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| Today's funeral for some of the terrorists killed in the tunnel |
Once again, the most striking unreported story about Palestinians isn't what some of them are saying, but what none of the are not.
The only purpose of a tunnel reaching under the Gaza border into Israel is to perform war crimes. Whether the crimes are to kidnap civilians, kidnap soldiers, or to pop out of the tunnel and shoot everyone on sight, there is no justification from a human rights or international law perspective to these tunnels.
Looking through Palestinian media this morning, however, and you cannot find a single person who is against such tunnels.
Palestinian leaders rail about "international law" and "justice" at the UN and international forums all the time. They say that they want Israel to be treated as pariahs because of an alleged lack of "justice."
While there is no shortage of Israeli and Western leftists who happily adopt this narrative, there is an absolute (or near-absolute) dearth of Palestinians who are writing op-eds or Facebook posts or tweets who say, you know what? Tunnels are a violation of international law too, just sayin'?
Fatah's own Al Aqsa Brigades issued another statement saying "the occupation wants to drag the resistance to the square of direct escalation by performing ugly crimes and new massacres against our people. The resistance today fully aware of the behaviors of the occupation and therefore will respond to the crime with harsh consequences that will be painful to the occupation."
Ma'an, the independent press agency, refers to the dead terrorists as "martyrs" and describes the attack on the tunnel not as occurring in Israel but "east of Khan Younis" to inflame passions of Palestinians as if this was an attack on Gaza.
The Gaza Ministry of Health is claiming that Israel used poison gas in the tunnels, and is calling for an international investigation. Because, of course, they care so much about international law.
Of course, Islamic Jihad and Hamas and the other terror groups all issued statements about how this "crime" will not go unpunished. No Palestinian is decrying this "cycle of violence" that they are threatening to start.
The head of the secular and pro-democracy Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, described the bombing as "a crime aimed at reconciliation and aimed at provocation. It shows the criminal and provocative nature of the Netanyahu government and its ministers who want to use Palestinian blood for their internal rivalries."
Not a word against the idea of terrorists building tunnels into Israel to perform kidnapping and massacres.No chiding Islamic Jihad for provoking Israel to defend itself. Israel's actions, across the board, are portrayed as aggressive and unwarranted.
The media reports Palestinian claims. It never reports the tacit Palestinian support, across the board, for terror, by the absence of even mild criticism for terror in cases like this.