There is a very sad article in the Boston Globe. Jeff Jacoby writes about a terrible crime in the Palestinian Territories. Unfortunately, our money is supporting the hate education that plays its part in creating the environment where terrible acts like this take place:
Of course, the moral responsibility for such horrors belongs first with the awful people who committed such crimes.
If we want to try and understand why this sort of thing happens, we can look at a number of factors. There is a nasty militant Islamist ideology that has driven brutal terrorism from Delhi to New York to Bali and here in London. And the long conflict in Israel-Palestine has created plenty of reasons why people on both sides might hate the other.
Jeff Jacoby rightly highlights something else as well though:
What is really disgusting is that a lot of that incitement is carried out by organisations which depend on our money. The Palestinian Authority takes generous cheques from the British Government and others year in, year out. Last time we looked at the issue we found that funding was nearly £100 million in 2007-08. That's a huge amount of money. Given that the Palestinian population is only about 4 million that means every single Palestinian is getting about £25 from Britain alone. Lots of other Western countries are generous donors too.
It's bad enough when our money is wasted, but when it supports organisations whose dangerous rhetoric prolongs a violent conflict, and makes crimes like this more likely, that is utterly unacceptable.There is a very sad article in the Boston Globe. Jeff Jacoby writes about a terrible crime in the Palestinian Territories. Unfortunately, our money is supporting the hate education that plays its part in creating the environment where terrible acts like this take place:
Of course, the moral responsibility for such horrors belongs first with the awful people who committed such crimes.
If we want to try and understand why this sort of thing happens, we can look at a number of factors. There is a nasty militant Islamist ideology that has driven brutal terrorism from Delhi to New York to Bali and here in London. And the long conflict in Israel-Palestine has created plenty of reasons why people on both sides might hate the other.
Jeff Jacoby rightly highlights something else as well though:
What is really disgusting is that a lot of that incitement is carried out by organisations which depend on our money. The Palestinian Authority takes generous cheques from the British Government and others year in, year out. Last time we looked at the issue we found that funding was nearly £100 million in 2007-08. That's a huge amount of money. Given that the Palestinian population is only about 4 million that means every single Palestinian is getting about £25 from Britain alone. Lots of other Western countries are generous donors too.
It's bad enough when our money is wasted, but when it supports organisations whose dangerous rhetoric prolongs a violent conflict, and makes crimes like this more likely, that is utterly unacceptable.
"LAST WEEKEND in Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the Samarian hills, terrorists infiltrated the home of Udi and Ruth Fogel and perpetrated a massacre of the innocents.
The killers started with Yoav, the Fogels’ 11-year-old, and Elad, his 4-year-old brother. Yoav’s throat was slit, and Elad was stabbed twice in the heart. Then the attackers murdered Ruth, knifing her as she came out of the bathroom. In the next room they killed Ruth’s sleeping husband, Udi, and their infant daughter, Hadas. Apparently they didn’t notice the last bedroom, where the two other boys, Ro’i, 8, and Yishai, 2, were asleep. It wasn’t until half past midnight, when 12-year-old Tamar came home from a Friday night youth group, that the horrific slaughter was discovered. Much of the house was drenched in blood, and the 2-year-old was shaking his parents’ bodies, crying for them to wake up."
Of course, the moral responsibility for such horrors belongs first with the awful people who committed such crimes.
If we want to try and understand why this sort of thing happens, we can look at a number of factors. There is a nasty militant Islamist ideology that has driven brutal terrorism from Delhi to New York to Bali and here in London. And the long conflict in Israel-Palestine has created plenty of reasons why people on both sides might hate the other.
Jeff Jacoby rightly highlights something else as well though:
[caption id="attachment_26581" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Sweets being distributed to celebrate the attack in Gaza."][/caption]
"As news of the massacre in Itamar spread, candy and pastries were handed out in Gaza in celebration.
[...]
For years the Palestinian Authority has demonized Israelis and Jews as enemies to be destroyed, vermin to be loathed, and infidels to be terrorized. Children who grow up under Palestinian rule are inundated on all sides — in school, in the mosques, on radio and TV, even in summer camps and popular music — with messages that glorify bloodshed, promote hatred, and lionize “martyrdom.’’
None of this is news. The toxic incitement that pervades Palestinian culture has been massively documented. What children are taught in Palestinian classrooms, Hillary Clinton said in 2007, is “to see martyrdom and armed struggle and the murder of innocent people as ideals to strive for. . . . This propaganda is dangerous.
