The recent outrageous massacre of innocents in Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the Samarian Hills, when terrorists infiltrated the home of Udi and Ruth Fogel raises serious questions. This horrific act illustrates that “settlements” are not the obstacle to peace as some would have us believe.
It has been reported that the savage killers started with Yoav, the Fogels’ 11-year-old, then Elad, his 4-year-old brother. Yoav’s throat was slit as he was reading in bed, and Elad was stabbed twice in the heart. Then the attacker murdered Ruth, knifing her as she came out of the bathroom. In the next room they killed Ruth’s sleeping husband, Udi, and their infant daughter, Hadas. Apparently they did not notice the last bedroom, where two other boys, Ro’i, 8, and Yishai, 2, were asleep. When 12-year-old Tamar came home shortly after midnight from a Friday night youth group, this horrific slaughter was discovered.
What explains such unspeakable evil? What sort of human being deliberately butchers a sleeping baby, or plunges a knife into a toddler’s heart?
The atrocity in Itamar recalls the 2002 terror attack at Kibbutz Metzer that left five victims dead, including a mother and her two little boys. It brings to mind the murder of Tali Hatuel and her four daughters, who were shot at point blank range as they drove from Gaza to Ashkelon in 2004. It is reminiscent of the bloodbath in a Jerusalem yeshiva three years ago, in which eight young students were gunned down. The civilized mind struggles to make sense of such savagery.
For years the Palestinian Authority has demonized Israelis and Jews as enemies to be destroyed, vermin to be loathed, and infidels to be terrorized with Allah’s blessing.
Children who grow up under Palestinian rule are inundated on all sides — in schools, mosques, on radio and TV, in summer camps and popular music — with messages that glorify bloodshed, promote hatred and lionize “martyrdom.” This toxic incitement that pervades Palestinian culture of hatred and violence is well documented.
Their propaganda is not only dangerous, but deadly as well.
It is ironic to note that at the moment of the Fogel family murder, the West Bank town of Al-Birch celebrated a public square named in honor of Dalai Mughrabi. It was Mughrabi who, 33 years ago, led a PLO terror squad on a savage rampage on Israel’s coastal road. Thirty-eight innocent Jews, including 13 children, were murdered on that day.
With current policies toward Israel and the Israeli people as indicated above, how can the Palestinians hope to achieve an independent viable state living side by side with Israel in peace?