Palestinian leaders excel at creating martyrs for their cause – people willing to die attempting to murder Jews and bring about the destruction of Israel. It's not surprising since the average Palestinian is fed a steady diet of Jew-hatred and glorification of martyrdom from cradle to grave.
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While Israel has repeatedly doubled down on efforts to make peace with the Palestinians and give them the statehood they claim to crave, Palestinian leaders have doubled down on malignant, murderous propaganda. They encourage their citizens to commit deadly, mostly suicidal acts to slaughter innocent Jews.
In 2022, Palestinians launched more than 5,000 terror attacks – including shootings, stabbings, and car rammings – all directed at innocent Israelis. It's hard to imagine Israel, or any nation, warming to peace with a people committed to such a belligerent strategy.
Tragically, the average Palestinian is bombarded by messages telling them that Jews are evil and that Israel has no right to exist. These messages appear everywhere – newspapers, TV, schools, and places of worship. Even children's summer camps teach youth skills and beliefs designed to create the next generation of terrorists.
Along with these messages comes the call for every Palestinian to be willing to give their life in the name of wiping Israel and the Jewish people from the Holy Land.
There is a popular Palestinian slogan: "We love death like our enemies love life." But peace will only be possible once Palestinians choose life over death – choose to live in peace with the Jewish people rather than die trying to kill them.
While the most successful leaders inspire their people with the dream of building a nation with freedom and prosperity, Palestinian leaders offer no such nation-building dream. Instead, they offer their citizens a vision of hate and destruction against the evil Other – the Jews and Israel.
Palestinian leaders wrongly accuse Jews of defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which stands atop the Temple Mount, where the ancient Jewish temple that Palestinians don't acknowledge once stood. They propagate antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as the lie that Jews were responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US Palestinian leaders also engage in Holocaust denial. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, for instance, is well-known for denying the Holocaust. He has accused Israel of being responsible for "50 holocausts" against the Palestinians.
In mosques, religious leaders, who should be teaching the message of the Prophet Mohammed that humankind is one community, instead, promote genocide against the Jews. This was the message that an imam leading prayer at a mosque broadcast on PA TV during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan tried to convey last year, when he said, "Allah, delight us with the extermination of the evil Jews."
The leaders of the Palestinian people can't even bring it upon themselves to put Israel on a map. The maps used by the PA's Ministry of Education completely erase the Jewish state. This is done to convey one message: "Palestine – the entire land is ours, from the (Mediterranean) Sea to the (Jordan) River." Teaching hatred against Jews and refusing to accept the existence of Israel shows that the Palestinian leadership is not interested in pursuing peace.
Indeed, instead of promoting peace and coexistence with Israel, Palestinian leaders indoctrinate their people to believe that it is a duty and an honor to kill Jews as part of the effort to destroy Israel, even if they have to die doing so. Islamic religious leaders tell their followers that if they die trying to murder Jews, they will become "grooms" who will wed the Virgins of Paradise. The PA offers a lucrative financial incentive in the form of its pay-for-slay policy, which gives terrorists and their families lifetime salaries for killing Jews.
The average Palestinian learns from a very young age that martyrdom is the greatest achievement they can aspire to. Thus, schools are often named after Palestinian terrorists, whom children are taught to venerate and emulate. Palestinian textbooks teach children to "cut the throats of enemy soldiers" and "put on explosive belts," because martyrdom is required to fight the enemy.
Even children's summer camps are places where Palestinian leaders encourage terrorism and martyrdom. Last year, the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip organized camps for 100,000 children to "prepare kids for liberating Palestine." These children were given military training, including instruction on the use of firearms. Similar training was offered to Palestinian children as young as 7 years old at a camp in the Hebron Hills controlled by Fatah, the PLO faction to which President Abbas belongs. So begins the raising of the next generation of terrorists.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Palestinian people is that their morality of death and destruction blinds them to the opportunity for peace and launching their nation – which they purport to want. Indeed, the Palestinians have been offered land for their state – by the United Nations and by Israel, backed by the United States – many times. Tragically, they have rejected every opportunity for independence in favor of a seemingly unending mission to murder Jews.
Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinians as long as Palestinian leaders continue to foster a culture in which it is better to die slaughtering Jews than to live and fulfill worldly ambitions. In the face of Palestinian rejection of peace offers, followed by thousands of terrorist attacks and senseless murders every single year, it's no wonder Israel has little patience for a peace process.
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