Depraved society: Palestinians celebrate "the journalist who preferred the gun to the camera"

Last week, a 21 year old Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades gunman named Ahmed Abu Junaid was killed while shooting at IDF soldiers in Balata.

The Palestinian preference for terrorism over peace can be seen from this article in Safa News celebrating his death:

Only one year separated Ahmed Abu Junaid from graduating from university and obtaining a journalism certificate to join his fellow journalists, but he preferred to carry a gun instead of a camera in order to obtain the highest degrees.

Abu Junaid, 21, was martyred hours after he was critically wounded, in an armed clash with Israeli special forces that stormed Balata camp, east of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank, at dawn on the eleventh of January.

Ahmed's mother, who attended his funeral and showed a great deal of patience and perseverance, did not hide her pain at his separation.

She tells Safa news agency: "Praise be to God who honored me with the martyrdom of Ahmed. Praise be to God that he was martyred while resisting and defending his land. He was martyred while carrying the gun."

The accounts of his family and friends reveal an aspect of Ahmed's life, who wished for martyrdom and worked hard for it until he deservedly obtained it.

And his mother adds, "Ahmed did not want to get married. I told him I want to marry you. He told me, I do not want to get married.. I want a martyrdom."

Amer Abu Junaid, the father of the martyr Ahmed, said with tears filling his eyes: "He asked for martyrdom and obtained it. He lived his life honorable and pure and died like that."

Ahmed was on the verge of his academic achievement and was interested in developing his capabilities in the field of journalism, and his classmates saw him as a promising journalistic project, but nevertheless he saw himself as a martyr's project and his resistance work took priority over any other interests.

And he used to talk to some of his companions about his desire for martyrdom and tell them: My blood is for Palestine, and he asked them not to grieve over him, and they tried to dissuade him, but he had made up his mind and chose his irreversible path.

He wanted to be killed by Israel. He told everyone of his desire, including his own mother. And this person who worshipped death is regarded as a hero.

There are no stories, ever, that say that if Palestinians would prefer to become coders and doctors and writers instead of terrorists, they would be in much better shape. 

Their choice of heroes, and their choice of what makes someone admirable, tell you everything you need to know about Palestinian society. And it is a story that the Western media studiously keeps from its consumers.

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On Jews, Muslims, and Matters of Life and Death (Judean Rose)

 

Life is a supreme Jewish value. So much so that it’s customary to make charitable donations or monetary gifts in multiples of 18: the numerical value of the Hebrew word for life: chai. When we drink in celebration we say, “L’Chaim,” as popularized by the song from Fiddler on the Roof.

We Jews place life on a pedestal not only in times of celebration but in times of mourning too. Anglo-Jews from Britain and communities in the former Commonwealth, for example, are likely to conclude a condolence call with “I wish you long life.”

In Islam, on the other hand, life appears to take a backseat to death. The goriest murders, butchery, death, and suicide seem not to faze Muslims at all. Whereas Jews are preoccupied with life, the Muslim thinks more about death. In a 2004 op-ed, Aspiration not Desperation, Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook detailed the final words of a suicide bomber, describing her joy at the prospect of blowing herself to smithereens.

“I always wanted to be the first woman who sacrifices her life for Allah. My joy will be complete when my body parts fly in all directions.”

These are the words of female suicide terrorist Reem Reyashi, videotaped just before she killed four Israelis and herself two weeks ago in Gaza. What is surprising about this horrific statement is that she put a positive value on her dismemberment and death, distinct from her goal to kill others. She was driven by her aspiration to achieve what the Palestinians call “shahada,” death for Allah. She had two distinct goals: To kill and to be killed. These independent objectives, both positive in her mind, were goals greater than her obligations and emotional ties to her two children. This aspiration to die, which contradicts the basic human instinct for survival, is at the core of the suicide terrorism fervor.

Contrast this with the Jewish concept of dying “al Kidush Hashem,” in sanctification of God’s name. Every Holocaust victim, every Jewish terror victim, is considered to be a holy martyr. But Jews don’t strive for that holy eventuality—we don’t court death for the sake of martyrdom. Which is what all too many Muslims seem to do.

