Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Where are the Palestinian Mothers?

Hamas activists Amer Abu Aysha, 33, and Marwan Qawasmeh, 29 have been implicated in the murder of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16. Upon learning of her son’s potential role in this crime Abu Aysha's mother told Israel's Channel 10 news. "If he did the kidnaping, I'll be proud of him."

The role of incitement in Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians is seldom addressed, but in the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephen asks the hard questions:

Where are the Palestinian Mothers?

He writes:

Here's my question: What kind of society produces such mothers?
 
Well-intentioned Western liberals may prefer not to ask, because at least some of the conceivable answers may upset the comforting cliché that all human beings can relate on some level, whatever the cultural differences. Or they may accuse me of picking a few stray anecdotes and treating them as dispositive, as if I'm the only Western journalist to encounter the unsettling reality of a society sunk into a culture of hate. Or they can claim that I am ignoring the suffering of Palestinian women whose innocent children have died at Israeli hands.

But I'm not ignoring that suffering. To kill innocent people deliberately is odious, to kill them accidentally or "collaterally" is, at a minimum, tragic. I just have yet to meet the Israeli mother who wants to raise her boys to become kidnappers and murderers—and who isn't afraid of saying as much to visiting journalists.

Read it all here

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