Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Palestinian values

Showing posts with label Palestinian values. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 05, 2023

What the @NYTimes left out from their story on Palestinian kids wanting to be "martyrs"

Raja Abdulrahim continues in her tradition of using her platform as a New York Times reporter to shade the facts away from the reality.

She has a tragic story about how teenagers in the West Bank are writing out "wills" in the expectations of being killed by Israeli troops.

The farewell testaments reflect a prevailing sense among many young men that death is heroic, meaningful and inevitable during what is now the deadliest period for Palestinians in nearly two decades in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

With the intensifying violence, many young Palestinians feel added pressure that they themselves must become involved in the struggle against Israel and act.

Palestinian society has long lionized “martyrs” — anyone killed by Israeli forces — with many of their images displayed on walls and banners in Palestinian cities and, more recently, on social media platforms like Instagram.

Farewell messages are often published by the Palestinian news media and shared widely on social media, inspiring more young Palestinians to write their own.

Dr. Samah Jabr, the head of the mental health unit for the Palestinian Authority, said the writing of such wills was wrapped up with generational traumas for Palestinians living in the occupied territories, dealing with checkpoints and near daily raids by Israeli troops. Many young people feel a duty to take on adult roles, including confronting Israeli troops.

“It’s not that they want to die, but it’s that they feel like there’s nothing else to give to Palestine except martyrdom,” [writer Jalal] Abukhater said.

Abdulrahim buried the lede.

Palestinian society is suffused with turning all those killed by Israel into heroes. Just calling them "martyrs" is a powerful incentive. TV programs celebrate "martyrs," schools and camps and sports tournaments are named after "martyrs," the Palestinian Authority and Hamas pay families of "martyrs" - it is a death cult where being killed is the surest way of being honored. And this is a society that craves honor.

Yet outside the half sentence on how Palestinian society lionizes "martyrs," Abdulrahim doesn't describe this fundamental part of Palestinian society. She tries to make this sick mindset relatable to the West, pretending that the kids have no choice in a place where they have no future.

Think about it. There are about two million Palestinians under 20. The number who are killed is a tiny percentage of that number, while many more go on to live dignified and successful lives. But there are few if any TV shows and music videos about them.

When a child gets killed by Israel, he (or she) is instantly hailed as a hero by their media, social media and role models. That is the reason so many choose to go that route - not desperation, not because of "no choice." They are not being given any mainstream messages that getting killed while attacking Jews is stupid or counterproductive or evil. They do it because they want to, not because they are forced to, and their entire culture supports this goal, implicitly or explicitly.

That's the story the article is purposefully ignoring. Instead of blaming the Palestinian leaders - teachers, actors, musicians, poets, and other role models - for creating a death-centered culture, it pretends that somehow the Israelis have given them no choice but to want to get killed.

“We can counsel the students, but we can’t prevent the army from raiding the camp,” [a school counselor] said. “The occupation is the biggest driver among the youth who ask why they should stop when they are subjected to war and death.”

Is anyone - anyone at all - telling the kids to stay off the streets when there is an IDF raid? They aren't shooting at innocent people's houses. Only the ones who want to act macho and throw firebombs or shoot guns are the ones getting killed. It isn't a difficult concept to stay away from the fighting, but one that is apparently too difficult for adults and other role models to tell the kids.

The solution is obvious: to shame the people who commit suicide by IDF instead of honoring them. If the message in the Palestinian media is to teach kids to grow up and to try to build a decent society, instead of turning terrorists into heroes, things would change in weeks.

But no one wants to talk about solutions (unless it is the State of Israel committing collective suicide.)

This is a systemic failure of Palestinian society - and that is something the New York Times will never, ever discuss.

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Latest Palestinian poll shows they still love terrorism

A new PCPSR poll was released today asking Palestinians questions about the 75th anniversary of the "nakba" as well as other topics.

As always, when given a choice, Palestinians show an overwhelming preference for terror.

When asked what was the most positive developments for Palestinians since 1948, 24% said the rise of Islamist terror groups, 21% said the two terror sprees known as intifadas, and 25% said either the establishment of the PLO or Fatah, both of which were explicitly founded as terror groups. Which means that 70% of Palestinians consider terror to be their proudest accomplishment.

