Editorial

‘A culture of sickness’

April 03, 2008

A Hamas television station lauds suicide bombings and holy war until “Palestine” is free of Jews.

Hamas children’s programs promote “martyrdom.”

A Hamas legislator and imam writes a column longing for “the holocaust [that] is still to come upon the Jews.”

In a grim front-page article this week, The New York Times acknowledged what many pro-Israel activists have been saying all along: that Hamas and other radical Islamists continue to raise their young people in a culture of hatred and incitement. Forget “road maps,” bilateral talks, back-door negotiations. Crouching at the front door are Hamas propagandists who indoctrinate their people in murderous rejection — and do so in the name of religion.

And if you think this is just a problem for Israel, consider this from JTA: “Al-Aksa Television this week broadcast a puppet show in which the hero, a Palestinian child whose relatives were killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, is shown stabbing a fearful [President] Bush to death in revenge.”

Apologists will say these are understandable reactions to Israeli “oppression” and decades of injustice. And yet these same apologists refuse to acknowledge the confidence-building measures Israel has agreed to and encouraged over the past two decades — only to be met with cartoon rabbits who dream of devouring Jews.

The one glimmer of hope is that even some Palestinian commentators are beginning to understand the propaganda for what it is. “[W]hat is not fine is to build up children with a culture of hatred, of closed minds, a culture of sickness,” the deputy minister of culture in Ramallah told the Times.

Such words are heartening, but not enough. Israeli officials are calling on moderate Arab leaders to speak out more strongly against the hate-mongers. They are insisting that Palestinian schools and media stop preaching incitement to violence and hatred and that the international community cease support to any “educational” activity that openly teaches hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.

Peace is impossible so long as Hamas and its Western enablers allow a generation of Palestinians to grow up longing for a second genocide of the Jews.