and read the whole thing):

PA journalist: "A mother brushes her young son's hair at 7:00, so that he will be killed at 7:30."
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook - June 26, 2007

A Palestinian journalist has expressed despair about the society of death worship in Gaza. In so doing, he has corroborated PMW findings documenting the death culture promoted in Palestinian Authority education.

The journalist wrote:

“We knew that they would do it, especially in Gaza, where a mother brushes her young son's hair at 7:00, so that he will be killed at 7:30, and where the children learn that death is preferable to life! We knew that they would do this, it was clear to us: with language overflowing with the rhetoric of death and the norms of killing, in the religious rulings [Fatwas] and in Friday and holiday sermons.”
[Ghassan Zaqtan, Al-Ayyam, June18, 2007]

The journalist's critical mistake is that he seems to attribute the death culture only to Hamas, whereas it has been the Fatah leadership and education that initiated and still actively teach that death is preferable to life.

For example, a Palestinian Authority schoolbook written by Fatah educators teaches 13- and 14-year-olds literally to prefer death over life, while it is the "enemies" who cherish life:

“O heroes, Allah has promised you victory ... Do not talk yourselves into flight…Your enemies seek life while you seek death. They seek spoils to fill their empty stomachs while you seek a Garden [Paradise] as wide as are the heavens and the earth. Do not be anxious to meet them [enemies], for death is not bitter in the mouth of the believers. These drops of blood that gush from your bodies will be transformed tomorrow into blazing red meteors that will fall down upon the heads of your enemies."
[Reading and Texts Part II, Grade 8 (2002), p. 16]

The words introducing this poem are: "Read and enjoy."

The rest of this report is here.

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