71% of the Palestinians polled say they are in favor of forming terror groups such as the “Lions’ Den” and the “Jenin Battalion."

The vast majority (86%) says the PA does not have the right to arrest members of terror groups in order to prevent them from carrying out attacks against Israel or to provide them with protection.

The most popular potential presidential candidate is Marwan Barghouti - a terrorist. #2 is Ismail Haniyeh, senior Hamas official - a terrorist. Everyone else received only small percentages.

If new legislative elections were held now, of those who would participate, 34% say they would vote for Hamas and 31% say they would vote for Fatah.

This is not a people who want peace - and it is not a people who are being taught that peace is the best option.

In February, CNN's Christiane Amanpour said on TV, "The latest polls from the Palestinian side also show that they want a peaceful, two-state solution." It was a lie, and this poll proves it even more: only 28% of those polled supported a two state solution while 70% were opposed.

However, it appears that the "one state" that they favor isn't the democracy with equal rights that the "progressive" crowd claims they want. Only 21% support a one-state solution with equal rights between Arabs and Jews; 76% opposed.

Which means the "one state solution" that Palestinians want is a single Arab state with, at best, a small second-class Jewish minority population. Their idea of peace is replacing Israel, not living with it.

Every single response in this poll proves that Palestinians do not want peace and that they fetishize terror. So it won't get any coverage in Western media.

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The demographics of Palestinians killed is nowhere close to those of Palestinians altogether

This morning there was a terror attack near Jerusalem's famed Mahane Yehuda market, where a car rammed into a crowd. An elderly man and a woman were among the injured.

For most terror attacks, the Israeli victims roughly match the demographics of Israeli society - children, women, the elderly are all represented in about the same proportions that one would find them walking around on the street.

Things are a lot different with Palestinians killed.

Here is the population pyramid of the Palestinian territories as of 2019.

About 40% of the population is under 15 years old, and (as one would expect) about half are male and half female.

Now, here is the population pyramid of the people Israeli forces killed in the West Bank in 2022:

Well over 90% of those killed were men of fighting age. (And at least one of the women were involved in attacks when they were neutralized.)

Unlike Israeli victims of directed attacks, there were no Palestinians killed under 10. No one over 60.

Clearly the IDF is not engaged in indiscriminate firing, which is the entire point of Palestinian terror attacks.

There is no comparison between those killed because they are Israeli to those killed to save Israeli lives.

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What a sick, twisted society Palestinians grow up in

There was a ceremony Sunday afternoon at the Al Aqsa University in Gaza, honoring female students, organized by the Islamic League there.

Islamists giving honor to outstanding female students - sounds very woke, right?

One of the speakers at the ceremony was Walid Al-Qatati, a member of the political bureau of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

Here is how he complimented the woman scholars.

He said that Islamic Jihad believes that "writing with a pen equals pressing the trigger of a gun, reading from a book is equivalent to igniting the fuse of a missile, and advancing one's studies is like nearing martyrdom."

The only way such a twisted message makes sense is if the young women have already internalized the message the the ultimate yardstick by which all other achievements are measured is dying while trying to kill Jews.

A student who achieves great intellectual heights is only comparable to an illiterate teen with a gun who is killed while shooting at Jewish civilians. Studying and writing for years is equated with the brainwashed people who steer their cars into crowds of Jews.

And this is the most liberal message Palestinians are ever likely to hear.

Qatati ended off saying, "A salutation full of success, excellence and creativity to the outstanding female students, hoping for liberation, independence and building the future of our homeland, Palestine, as we walk on the path of the martyrs, leaders and heroic resistance fighters ."

Earlier this month, Qatati spoke to another group about the importance of poetry - and he specifically praised a Palestinian poem called "Pull the Trigger Twice."

Give me a quiver and gunpowder
Respond to gunpowder with gunpowder
My weapon came out of my wounds,
Kalashnikov, keep your bullets high,
oh my guerrilla, keep your bullets right
... and pull the trigger twice."

Pull the trigger twice on the chest of the enemy..
pull the trigger.. and come with the revolution, and unite with the revolution..
pull the trigger.. this is our revolution and this is our path..
...Come on, organize and arm, O our people..
Struggle, O our people, and escalate..
Leave the two bullets tight to the enemy's chest.

This is an example of the kind of culture and writing that Palestinians encourage.