Most people can't stand the sight of blood, but blood doesn't seem to generate the same revulsion in Muslims. Take the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which commemorates what we Jews still call the Akedat Yitzchak, the binding of Isaac. The Muslim version, which of course postdates Jewish scripture substitutes “Ibrahim” for Abraham, and “Ismail” for Isaac. Jews remember the Akedah by reciting the story from the Torah before the congregation on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Muslims, on the other hand, celebrate their version of the story with mass slaughter of livestock. So many animals are killed on this holiday, that in 2016, the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh ran red with blood.

Dhaka, 2016

In The value of life in the Jewish tradition: Towards understanding Jewish bioethics, written in 2009, Professor Michael Barilan of the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, writes about protecting the ability of animals to procreate and bring new life and what we as humans are supposed to learn from this:

Judaism is possibly the only religion that prohibits all forms of castration. This taboo creates grave challenges to pet owners, modern animal farming and scientific research. However, when one becomes aware of the ubiquity of sterilization in the utilization of animals, one may also appreciate the subtle protest Judaism articulates against the mechanical exploitation of animals. The prohibition on sterilization of animals and humans underscores further the special regard in Judaism to the capacity to generate life. According to Sefer Ha’hinnukh, castration articulates a nihilistic attitude towards life. Contemporary scholarship on Judaism and human rights also interpret God’s admonition “Choose life!” as a call for hope and engagement in worldly life, not as a strict refusal to recognize situations in which loss of life is the more dignified and just course of action.

In regard to shedding blood, Barilan writes,

Ironically, the first prohibition on bloodshed is articulated in terms of the death penalty. “Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the Image of God made he man.”

The Torah does not tell us directly, “do not kill” the way God proscribed eating from the tree of knowledge. From the story on Cain and Abel we learn that this knowledge is self-evident; every person must recognize it naturally.

Many Muslims, apparently do not. There is ample evidence of the Muslim thirst for bloodshed.

As Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook documented in their aforementioned op-ed, “Palestinian society actively promotes the religious belief that their deity craves their deaths. Note the words of a popular music video directed at children, broadcast hundreds of times on PA TV, which depicts the earth thirsting for the blood of children: ‘How sweet is the fragrance of the shahids, how sweet is the scent of the earth, its thirst quenched by the gush of blood, flowing from the youthful body.’”

Life is so important to Jews that we are allowed to break just about any religious commandment in order to save the life of a human being. Look at that last sentence carefully. There is rabbinical consensus that we are commanded to breach Torah laws not only in order to save Jewish lives, but in order to save the life of any human being in peril.

In Jewish law, human life comes first. We understand how important a man’s life is—any man’s life—by the early mention of the concept in Scripture:

“And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him.” (Genesis 1:27)

Judaism is life-affirming. Islam, on the other hand, cares little for life, and instead embraces death with a whole heart. More from Marcus and Crook:

PA ideology rejects the value of ‘life’ that other societies hold supreme. As expressed by a senior historian, Professor Issam Sissalem, in a lecture on PA TV: “We are not afraid to die, and do not love life.”

This attitude was echoed by Nidal Malik Hasan in wrapping up a presentation he created for his fellow doctors, two years before he killed thirteen and wounded 29 at Fort Hood: “We love death more than you love life!”

According to the National Post, the sentence originates with “a 7th-century Muslim commander who threatened his enemies with the prospect of ‘an army of men that love death as you love life.’”

The Post then references a 2004 interview with Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah. Professor Richard Landes quotes the same interview in Lessons from Kafr Qana:

“We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”

Landes, describing Muslim awareness of their own obsession with death, writes:

Even as they deplore it, Arab intellectuals acknowledge the depths of the problem: Wrote Tunisian intellectual Al-Afif Al-Akhdar:

“Why do expressions of tolerance, moderation, rationalism, compromise, and negotiation horrify us [Muslims], but [when we hear] fervent cries for vengeance, we all dance the war dance?… Why do other people love life, while we love death and violence, slaughter and suicide, and [even] call it heroism and martyrdom?”

