Tel-Chai Nation

Jonathan Rosenblum writes about why incitement is a serious matter, and provides some info on where Sweden got its blood libel ingredients from:

Ever wonder where the report claiming IDF soldiers kidnap and kill Palestinians in order to harvest their organs for transplants originated? Palestinian Media Watch provides the answer. It was lifted in toto from the December 24, 2001, edition of Al Hayat Al Jadida, the official Palestinian Authority newspaper.

Donald Bostrom, the reporter for Sweden's Aftonbladet who disseminated this fabrication, has said of his handiwork, "Whether it's true or not, I have no idea. I have no clue." Given his indifference to truth, what further "scoops" can we anticipate from Bostrum? Again, Palestinian Media Watch provides the answer.

Here are just some of the charges one could have read in the official Palestinian press or heard from leading Palestinian Authority officials in recent years: Israel will pay NIS 4,500 to any Palestinian who can prove he is a drug addict; Israel produced and distributed to Palestinians 200 tons of drug-laced bubble gum designed to destroy the genetic systems of Palestinian youth; it also distributes carcinogenic food and fruits for Palestinian consumption and children's games that beam radioactive x-rays. And don't forget the HIV-infected Jewish prostitutes whom Israel unleashed on Palestinian youth. Or Suha Arafat's accusation to Hillary Clinton that Israel poisons Palestinian wells.

As the above accusations make clear, demonization of Israel is alive and well in the Palestinian Authority. In every agreement since the onset of Oslo, the Palestinians have solemnly pledged to end the incitement against Jews and Israel in the Palestinian media and to purge it from Palestinian textbooks. And each such undertaking has been promptly ignored.

THE FAILURE to curb incitement has been so constant, so long-standing that it barely elicits a yawn today. But that apathy reflects a profound misunderstanding of the significance of that incitement.

Shimon Peres once remarked, "I don't care what the Palestinians say, only what's written in the agreements." But what the Palestinians say to one another, and particularly what they teach their children, is far more important than what's written in peace agreements.

Incitement and demonization are not just one more treaty violation. They reflect the failure of the Palestinians since the beginning of Oslo to create a constituency for peace with Israel, to educate the Palestinian population to the idea of living side-by-side with a Jewish state or to make clear that peace will also require concessions on the Palestinians' part.

That has never happened. Even worse, there has been no education to accept the existence of Israel in any borders or to renounce once and for all the dream of throwing all the Jews into the sea.

The Palestinian Authority has gone out of its way to make heroes of the most vicious terrorists - not exactly the way to encourage thoughts of reconciliation and peace. Mahmoud Abbas sent his warmest congratulations to child-murderer Samir Kuntar, upon his release from an Israeli jail, and commissioned festive celebrations in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, the mastermind of the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre in which 38 Israelis were murdered.

At the first Fatah Conference in two decades last month, the young and old guard competed as to who could be more intransigent with regard to peace negotiations with Israel, according to the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh. The resolutions passed included demands that Israel accept the "right of return" for all 1948 refugees and their descendants and hand over to the Palestinians all Jewish neighborhoods built in Jerusalem since 1967.

Other resolutions by the conference accused Israel of having murdered Yasser Arafat, urged exploration of a strategic alliance with Iran, and called for the upgrading of the status of the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, the Fatah militia most involved in anti-Israel terror. For good measure, Muhammad Ghaneim, an extreme hard-liner who opposed the Oslo Accords, was the top vote-getter for the Fatah Central Committee and is now Abbas's heir apparent.

The effect of decades of incitement to destroy Israel is fully reflected in Palestinian polls. A June 5-7 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that three-quarters of Palestinians reject any possibility of reconciliation with Israel in this generation, even if a final peace agreement were signed and an independent Palestinian state created.

So now we know where the blood libel bizarrity began: it was with the PLO, which countries like Sweden so blatantly embrace. And it goes without saying that their ignorance/embrace of Fatah/PLO's incitement is exactly why they keep up with it.

Labels: anti-semitism, islam, jihad, Scandanavia, terrorism