De Palestijn doden die jou dood wenst (Bradley Burston)

Soms is Bradley Burston iets te optimistisch:

 

"The longer the lies of martyrdom and What Our Lord the Terrorist Wants go on, the longer the world will be content to live without an independent Palestine in its midst."

 

 

Op de donor conferentie eergisteren was daar weinig van te merken, en men had vooral aandacht voor de vele Israëlische obstakels en belemmeringen waardoor de Palestijnse economie zich niet zou kunnen ontwikkelen. De Qassams werden wel even ritueel veroordeeld, maar er werd verder niet gerept over de verheerlijking van geweld tegen Israël, de heldenstatus van de 'martelaren', de ophitsing in de media zoals de Hamas kindershow waarin geregeld wordt opgeroepen alle Zionisten te doden omdat zij vijanden zijn van de islam.

 

Het lijkt er helaas op dat de wereld best kan leven met een Palestijnse staat zonder dat aan deze leugens en ophitsing een einde is gekomen.   

 

 

Ratna

----------

Killing the Palestinian who wishes you dead 

By Bradley Burston / A Special Place in Hell / Haaretz 18-12-2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/935825.html

We, the Jews and the Arabs, hold a number of truths to be self-evident, not knowing, or not caring, that they are, in fact, the lies we live by.

One of the lies of the Jews, a lie in which the Jewish right takes particular delight, is the idea that Palestinians, as a people, want to see the Jews dead. The lie serves with devotion and remarkable durability the ulterior political motives of the right, in particular the restoration of the lost Kingdom of Yesha, the return of Jewish dominion to all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Like all lies which become ironclad tenets of political belief, the lie of the genocidal Palestinian comes with a certain wrapping of truth. There are Palestinians whose life goal is to bring death to the Jew.

On Monday night, Israel's armed forces killed 10 of them.

The IDF, it must be said, killed the Islamic Jihad men without shedding the lives of innocent Gazans. One of the men killed, Majed Harazin, has for years been one of the central commanders in the Jerusalem Brigades, the Jihad's armed wing. He and another Jihad commander killed in the Monday night raids were key figures in Qassam production, targeting, and launch against civilian targets and innocent populations. A third Jihad man killed was the wing's commander in the northern West Bank.

They were war criminals. More to the point, they were soldiers. Soldiers in a war in which they are declared combatants, and in which civilian non-combatants are their declared targets. It was our right to kill them. It was our responsibility.

Just as we condemn, and should, the Israeli attacks in which innocent Palestinians are killed, we have a right to respect and appreciate what it took to prevent the deaths of non-combatants while killing our sworn enemies.

In the interest of candor, let us call the Palestinian Islamic Jihad what it is: the most active terrorist organization now operating in the Holy Land. It is this group which fires most of the Qassams into Israel's southwest. It is this group which has hatched most of the suicide bombings over the past two years, most of which were, thank God - who is their God as well - thwarted by Israeli intelligence and security efforts.

And in the interest of shedding light on the lies by which we live, it would be worth taking a closer look at the Jihad's initial response to the IDF operations.

After the deaths of Harazin, rocket mastermind Karim al-Dahdouh and the others, the Jihad e-mailed reporters, threatening to retaliate with a wave of suicide bombings inside Israel, effectively greatly escalating attacks against Israeli civilians. "The assassination of the general commander will open the door wide to a wave of martyrdom operations," the e-mail read.

In a second announcement, Jihad spokesman Abu Hamza told reporters at a mosque, "The blood of our comrades will be the fuel for the rockets that will bring death and destruction to the Zionists."

That is how it is with lies. You can't have it both ways. You can't call yourselves Soldiers for Palestine, lovers of death, cravers of martyrdom, incinerators and dismantlers of Israel and the Zionist enterprise, and, at the same time, profess outrage and anger that we would have the temerity to kill you.

You're soldiers. Grow up.

But that's how it is with lies. Their strongest appeal is to the two-year-old in all of us, and to the 12-year-old boy in too many of us. The suffering of those on our side is the only suffering in the conflict. The other side has no rights to recognition, nationhood, peoplehood, land.

The irony is that the Palestinian organization which was once the most honest, Hamas, is now trapped within a number of lies of its own. Two days after 200,000 Hamas activists rally in Gaza to chant "We will never recognize Israel," a spokesman on the group is a guest on Israel Army Radio's flagship morning news talk show, telling the host that assassinating Jihad men is not the way to seek a solution in the conflict, and that only negotiations can bring a solution.

On one hand, Israel has done much to cripple the possibility of talks taking place. But there is another hand, and it's a strong one in this tug of war. Hamas supplies the Islamic Jihad with weaponry, including the Qassams that Jihad men fire at Israel.

Moreover, the Jihad takes orders from Iran, which has no interest in the survival of Israel, much less talks with an existing Jewish state in the Holy Land.

Truth be told, there was always a certain overall contradiction in their activities. Year after year, Hamas showed selfless generosity in providing health care, education, and sustenance to children, young families and the elderly of Gaza, while providing self-congratulatory suicide bombers to kill children, young familes and the elderly of Israel.

The longer the lies of martyrdom and What Our Lord the Terrorist Wants go on, the longer the world will be content to live without an independent Palestine in its midst.

The Palestinians must choose what they want to do with their liars. The Palestinians themselves must decide what they want to do with the warlords who want Jews dead more than they want a state. With the babyish young men who want Jews dead more than they want Palestine to be a functioning, contributing part of the world. With the Palestine-as-Columbine gun nuts who want Jews dead more than they want Palestinians to be able to live in peace and well-being. And who will never accept a Palestine which is won on the negotiating table and not in a blood-flooded West Jerusalem street.

The Palestinians have a choice to make. They can be ruled by the mentality of the seventh grader, the kid with a heart full of fresh, unsullied ideals and a head full of hormones. Or they can begin to think about the future like adults.

Thanks to the Jihad and to Hamas, the real martyr is no longer the poor kid who goes to kill himself for a few dinars and a passle of religious lies. At this point, thanks to the Jihad and to Hamas, the real martyr is the cause of Palestine itself.