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These Children Live to Die

LICIA CORBELLA  |
Hopelessness, say the unthinking and uninformed, is what lies behind Palestinian youth committing acts of terrorism.
In fact, the polar opposite is true of not just Palestinian terror, but all Islamic terrorism. Rather, it is hope – fuelled by official Palestinian Authority propaganda – that drives this terrorism, carried out so often by brainwashed children.
Don't believe me? Fine.
But maybe then you'll believe the children themselves. Maybe you'll believe the pro-martyrdom music videos, advertisements, speeches and sermons played every single day on the Palestinian Authority television.
Maybe you'll believe it when you see a hijab-wearing mother kiss her 17-year-old son goodbye and then brag to the camera how she has chosen Shahid [sic] – or martyrdom – for her son, telling him, prior to his murderous mission, don't you dare come back to me alive.
“I give my son to Jihad for Allah,” says this evil woman to Arab News Network TV, which glorified her.
“This is a religious obligation for us,” she adds, smiling with pride for the camera after it became known her son murdered five Israeli teenagers before being killed himself.
“If I were to have compassion for him or allow him to change his mind it would not be right. I sacrificed him for something greater. How? Because I love my son and I want to choose the best for him.”
Still don't believe me? See for yourself.
Today, at 7 p.m. at the Calgary Jewish Centre, 1607 90 Ave. S.W., Barbara Crook, the volunteer North American representative of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) will show a video and give a talk on this troubling topic.
PMW is a Jerusalem-based organization that examines and reports on the way in which the Palestinian Authority-controlled news media foment anti-Semitic hatred and indoctrinate Palestinian children to become martyrs for Allah.
It's the same video documentary shown by PMW at a U.S. Senate committee hearing on Oct. 30 last year that so shocked those who watched it that they have drafted amendments to the 2005 U.S. Foreign Operations Bill that will make it much more difficult for U.S. foreign aid money to be used for terror promotion.
Senator Hillary Clinton was quoted in the Jerusalem Post the day after watching the film saying: “Horrific abuse of children. How can you think about building a better future … if you indoctrinate your children to a culture of death?”
Senator Arlen Specter came to much the same conclusion during that Senate hearing. “The characterization at the end about (the PA being) child abusers is a vast understatement. They're civilization abusers. The children are their means to destroy civilization.”
“Essentially there are two very different images of Palestinian society,” says Crook, who worked as a journalist for years for daily newspapers in Canada and who converted to Judaism in 1997.
“The one the PA leaders present in English to the world’s media – where you see Yasser Arafat saying things like: ‘We deplore suicide bombing, and this is a dispute about borders,’ versus what they're telling their own people in Arabic, which is: ‘There should be no Israel, it has no right to exist, the Jewish people should be killed.’
“That’s a huge discrepancy and I have many, many examples,” says Crook, who backs up her claim by e-mailing literally dozens upon dozens of chilling examples of translated sermons, textbook passages and the like.
But it is the documentary, in which you see and hear for yourself how pervasive and repetitive this culture of death and martyrdom glorification is that is most chilling of all.
Over and over again, the Palestinian Authority tells children – through grade school textbooks, mesmerizing music videos, television advertisements and speeches at schools by Arafat himself – the noblest goal in life, and the best way to make their mothers and fathers proud, is to die for Allah while murdering Jews and other infidels.
Just a few days ago, PMW sent out a bulletin saying that twice in three days, PA religious leaders have openly called for the genocide of Jews. Broadcast on official PA TV, both called for the murder of Jews until the Jewish people – often referred to as pigs and monkeys – are annihilated.
“To support these mandatory killings, both cited the same Hadith – Islamic tradition attributed to Mohammed – expressing Allah’s will that Muslims will kill Jews before the ‘Hour of Resurrection,’” wrote Crook along with co-writer and PMW Director Itamar Marcus.
At one point, the 25-minute video, which can be downloaded from PMW’s website (www.palwatch.org) shows Arafat, with his trademark grin, giving a speech to a bunch of school kids – maybe 10 or 11 – praising 14-year-old “Shahid” or martyr, Faris Ouda.
“We are proud of this growing generation … that was represented by your colleague, the hero Shahid, Faris Ouda!” bellowed Arafat to the cheering youngsters.
The PA official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on Nov. 30, 2000 reported: “On the day of his death Faris Ouda left his home with a slingshot, after having made himself a wreath decorated with photos of himself and having written on it ‘The Brave Shahid Faris Ouda’…”
Tellingly, he also said to his mother, “Don't worry, mother, Shahada (martyrdom for Allah) is sweet,” which parrots a line in an oft-repeated PA music video glorifying children suicide bombers.
When asked by a television host on PA TV: “What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people, or Shahada?” 11-year-old girls Walla and Yussra described Shahada as “very beautiful.”
“The children of Palestine have accepted the concept that … death by Shahada is very good,” said Yussra. “We benefit not from this life, but from the afterlife.”
Not a hopeless desperate word to be found anywhere.
And that's the scariest thing of all.

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