This is a twisted and perverted society.

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Do Palestinians have love for the "Ibrahimi Mosque" in Hebron, or hate for Jews?

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that thousands of Muslims jammed the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the surrounding streets on Friday, the first Friday of Ramadan.

It is one of the ten days of the year that Jews are banned from the sacred site, the second holiest site in Judaism.

Wafa interviewed one of the worshipers, who explained why she came. "It is our duty, we, the people of Hebron in particular, and Palestine in general, to stay in it by praying in it, because our presence here enrages the occupation and its settlers who are trying to Judaize the Haram, and we must protect it through our permanent presence and prayer in it."

The main reason to go to the site is apparently not for prayer, but to send a message to Jews and enrage them.

This point was repeated by Palestinian officials as well.

The Director General of the Hebron Endowment, Nidal al-Ja’bari, told Wafa, “Today, thousands of worshipers came the first Friday of Ramadan in all the Ibrahimi Mosque's corridors, squares, and internal and external courtyards. The sanctuary will remain purely Islamic, and the Jews have no right to it."

He added, "Jerusalem, Hebron, and Palestine, along with the unified Arab and Palestinian sanctities in them, will remain, and will not be the legacy of the abhorrent Israeli occupation."

The preacher of the sanctuary, Sheikh Atta al-Muhtaseb, urged during his Friday sermon that Palestinians flock and pray in the building, to protect it and provide for it in light of the arrogance of the occupation and its settlers.

The language is never how holy or sacred the site is. It is never about the importance of Abraham to the Islamic religion. Invariably, when Palestinian are talking about the holy sites in the land, it is is terms not of their importance to Islam but their desire to rid those sites of Jews.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount were off-limits to Jews altogether when Muslims controlled the region. They make no secret that they want things to return to the way they were - a status quo from the 19th century.

And much of the world agrees with this official antisemitism of the Palestinians.

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75 years ago: Jewish heroes saving lives - and getting killed for it

Heroes Haim Graf and Mordechai Komornik

There were two interesting and related articles in the Palestine Post of March 22, 1948, on events that happened 75 years ago today, that were both about Jewish heroes.

The first real heroes were two guards, Haim Graf and Mordechai Komornik, who saw smoke coming out of the abandoned vehicle outside the Solel Boneh building in Haifa. They warned scores of people about a truck bomb - and who were killed by that very bomb as they were pushing the truck away from the crowded building.

Unfortunately, four were killed besides the guards, including a father and his five year old son.

The other heroic story was of a different type:

The Jews rushed to save the lives of their armed enemies - and Zichron Mizrahi paid with his life.

Why did the Arab Legionnaires assume that the Jews who were trying to rescue them were attacking them?

Because that is how Arabs would act!

Palestinian Arabs have a different idea of what being a "hero" means. They have used the word "heroic" consistently with every single murder of a Jew this year (and every other year) by an Arab.

If you want to know a people, know who they consider their heroes.

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Palestinians defending the right to play soccer on the Temple Mount

This video from Palestine Times is upset at an Israeli Knesset member suggested that playing soccer on the Temple Mount be prohibited, and defends the right of Muslims to desecrate the holiest place in Judaism.

It is remarkable that the very people who insist that everyone else respect their customs to the extent that all must follow their own laws (e.g., no one can draw cartoons of Mohammed) and who threaten those who don't adhere to their standards, have so little respect for the feelings of others.

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German tourists who were almost lynched in Nablus pleaded with attackers, "Don't hurt us! We aren't Jews!"

This interview of one of the German victims of a near-lynching in Nablus when they drove a rideshare car with an Israeli flag has an interesting implication:

I did not know if I would go out alive, because they had so much hate against us....Suddenly they came our of taxis and kind of surrounded us, and we tried to explain in English that we are tourists, we are from Germany, we are both not Jewish so we are not a target for them."

I can't really blame them for saying whatever they needed to in order to save their lives, but I cannot help but think that there is an implication that it is somehow more tragic to kill an innocent German non-Jew than to kill a Jew.

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Even the most "moderate" Palestinians support shooting Jewish civilians

The shooting of David Stern as he drove with his family today resulted, as always, with great celebrations by Palestinians.

Here a crowd goes to his house to celebrate.

And here are the obligatory fireworks celebrating the shooting of a Jew.