In Death: a beautiful Gift for a believer (compiled by unknown), the author describes hating death as the provenance only of the “ignorant”:

Hatred towards death and love of the world is the outcome of an ignorant person's mind, who thinks that the happiness of this world is his prosperity and good fortune. The world beset with numerous troubles and anxieties is about to end in misery and does not enjoy eternity, perpetuity and sincerity. A poet has referred to this in the following words - “Do not give your heart to this world, for its example is of an unfaithful bride who has never loved you, even for a night.”

Unknown also writes:

[Hazrat Qasim], the son of [Imam Hasan Al-Mujtaba], when asked concerning death at Karbala, answered: “death to me is sweeter than honey.”

He continues (emphasis added):

Usually, most of the people are alarmed and fearful upon hearing the word `death', and to them, death appears dreadful and terrifying, whereas, according to the Islamic ideology, this terminology or this subject has a different appearance and can be perceived in a different way. Basically it can be said that those who fear death, consider it to be a negative entity.

According to this insight, death is an end of life and a moment of everlasting separation of man with his life. They believe that with death, the compounded substances of the body suffer a breakdown and return to nature and man too, is nothing except this very broken-down body. Hence, with death, everything ends with no hope remaining!

Indeed, with this view and insight, death is darker and more dreadful than every other thing and perhaps, no calamity, pain, sorrow and tragedy can be greater and more painful than the tragedy of death, because death would mean the burial of all the desires, hopes, longings and in short, the termination of all things for man - that man who loved life and eternity very dearly.

Anyway, Islam does not possess such a dark and fear-instilling view of death because according to the Islamic view, death is a positive entity.

The idea of death as a “positive entity” is informative, here--perhaps more than anything else. Jews and incalculable numbers of Muslims stand in diametric opposition to each other when it comes to our most essential and sacred beliefs.

But it is more than that, of course. It’s more than our differing views on life and death, but the gruesomeness of the Muslim culture of death, the horrifying bloodlust that accompanies those beliefs; the nature of the killings; and the lack of even the tiniest drop of the milk of human compassion when choosing their victims.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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PalArab self-death update

Things have certainly calmed down in the territories, although not as much as you might think.

While Fatah and Hamas are not as successful in killing each other as beforehand, their efforts to kill Jews continue unabated (as yesterday's foiled terror attack shows.)

Yesterday, a Gaza man blew himself up while working on a bomb, making the counts of PalArabs who have been killed violently by each other go up to 322 since Operation Summer Rains and 117 so far this year.

UPDATE: PCHR mentions a number of incidents Wednesday, including two guys in Gaza who were messing around with a gun. One ended up dead.

Meanwhile:

At approximately 13:00 on Wednesday, 21 February 2007, Nahda Sa’di Hasanein, a 20-year old female resident of Sheja’eya Quarter in Gaza City was admitted to Shifa Hospital suffering from a gunshot wound in the abdomen. She was injured while inside her house; and the source of the shot was not determined. When members of the young woman’s clan were inside the hospital, a verbal dispute broke out when they refused to give information about the injured woman to the Executive Force station in the hospital. At approximately 19:30 on the same day, the Executive Force prevented members from Hasanein clan from entering the hospital because they were armed. An gunfight broke out between both sides in the hospital compound, and led to the injury of 10 people (including a 3-year old.)

Also a bomb set off outside the house of the Director of Police Security.

We are now at 323 and 118.

UPDATE 2: A PalArab policeman, chasing a car that didn't stop at a Palestinian Arab checkpoint (we never hear about those, do we?), fired his gun - and killed a bystander. 324 and 119.

UPDATE 3:Two more killed in Gaza (one shot many times, one stabbed.) 326 and 121.
During this week, 6 PalArab were killed by each other, and one was killed by Israel - and that one was responsible for attempting to kill many, many people.

UPDATE 4: 3 more dead as things are flaring up again. 329 and 124.

UPDATE 5: Apparently, the three killed on Saturday were in retaliation for a "militant" killed late Friday who I didn't count. So we are at 330 and 125.

UPDATE 6: For those of you visiting from LGF or Digg, there are plenty more where these came from. Here is a link to the next installment. And here is one to our last count update.

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Self-death count update

PCHR counts a total of 33 killed in the Fatah/Hamas clashes since last Thursday, and one more today, so our count of Palestinian Arabs killed by each other increases to 275 killed since Summer Rains started and 70 killed so far in 2007.

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