Home Opinion Editorials Still another Palestinian tactic to destroy Israel. Still another failure.
Still another Palestinian tactic to destroy Israel. Still another failure.
Parents paid to lie about the tragic death of their own children — in the currency of the enemy.
Let us enumerate the Arab and Palestinian tactics to erase Israel. All failed. One would think that the lesson, after 70 years of these failures, would be to sober up and make a deal with Israel. But no. The creative juices, malignant and destructive, not least to the Arab and Palestinians themselves, never cease. Alas, a new tactic hit the news this week.
But first, let us enumerate. Pardon us for the long list before getting to the new item on the list, but it was not we who devised the list. Israel's endlessly obdurate enemies did.
Tactic number one: Wage war. Attack Israel. Fight to destroy it. This was tried in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 (with lesser but still lethal variations in between). These wars brought great death, physical suffering and economic loss to Israelis and Arabs alike. But Israel survived.
Tactic number two: Terrorism. The killing of Israelli innocents. On buses. In restaurants. On streets. On beaches. In schools. Children and adults serving equally as legitimate targets, even though unarmed. This tactic, too, failed, though it remains popular with Hamas and other practitioners of evil. But Israel survived.
Tactic number three: Delegitimation. Take down Israel's reputation in world forums. The United Nations and its various subentities. The European Union. The Presbyterian Church and other supposedly religious bodies dedicated to human welfare. For some, this tactic has removed the sheen from the heroic image of the Jew engaged in national self-determination. But Israel survived.
Tactic number four: Pay for slay. Pay families whose members launch terrorist attacks against Israel. Monetize the murder of Jews. Corrupt the concept of martyrdom. Incentivize the culture of death. Take the madness of murder well beyond the murderer. Transmogrify the fundamental social unit of compassion, the family, into a collective reservoir of hatred.
Now we reach tactic number five, something new on the disfigured horizon of Palestinian terrorism. It is a variation of tactic number four. It is new this week: Exploit children.Pay families to testify falsely that their children were killed by Israelis, when they were not. Weaponize the wastage from disease.
The case in point is death of an eighth-month-old Palestinian baby who tragically died of a blood disease, the same disease that took his baby brother a year earlier. But apparently since the idea of lying for the sake of damaging Israel's reputation is well incorporated into the Palestinian ethic (if you can call it that), the baby's family told media far and wide that Layla al-Ghandour died from exposure to tear gas at a Palestinian-instigated demonstration on the Gaza border.
Hamas paid the family to say this. This is confirmed by no less than Mahmoud Omar, 20, a cousin of the eight-month-old baby. Omar filed his testimony with an Israeli court in Beersheba District Court on June 21.
Needless to say, the widespread reportage of the Israeli killing of this eight-month-old baby spread like wildfire through the Arab press and indeed around the world. This slander reached the pages of The New York Times. Are you thinking there will be widespread or prominent retractions? Are you thinking that the poisonous hatred of Israel for "killing Palestinian babies" will cease, whether amongst the "Arab street" or the Presbyterian Church in the US? Think again.
Omar testified, reports JTA (see page 8 this week), that Hamas paid his Aunt Mariam and her husband Anwar 8,000 shekels, or about $2,200, to say that their daughter had died from the tear gas exposure.
The irony in the Palestinian search for ever new ways to take down Israel, or its reputation, could not be better highlighted than in the currency of payment: Israeli shekels.
Israel made a state. Israel made an economy. Israel made a currency. The Palestinians have not. Theymust resort to Israel's currency in order to sustain their nefarious, new tactic. One would think that the lesson is obvious: Stop trying to destroy Israel. Start trying to emulate it. Make your own state. Make your own currency.