But, you may say, these are only the extremists. Certainly normal, sober Palestinians support shooting random Jewish civilians.

Well, Muhammed Shehada - who has bylines in Haaretz, Newsweek, Vice and elsewhere, and is a columnist for the Forward, and who also has a job working for a "human rights" NGO - went out of his way to justify Stern being shot twenty times:

The settler wounded in today's shooting near Huwara is David Stern, a former US Marine soldier who provides combat & weapon training to #Israeli settlers.

He's Israeli-American & lives in the Itamar settlement, built on land confiscated from 5 Palestinian villages.

Under international law, Stern is a civilian. His job and where he lives does not affect that designation. So this celebrated writer who pretends to be a human rights professional is justifying a war crime.

And he is considered moderate enough to write for Jewish-owned media.

If this is the best example of morality from Palestinian society, then Palestinian society is rotten to the core.

(h/t Adam Albilya)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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When Palestinians are killed by Jews: "Genocide!" By Palestinians: "Unfortunate."

Two young Palestinian men were shot and killed in a family clan clash in the town of Jayyous, east of Qalqilya, in the northern part of the West Bank.

The news stories about it use a single word: "Unfortunate."

Press sources stated that forces from the security services went to the town of Jayyous and imposed a curfew to control the unfortunate events that took place in the town.

And the Directorate of Education in Qalqilya decided to close the schools in the town of Jayyus tomorrow, Wednesday, because of the unfortunate events that took place in the town this evening.

Palestine Today described the fighting as an "unfortunate quarrel."

Two young men were murdered and the only word they can use is "unfortunate?"

There's no anger. There are no calls to limit access to weapons. No, families targeting each other is as Palestinian as can be. Maybe it will be celebrated in the next exhibition of the Palestine Museum.

But if a Jew can be blamed for the death of a Palestinian, no matter how indirectly, it is "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and sometimes a "holocaust."

Apparently, being murdered is no biggie. No one cares if a Palestinian isn't killed by the right person.

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Poll: Palestinians think their suffering is unique in world history, and this justifies terror

In December, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and Tel Aviv University carried out a joint opinion survey of Palestinians and Israelis, asking them similar questions to compare their opinions.

These joint polls have been happening for years, and they are very valuable in comparing both sides' opinions of the peace process or a two state solution.

There were two questions asked, though, which were not well thought out. The responses are far more significant than they appear at first blush.

The pair of questions were prefaced with, "To what extent do you disagree or agree with the following statements regarding the experiences of Jews /Palestinians generally?" with the wording of "Jews" given to Israelis and "Palestinians" to Palestinian Arabs.

The first statement was, "I believe that the suffering of Palestinians/Jews is unique throughout the human history."

This question implies an equivalence between the Jewish people who have existed for over 3500 years and a Palestinian people who have existed as a self-defined people for, at the very most, a century. If the question was meant to show equivalence, it should have used "Israelis" instead of "Jews."

The answers:

More Palestinians than Israeli Jews think that their suffering is unique throughout human history! Given that Jewish history includes centuries of pogroms, Crusades, expulsions, forced conversions, massacres and a Holocaust, this Palestinian mindset is astonishing both in its unparalleled hubris and in its ignorance of world history.

It is impossible to make peace with people who are so detached from reality, and so wedded to the myth that their victimhood trumps all others since the dawn of time.

The next statement: "Since Palestinians/Jews are the victims of ongoing suffering, it is their moral right to do anything in order to survive."

The answers:

It is a poorly written statement for comparison purposes, because each side is likely to interpret it differently.

The statement did not define the parameters of "anything." Almost certainly, if the question had the words "including genocide" or "including blowing up babies" the percentage of Israeli Jews who agreed would have shrunk significantly.

I'm not so certain if the same could be said about Palestinians. After all, they are taught that killing Israeli Jewish civilians is not only moral, but a legal right of "resistance" under international law, and they overwhelmingly support terror attacks against innocent Jews while the number of Israelis who support murdering Palestinian civilians is quite small.

The Israeli Jews almost certainly didn't have an expansive interpretation of what "anything" means. The Palestinians almost certainly did. Even so, far more Palestinians - nine out of ten! - say that anything is justified for their cause.

This poll shows a Palestinian people who are unhinged from both reality and morality.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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