The silent massacre

The massacre of five members of the Fogel family a week ago sent shock waves through Jewish communities around the world.

Three small children aged 11; four and just three months old were savagely murdered in their beds. The parents, Udi and Ruth were also murdered.

Why was the Fogel family so brutally murdered? Because the Fogel family was Jewish and living in Samaria; an area which has been inhabited by Jews for 3,000 years. According to many of the powerful news editors, politicians and academics of the world, a Jew living in Samaria is a committing a crime. This has been designated ‘Palestinian Land’ which, in the upside-down world of Middle East politics, means that a Jew who refuses to be ethnically cleansed from the area is labeled a criminal.

Details of the grisly massacre have been revealed. The murderers stabbed the mother after she saw her husband and baby with their throats slit. The other two children clenched their little fists as they were brutally stabbed to death in their beds. They clenched their fists, what else could they do against these men armed with knives?

The murderers missed one of the bedrooms so the two-year-old and the six-year-old were spared death; instead, they found their parents and siblings, lying bloodied and dead. The 12-year-old daughter who had been out with friends came home to find her two-year-old brother screaming over his parents bodies.

Immediately after news of this horrific attack, there was a street party in Gaza, complete with sweets and celebratory dancing. Celebrating the murder of Jewish children is not a new phenomenon in Arab society. The child murderer Samir Kuntar was given a hero’s welcome in Lebanon after his release from an Israeli jail. Kuntar had kidnapped a Jewish girl and her father from their home and shot the father in front of the four-year-old girl before smashing her head against a rock. This man received a ticker tape parade when he returned to Lebanon. Israel had released Kuntar and other terrorists in exchange for the dead bodies of two kidnapped Israeli soldiers.

For decades the Palestinian leadership has fed a constant diet of hate to the Arab population. They lie about Israel and its actions, celebrate the Holocaust and indoctrinate their children to believe that the Jews are sub-human. They create blood libels against the Jewish people and reward terrorists who kill Jews by giving money to their families and naming schools, parks and organisations after them. Indeed, the murderer of the Fogel family can expect a school or park to be named after him too. That is Palestinian Authority policy.

Hillary Clinton, upon becoming the US Secretary of State made it a priority to demand that the Palestinian Authority cease vilifying Jews. She insisted that they remove all references to Jews as Apes and Pigs from their school books and television programmes. Her demands went unheeded.

A report from Palestinian Media Watch states, "The PA's policy of naming schools, summer camps, sporting events, streets and ceremonies after terrorists fundamentally undermines the chance for peace". Well, isn’t that the understatement of the decade? Undermines the chances for peace? Incites terror is the correct analysis. As Binyamin Netanyahu correctly stated in an under-reported media release, "A society that allows wild incitement like this, leads to the murder of children".

The wild, irrational and violent hatred of Jews is terrifying. Also terrifying is the silence emanating from the western media on this and other manifestations of Arab anti-Semitism. There is only one narrative to which many western liberals will adhere: Israeli aggressors versus Arabs as peaceful victims. The mantras of ‘Israeli occupation’ and ‘Israeli aggression’ are prime examples of a lie which, when repeated often enough, becomes the truth. Perhaps this is why the wild celebrations of murder went unreported. How could a media which perpetuates the lie that the people of Gaza are starving then report the handing out of sweets? How could a media which perpetuates the lie that the Palestinians are peaceful victims then report the jubilation with which they greeted the news of this tragedy?

The insistence of a one-sided narrative has created a situation where those who incite violence and hatred are encouraged to continue their incitement. Far from being condemned for encouraging and celebrating child murder, the Palestinian leadership pursue their current policies with the help of news outlets like the Guardian and the BBC who, in this case, found a way to blame the ‘settlers’ (read Jewish families) for their fate. Other outlets, like the ABC refused to report these grisly murders at all. The silence is deafening.

Media and politicians from Western countries who continue to refer to the ‘settlements’ in Judea and Samaria as the ‘major obstacle’ to peace are ignoring the truth about the real reasons for the Israeli-Arab conflict. This does not help either side in the conflict.

Western analysts who ignore the hatred emanating from the Arab leadership in the Middle East are aiding terror. Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly stated that the new Palestinian State will not have one Israeli (Jew) in it and that he refuses to accept any international forces which include even one Jew. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the area for 3,000 years. What Mahmoud Abbas proposes is ethnic cleansing. His compatriots in Gaza promote genocide. The Hamas charter clearly states the following:

The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him. (Article 7)

The refusal to acknowledge the truth about the extreme hatred of Jews permeating Arab society gives a green light to terror and child murder.

As Edmund Burke famously proclaimed, ‘Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it”.