Monday, October 19, 2015

She can hear a Palestinian Marseillaise

The deputy foreign minister of Israel, who goes by the name Tzipi Hotovely, is trying to tell us that the Palestinians are unique in the sense that they have an ongoing love affair with what she calls the culture of death. But instead of doing that, she ended up demonstrating that the Palestinians are similar to the rest of the human race in the sense that they have an ongoing love affair with freedom.

Hotovely made her views known in an article she wrote under the title: “Abbas: We Welcome Every Drop of Blood Spilled in Jerusalem,” and the subtitle: “Palestinian leaders have created a culture of death that is motivating the latest violent terrorism.” It was published in the Wall Street Journal on October 19, 2015.

She begins by accusing the Palestinian leaders of explicitly calling for the spilling of blood, and that the current cycle of clashes in the West Bank of occupied Palestine is a well-orchestrated campaign by those leaders. She ignores the talk that is emanating from her own government to the effect that the clashes are caused by what they call self-motivated lone wolves with no one to organize them.

The government source further explains that such loners are inspired by material they gather from social media. To counter this revelation, Hotovely seeks to buttress her argument – which she must know is false and absurd – by saying that Palestinian children are taught to kill Jews, and taught to regard their own death as the pinnacle of their aspirations. Well, there is only one thing to say about that:

It appears that the lady was reading the words of the French national anthem known as La Marseillaise before writing her piece or maybe while writing it. She must have been impressed by this passage: “Arise, children of the motherland, the day of glory has arrived. Bloody banner is raised; they are coming to cut the throats of our sons and our women. Form your battalions; let an impure blood water our furrows. To arms, citizens...” And so she attributed to the Palestinians the revolutionary fervor expressed in those words.

Still, conscious of the fact that the Palestinians she is talking about are of the third generation, born and raised under the influence of the Jewish culture imposed on the Palestinians for half a century; Hotovely tries to place the blame for what the children have become, not on the roots of the Jewish culture, but the roots of the Palestinian culture. And so, she says this: “Such violence has deep roots. It goes back to the rampages at the behest of Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Muslim activist and at one point grand mufti of Jerusalem, in the 1920s, '30s and '40s.”

This forces the question: Why not Che Guevara? Better yet why not Maxmillien Marie de Robespierre? After all, these were great revolutionaries who actually achieved independence for their people … unlike al-Husseini who lost the Palestinian motherland to the Jewish hordes that came from the sea. But like they say: Ask me no question and I shall tell you no lie.

Convinced by now that she made a brilliant presentation, the deputy foreign minister of Israel takes on the international media for failing to see things her way. This is how she does that: “The apathy shown by the international community and the manner in which violence is treated by the media is doing long-term, irrevocable harm to generations of Palestinians.”

Note that she says she wants to media to change and get better – not to benefit the occupation which is her only motivation – but to benefit future Palestinian generations about whom she could not care less. Like they say, hypocrisy comes without shame but always reveals something new about its practitioner. This time it is revealing that the Israelis have no intention to end the occupation and get out of Palestine.

Immersed in a fantasy-land that delivers all that she wants for now, an important concept escapes her. It is that Israel's soldiers who may be criminals in the eyes of Palestinians are heroes in the eyes of the Israelis. When they die while on duty, they are honored by their government. Likewise, when Palestinians who may be called terrorists by the Israelis are honored like heroes by their people.

Thus, she complains that the Palestinian families of dead heroes receive a stipend, and that monuments are named after them. And so, she wants the world community to do something about it. If not compensation, these people always want the others to do something for them. They are hopeless.