During the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, my neighbor on French Hill in Jerusalem was a retired high-level CIA analyst and operative. Despite an almost complete embargo of information about the war in the Israeli press, he was able to discern the dire threat we faced by analyzing the international news reports he heard on his radio.
Years later, we learned the situation had become so grave that after surveying the conditions in the North and the South, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered Maj.-General Benny Peled, commander of the Israeli Air Force, to divert planes bombing Egyptian positions to the Syrian front because he said, “The Third Temple is in danger.”
The experience taught me that much of the information we need to evaluate a situation is openly accessible to all of us. We just have to be open to connect the dots. At times, we seem unable to assess the information, absorb the data or grasp its significance. Part of the reason is a proclivity not to accept what is disturbing. Denial allows us to avoid unpleasantness. Confronting reality might also compel us to action that could disrupt our lives.
After having experienced the Shoah, the failure to accept that the Palestinian Arabs might actually seek to destroy the state of Israel is precisely what led to the delusional, predictable and extremely destructive Oslo fiasco.
What the Arab Leaders Preach to Their Constituents
One can hardly deny that the Palestinian Arabs hide their genocidal intentions. Itamar Marcus, the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), provides daily examples of how the Palestinian Authority incites their people against Israel.
On November 30, 2017, for example, the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida broadcast a music video promising to attack Jews: “We will raise the Fatah flag with the rifle…We will come at you from the sea…We are soldiers, until we break the Jews.” (http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=24353)
On November 26, 2017, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida accused Israel of murdering Palestinian Arab children in cold blood, and deliberately targeting Palestinian Arab children.
On the annual day celebrating the Arab headdress, the keffiyeh, the director of the Qalqilya district Directorate of Education—a branch of the PA Ministry of Education—explained to Palestinian Arab teenage girls that the blood of “martyrs” is “the purest.” His statement was broadcast on the school radio.
PMW has documented that the PA has named at least 31 schools after terrorists, and that 41 school names glorify martyrdom.
A headline in the same paper accused Israel and the US of orchestrating the massacre in Egypt in which 305 were murdered. They also charged Israel with organizing the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, and claimed that the US and Israel direct ISIS terror activities in Europe.
On November 19, 2017, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported that the student council at Modern University College hosted a memorial service for its student martyrs (shahids) in Ramallah with Fatah’s Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen in attendance. Five students from Modern University College “ascended [to Heaven] as martyrs within a year.”
On the Facebook page of the “Jerusalem Intifada’s Young People’s Coalition,” there is a video entitled “Stabbing for kids: Palestinian girl gives demo.”
A girl from Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, supports the stabbing campaign by the young people of Hebron. The title of the video is “#so_what?”
This video and the term “so what,” Marcus notes, refers to a hashtag used as a slogan on Palestinian Arab social media to goad Palestinian Arabs to continue rioting, hurling rocks and engaging in violent actions against Israelis.
“#so_what” is a Palestinian Arab response that mocks Israel’s alleged crimes, asserting that Palestinian Arabs will not be deterred by the Israelis or care about Israeli reprisals. They will continue to riot, throw rocks and stab Israelis and engage in and other acts of violence.
Searching for the Moderate Arab
Instead of recognizing that there can never be peace so long as Palestinian Arab leaders encourage and reward their citizens to become suicide bombers, and urge them to indiscriminately maim and murder Jewish men, women and children on buses and in cars, restaurants and their homes, there is an interminable futile search for the elusive moderate Arab leaders. This process did not begin with Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
In June 1938, Sir John Shuckburgh of the Colonial Office was asked about Arab moderates. Shuckburgh recalled the saying of the late Lord John Morley, that, in times of unrest, “moderates are always at a discount.” The condition in Palestine, Shuckburgh noted, “was unhappily one in which extremists held the limelight and moderates had little influence.”
Alec S. Kirkbride, district commissioner of the Galilee and Acre District, added that there were a number of moderates who were prepared to cooperate with the British, even though they disagreed with the British mandatory policy. It was “impossible” to estimate their exact number, however, because “they were naturally disinclined to come into the open.”
One final note: The reality of Palestinian Arab genocidal intent should not be so difficult to accept. Just look how they treat their fellow Arabs.
By Alex Grobman, PhD
Alex Grobman, a Hebrew University-trained historian, has written extensively in books and articles on the Palestinian Arab conflict. He is a member of the Council of Scholars for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), and a member of the Advisory Board of The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). He has trained students how to respond to Arab propaganda on American campuses. One student, who worked with him for three years, became president of Harvard Students for Israel.
