By Evelyn Gordon 2015-11-24
For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/o8ujkb9
In
confronting the current onslaught of lone-wolf attacks, the tactics Israel has
used successfully against terrorist organizations have so far proven
ineffective. That begs the question of what it should be doing instead. I have no
solutions for the short run, but there’s one obvious step Israel must take if
it wishes to prevent attacks like these over the long run. That step emerges
from two of the most salient features of the current violence: Permanent
residents of Israel have committed a huge proportion of the attacks, but citizens of
Israel have committed very few.
The
permanent residents in question are mainly east Jerusalem Arabs, and they have
committed more than eight times as many attacks as Arab citizens have, even
though Arab citizens outnumber permanent residents by more than 4:1. This
enormous gap certainly can’t be explained by the popular fallacy that terror is motivated mainly
by economic concerns; as permanent residents, east Jerusalem Arabs enjoy the
same access to jobs, the same freedom of movement throughout Israel and the
same health and welfare benefits that citizens do. Granted, Arab citizens are
generally better off, but the difference isn’t dramatic enough to explain the
dramatic gap in terrorist activity.
There
is, however, one difference quite dramatic enough to explain this gap: Whereas
Arab citizens study the Israeli curriculum in school, most of East Jerusalem’s
permanent residents study the Palestinian Authority curriculum. And that
curriculum, as sweeping reports by both Palestinian Media Watch and IMPACT-SE
have detailed, is filled with vile anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement.
Inter
alia, as PMW’s report notes, this curriculum rejects the legitimacy of Israel’s
existence (textbooks refer to “the so-called State of Israel”), justifies
violence against it, defines such violence as a religious obligation and
informs students that Jews and Zionists are irredeemably evil (one book, for
instance, refers to “the robbing Jews”; another tells students that Israel
“killed your children, split open your women’s bellies, held your revered
elderly men by the beard, and led them to the death pits”). These messages are
then reinforced by the “educational” programs broadcast on the PA’s official
media, where Jews are described as “monkeys and pigs,” “enemies of Allah” and
the “most evil of creations,” among other charming epithets.
East
Jerusalem schools have been using the PA curriculum, with Israel’s consent, ever since the PA’s establishment in 1994. In
other words, Israel decided two decades ago to let the PA indoctrinate a
generation of East Jerusalem schoolchildren to abominate Israel – and now it’s
shocked that the graduates of this indoctrination are going out and trying to
murder Israelis.
The PA
curriculum obviously isn’t the only problem; the PA also contributes to the
climate of incitement that drives these attacks in many other ways, including
statements by its senior officials, broadcasts by its official media organs and Facebook posts by its political parties. Nor can
this incitement be excused as a response to despair over the frozen peace
process: This is how the PA chose to “educate” its people even in the heyday of
the Oslo process when most of the world believed peace was at hand.
But
completely ending the PA’s massive incitement campaign would essentially
require turning the clock back to the days before Oslo – eliminating the PA,
deporting its officials, shutting down its media organs, banning its political
parties and removing its curriculum from the schools. And though Israel may be
driven to such drastic measures someday, it’s hard to see that happening right
now.
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