Israeli Forbearance
In Israel thousands of mourners grieve the violent deaths delivered by a Palestinian assassin to eight yeshiva students as they held their sacred books of study in the library of their seminary in Jerusalem. It was assumed by the government of Israel that Palestinians living in East Jerusalem would be unlikely material for jihadist action against Jews. A common-sense notion since those residents enjoy the privileges of living in Israel.Yet it has also been estimated that 20% of the attacks against Israelis have come from within the Israeli-Palestinian community. The young Palestinian man who murdered eight young Jewish students came from a fairly prosperous family. He was a driver for an Israeli transportation company, and was accustomed to driving students and workers from both Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem to various destinations in and around the city.
Alaa Abu Dheim, the Palestinian attacker of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, was being mourned by his family. They set up a mourning tent, to receive family members and friends and neighbours to help them grieve for their son. And they hung green Hamas flags and a yellow Hezbollah banner around their mourning tent. They grieve both a beloved son and a blessed martyr to the cause.
The family was ordered to remove the Hamas and Hezbollah flags by authorities from the municipal authority, but they are permitted to retain the tent. Other relatives, living in Jordan had also erected a large mourning tent to welcome visitors. But the government of Amman ordered the tent taken down, and they are not permitted to publicly mourn the murderer. His uncle has complained that this is an insult to the memory of his nephew.
"This was a heroic operation that must be celebrated by everyone here", he insisted. "Jordanian security agents and policemen cordoned off the area and prevented people from coming to my house. The decision was unjustified and doesn't make sense. My nephew carried out a heroic operation against an extremist Zionist college that calls for killing Palestinian Authority Arabs."
At the yeshiva, mourners at the memorial service for the eight young people were given instruction to refrain from the merest consideration of any retributive action. "Revenge is from on high", said the head rabbi, Yaakov Shapira, weeping. "Today we are all in need of mercy, the entire country. Pray for all of us, and for the parents and the brothers and sisters, and all the friends who are in such pain."
In Gaza, jubilant refrains were heard from area mosques. Gazans took to the streets to celebrate, firing guns triumphantly into the air, tossing candies to children, in a party atmosphere. "Maybe the events in Gaza", said the assassin's sister, drove him to the murderous rampage. Self-servingly absolving her brother, her family, her community from responsibility for the atrocity, for it was his anguish, she claims, over the plight of Gazans that drove him to murder.
But this is completely in accord with the manner of reasoning within the Palestinian world. Not to question cause and effect, but to cite their version of effect and just cause. Instead of turning their attention and their energies to making a life for themselves alongside a neighbour, they forever insist on the illegality in their opinion of the presence of that neighbour, on lands they insist are theirs and theirs alone.
Just as a member of the PLO Executive Committee, interviewed on the Palestinian Authority television has expressed his support for textbooks for schoolchildren including delineating the United States, European countries and "the Zionists" as enemies of the Palestinians. They are the "enemies", the "imperialists" and the Palestinians are justified in their "right to struggle and to resistance (terror) in all possible ways in all the occupied lands".
"I want to cite the actions and future actions of President Abbas from the starting point that the Palestine cause is the essential and central cause of the Arab Nation" said Mahmoud Ismail. "It's not surprising that to certain journalists of the current despicable American era, our Arab nationalist language of the 50s and 60s is outdated, when we talk about the nature of the struggle between the Arab Nation and its enemies: the Imperialists and Zionists, who attack and occupy our territories inside Palestine and outside...
"We however, take pride in this [Arab nationalist] language because we are the authentic Arabs who believe in our Arabism, our faith, our cause, our Nation, in our right to struggle and to resistance (terror) in all possible ways in all the occupied lands in Palestine, Lebanon the Golan and Iraq..."
In the face of which talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with the hope that they will lead to a peace agreement remain ongoing. Israel remains committed to peace, despite the horrendous lack of security on its borders, with hundreds of Kassam rockets hurtled from Gaza into Israeli border communities. And Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, insists that he and the PA are also committed to peace.
And then there is the reality that the Palestinian Authority security services, with whom the IDF have been tasked with working with, includes hundreds of Fatah Al Aksa Brigades terrorists. Previously imprisoned in Israeli jails, they vowed to join the Fatah peace movement for a get-out-of-jail pass. And this too is a reality: a large percentage of the murders of Israelis over the past year have been undertaken by PA security forces.
When a society has become so utterly degraded as to worship war and murder, celebrate killing and bloodshed, complacently teach their children to hate and groom them to assume personal responsibility for future jihadist actions on behalf of their aggrieved burden of incandescent and overarching hatred, what value can they see in achieving peace? Under these circumstances bargaining for peace is a sham.
Unless and until Palestinians begin to value their children, open their own eyes to their self-destructive impulses, understand that any death is a tragedy, whether Palestinian Arab or Israeli Jew, determine to transform themselves from avengers-of-victimhood to partners in a peace settlement, nothing constructive can come forward from current negotiations.
Labels: Middle East, Terrorism, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 09, 2008
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