An estimated 20,000 mourners accompanied the Fogel family as they were laid to rest in Jerusalem Sunday. In his eulogy, Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon predicted bitterly that in time the Palestinian Authority would honor the Fogel family’s murderers and name public squares after them. His comment might have seemed gratuitous — except that at that very moment, in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh, Dalal Mughrabi was being celebrated at a public square named in her honor. It was Mughrabi who, 33 years earlier, led a PLO terror squad on a savage rampage on Israel’s Coastal Road. Thirty-eight innocent Jews died that day, 13 of them children.’’
What is really disgusting is that a lot of that incitement is carried out by organisations which depend on our money. The Palestinian Authority takes generous cheques from the British Government and others year in, year out. Last time we looked at the issue we found that funding was nearly £100 million in 2007-08. That's a huge amount of money. Given that the Palestinian population is only about 4 million that means every single Palestinian is getting about £25 from Britain alone. Lots of other Western countries are generous donors too.
It's bad enough when our money is wasted, but when it supports organisations whose dangerous rhetoric prolongs a violent conflict, and makes crimes like this more likely, that is utterly unacceptable.There is a very sad article in the Boston Globe. Jeff Jacoby writes about a terrible crime in the Palestinian Territories. Unfortunately, our money is supporting the hate education that plays its part in creating the environment where terrible acts like this take place:
"LAST WEEKEND in Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the Samarian hills, terrorists infiltrated the home of Udi and Ruth Fogel and perpetrated a massacre of the innocents.
The killers started with Yoav, the Fogels’ 11-year-old, and Elad, his 4-year-old brother. Yoav’s throat was slit, and Elad was stabbed twice in the heart. Then the attackers murdered Ruth, knifing her as she came out of the bathroom. In the next room they killed Ruth’s sleeping husband, Udi, and their infant daughter, Hadas. Apparently they didn’t notice the last bedroom, where the two other boys, Ro’i, 8, and Yishai, 2, were asleep. It wasn’t until half past midnight, when 12-year-old Tamar came home from a Friday night youth group, that the horrific slaughter was discovered. Much of the house was drenched in blood, and the 2-year-old was shaking his parents’ bodies, crying for them to wake up."
Of course, the moral responsibility for such horrors belongs first with the awful people who committed such crimes.
If we want to try and understand why this sort of thing happens, we can look at a number of factors. There is a nasty militant Islamist ideology that has driven brutal terrorism from Delhi to New York to Bali and here in London. And the long conflict in Israel-Palestine has created plenty of reasons why people on both sides might hate the other.
Jeff Jacoby rightly highlights something else as well though:
[caption id="attachment_26581" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Sweets being distributed to celebrate the attack in Gaza."]
"As news of the massacre in Itamar spread, candy and pastries were handed out in Gaza in celebration.
[...]
For years the Palestinian Authority has demonized Israelis and Jews as enemies to be destroyed, vermin to be loathed, and infidels to be terrorized. Children who grow up under Palestinian rule are inundated on all sides — in school, in the mosques, on radio and TV, even in summer camps and popular music — with messages that glorify bloodshed, promote hatred, and lionize “martyrdom.’’
None of this is news. The toxic incitement that pervades Palestinian culture has been massively documented. What children are taught in Palestinian classrooms, Hillary Clinton said in 2007, is “to see martyrdom and armed struggle and the murder of innocent people as ideals to strive for. . . . This propaganda is dangerous.
An estimated 20,000 mourners accompanied the Fogel family as they were laid to rest in Jerusalem Sunday. In his eulogy, Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon predicted bitterly that in time the Palestinian Authority would honor the Fogel family’s murderers and name public squares after them. His comment might have seemed gratuitous — except that at that very moment, in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh, Dalal Mughrabi was being celebrated at a public square named in her honor. It was Mughrabi who, 33 years earlier, led a PLO terror squad on a savage rampage on Israel’s Coastal Road. Thirty-eight innocent Jews died that day, 13 of them children.’’
What is really disgusting is that a lot of that incitement is carried out by organisations which depend on our money. The Palestinian Authority takes generous cheques from the British Government and others year in, year out. Last time we looked at the issue we found that funding was nearly £100 million in 2007-08. That's a huge amount of money. Given that the Palestinian population is only about 4 million that means every single Palestinian is getting about £25 from Britain alone. Lots of other Western countries are generous donors too.
It's bad enough when our money is wasted, but when it supports organisations whose dangerous rhetoric prolongs a violent conflict, and makes crimes like this more likely, that is utterly unacceptable.