We are told, day after day, that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
is a genuine moderate committed to achieving a peace settlement with Israel. In
addition to the international community, even some Israelis – admittedly a
dwindling minority – also chant this mantra.
Abbas and his chief
negotiator, Saeb Erekat, bolster this theme by uttering soothing statements in
English, endorsing peace to the gullible international community. Yet
they speak with forked tongues because in Arabic, to their own people, they deny
Israel’s right to exist and promote vicious hatred against Jews.
They
also claim to have reneged violence. But the PA never conceded that terrorism
was immoral. They simply concluded that having failed to achieve their
objectives by violence, their goals could best be promoted by temporarily
suspending terrorism in order to gain Western support.
Abbas made it
clear that he “had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965” and was only
opposed to terrorist attacks “at this time” for tactical reasons and that “in
the future things may change.”
Yet, even within this framework, Fatah has
still succeeded in killing more Israelis than Hamas.
The true objectives
of the PA are reflected in the poisonous hatred against Jews and Israel
inculcated into their people through the broad range of institutions they
control, permeating every level of society– from kindergarten
upwards.
This can be traced to the very inception of the Oslo Accords.
Before that, the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, while far from
ideal, was certainly better than it is now; current polls indicate that 84
percent of Palestinians endorse the murder of Israelis.
In addition to
denying Jewish sovereignty, the PA from the outset indulged in the most
horrendous demonization, describing Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs,
comparing them to Nazis while simultaneously praising Hitler, accusing them of
stealing Palestinian body parts, using human blood during Passover, promoting
AIDs and many other loathsome blood libels.
This defamatory torrent
impacts directly on Israel’s diminished standing in the international
community.
In response to this, an important book compiled by Itamar
Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik titled
Deception: Betraying the Peace Process,
has just been released. It meticulously documents the poisonous behavior of the
Palestinian Authority during 2010 and 2011 throughout the broad range of
institutions they control. It will become an important source for pro-Israeli
activists and provide irrefutable evidence in response to those denying the
criminality pervading Palestinian society.
Itamar Marcus founded
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) in 1996 as a nonprofit organization to monitor the
Palestinian media. Its documentation of Palestinian behavior, including
systematically taping official Palestinian TV, became an important source for
parliamentarians and serious journalists throughout the world. His briefing of
US legislators was a major factor contributing toward the prevailing pro-Israel
orientation of Congress and the American people.
The book and the
PMW
website chronicle obscene examples of incitement, especially
in the wake of the release of the terrorists in the Schalit exchange. Chairman
Abbas, who publicly embraced these mass murderers, summed up the PA approach
when he stated “every prisoner is for us a saint and we must exalt
him.”
He subsequently appointed Mahmoud Damra, a notorious terrorist, as
his advisor. The state-controlled Palestinian media sanctified the murders
committed by the released terrorists. Thus Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who
orchestrated the suicide bombing at the Jerusalem Sbarro restaurant which killed
22 civilians including seven children, was quoted proudly proclaiming she would
do it again; Abbas al-Sayed who perpetrated the Passover suicide attack at the
Park Hotel in Netanya which killed 30 Israelis was described by Abbas as a
“hero” and “symbol of the Palestinian Authority.”
Only recently, while
commemorating the 47th anniversary of Fatah, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein, the
PA’s highest religious authority, appointed by Abbas, proclaimed that the
killing of Jews was a major Islamic goal required before the Islamic
Resurrection. The moderator introducing him reiterated that “our war against the
descendants of apes and pigs is a war of religion and faith.”
Just last
week PMW reported how official PA TV conveyed “greetings” to Hakim Awad, the
barbaric and unrepentant murderer of the Fogel family, which included a
four-month-old infant and children aged three and 11 years. His mother was
honored on the program and conveyed “greetings to dear Hakim, the apple of my
eye, who carried out the operation in Itamar, sentenced to five life
sentences.”
His aunt also related to “Hakim Awad, the hero, the
legend.” How can people claiming to be promoting human rights conceivably
associate themselves with a regime which adulates such monsters on its
controlled TV outlets?
The book itself provides chilling documentation
demonstrating how an entire generation is being brainwashed into absorbing a
culture of death and slaughter. The Palestinian children’s programs promoting
hatred and evil are incorporated into textbooks, music videos and summer camps,
all blatantly indoctrinating children with the sanctity of shahada (martyrdom)
and murder of Jews.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, purportedly the most
moderate of all Palestinian leaders, is cited for his speech praising four
terrorists and sponsoring of a Palestinian children’s summer camp in which the
participants were divided into groups labeled with the names of terrorists,
including a notorious bus hijacker.
Marcus and Zilberdik point out how,
in the course of one day, a Palestinian child can walk on a street named after
the mass murderer Abu Jihad, to a school named after the founder of Hamas, where
he will read hate-filled textbooks, work in a computer room named after a
suicide bomber, spend the afternoon at a soccer tournament with the teams named
after suicide bombers, go in the evening to the Abu Iyad community center, the
orchestrator of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics,
and finally return home to view anti-Semitic cartoons on TV before going to
bed.
After reading this book, a number of questions come to
mind.
The US Congress was considering terminating the funding of the PA
general budget unless it terminated incitement, glorification of suicide bombers
as heroic role models, payment of over $5 million a month for “salaries” to
5,500 terrorists in Israeli prisons, and pensions to the families of terrorists.
Why did Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ask them to desist? Why does Prime
Minister Netanyahu so frequently pay lip service to Abbas as a peace partner
and, other than very recently, fail to systematically highlight the criminality
of the Palestinian leaders?
If our prime minister agreed not to publicly
highlight these evils in order to placate President Barack Obama, we are likely
to pay a bitter price. If the civilized world is made aware of the culture of
death and hatred which permeates Palestinian society, we would be in a far
stronger position in the ongoing war of ideas.
And finally, how can
President Obama and Western countries justify their repeated vitriolic
condemnations of Israeli construction in Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem and yet
have so little to say about a society which indoctrinates its children with such
a barbaric worldview? How can Secretary of State Hillary Clinton validate her
silence over these issues after having so passionately condemned Palestinian
incitement against Israel when she was a Senator?
After reviewing these horrific
texts, which document such a savage, officially-imposed jihadi culture, it is
surely delusional to view the current Palestinian leadership as peace partners.
Such a calculated policy of deception reflected by the disparity between reality
and duplicitous statements designed for foreign consumption is not merely an
expression of malice. It is a manifestation of a determined policy to poison the
people against any possible accommodation with Israel. It provides a devastating
response to the question raised in the introduction to the book. Was a genuine
peace process ever intended?
The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at
ileibler@netvision.net.il.