The murdered Fogel family: Ruth, Udi, Yoav (11), Elad (4), Hadas (4 mo.).
The absolute vileness of the “Palestinian movement” is hard for those of us who grew up in civilized societies like the US and Israel to comprehend. As a result, many of us may be prepared to listen when they say that it is about human rights or justice.
But every once in awhile we get a window into what’s really behind it.
Even Israeli police and security personnel, who have seen some terrible things, were shocked last year by the sadistic murder of five members of the Fogel family including a 4-month-old baby whose throat was cut, committed by two Palestinian Arab teenagers, Amjad and Hakim Awad, cousins from the village of Awarta.
Captured after an intensive manhunt, the Awads were both convicted and given multiple life sentences. There was even consideration of applying the death penalty, something not done in Israel since Eichmann was hanged in 1962. Unfortunately, the court decided against it.
One might expect that the official Palestinian reaction — after all, they are preparing to petition the UN for statehood again — would have been something like “we condemn violent extremism, although we understand their frustration, etc.”
But they are past pretending even that much.The official reaction is that the butchers are heroes!
Watch the following video, from official Palestinian TV, courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch:
PA TV host: “We have a call from the family of prisoner Hakim Awad.”
Mother of Hakim Awad: “I thank you for connecting me with my son, because I and all of the family are prevented for security reasons [from visiting him].
Host: “Go ahead, sister, we can convey your voice.”
Mother of Hakim Awad: “My greetings to dear Hakim, the apple of my eye, from the village of Awarta, 17 years old, who carried out the operation in Itamar [i.e., killing of 5 Fogel family members], sentenced to 5 life sentences and another 5 years, in prison.”
Aunt of Hakim Awad: “I’m the sister of prisoner Hassan Awad and of Salah Awad; [I am] Um Habib, from the village of Awarta. My warm greetings to all the great heroic prisoners, to my brother Hassan Awad, head of the village council; to my brother Salah Awad, the heroic prisoner journalist; to the heroic, resolute prisoner, the lion, Yazid Awad, my nephew; and to my nephew Hakim Awad, the hero, the legend.”
Host:“We [PA TV], for our part, also convey our greetings to them.”
Aunt of Hakim Awad: “I dedicate this song to Hassan Awad, Yazid Awad, Hakim Awad, and Salah Awad, in prison:
‘My brother, in solitary confinement, your voice calls to me
You dare not throw down the rifle
That is what the homeland asked of me
In your eyes, we are all self-sacrificing fighters.
I convey greetings to the sound of the bullets of Ahmad Sa’adat and Hakim Awad.'”Host: “Thank you for being with us, the family of prisoners Hassan and Salah Awad of Awarta.”
— (PA TV, Jan. 19 and 21, 2012)
This is nothing new. According to the Palestinian ethos, murdering Jewish civilians, including (especially) children, is not only legitimate, but praiseworthy.
Now I know that if any Palestinian sympathizers are reading this, right now they will be saying “well, didn’t the IDF murder children in Gaza?”
Actually, no. Pro-Arab propaganda often takes the form of inverting reality, accusing Israel of behaving like Nazis, or (more to the point) Arab terrorists. The IDF’s operation in Gaza in 2008-9, a response to the thousands of rockets that had been bombarding Israeli towns since 2002, resulted in a higher ratio of combatant to noncombatant casualties (about 3 to 1) than any instance of urban warfare in recent times (where the ratio is more like 9 to 1). This is despite the fact that Hamas deliberately operated from civilian areas in order to use the population as a shield.
On the other hand, we have Palestinian Arab ‘military’ actions like these:
The Ma’alot massacre, in which 25 Israelis were killed including 22 children, the Bus of Blood (35 dead, 13 children), the attack on the nursery at Kibbutz Misgav Am (3 dead, 2 children), the Dolphinarium bombing (21 teens dead), the Sbarro Pizza bombing (15 dead, 5 children), the shooting at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva (8 dead, 7 teens), the vicious butchering of the Fogel family (5 dead, 3 children), the antitank rocket attack on a yellow school bus (1 child) — these are just a few of a long, long list.
One of the scandals of the the conflict is that the media have helped the Arabs get away with portraying it as a dignified struggle for self-determination, when it is better described as one to eliminate the Jewish presence from the region, carried out primarily by terrorism against civilians — an attempt to make living in Israel so painful that Jews will simply give up — and only secondarily by conventional war and diplomacy.
Don’t expect to see the details of the Palestinian admiration for murderers in the NY Times, for example.
Technorati Tags: terrorism, Palestinians, Israel
Israel has no mandatory death penalty. That is what Awads should have received.
And those who blather about the “inhumanity” of the death penalty have not the slightest idea about its place in Jewish ethics and justice.
Of course given the moral rot in Israel today, Eichmann probably wouldn’t be executed either.
We can see how innocent human life rapidly gets devalued. If Jews don’t respect the lives of their own people by insisting on the ultimate punishment for those who cold-bloodedly murdered them, they shouldn’t be surprised when their enemies agree with them.
The Fogels deserved justice and didn’t get it. That is the real tragedy.
I only wish that every Leftist Jewish sympathizer with the Palestinian cause could read and absorb the meaning of this article.
The death penalty IS inhumane, immoral, and illogical. “You are a bad boy for killing them, so we are going to kill you.”
That said, there may be some practicality in executing individuals such as the Awads. How else do we stop them?