Palestinians vote for genocide -
What happened to the generation of peace?
Hamas won overwhelmingly in elections for the student
council at a leading Palestinian Arab university last week. In other words, the
young leadership of the Palestinian Arab community just voted for genocide.
When I use the term genocide, I am not indulging in
hyperbole. I am referring to the actual, legal definition of genocide, which is
found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide: “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
“Acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”1948 Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of Genocide
That’s exactly what Hamas has been doing for decades, with
thousands of rockets, flaming balloons, stabbings, bombings, sniper fire,
suicide attacks and kidnap-murders.
And that’s exactly what Hamas has always advocated in its
official charter, which Simon Wiesenthal Center has described as “a Fatwa
(Muslim religious decree) for genocide.”
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| (photo credit: FLASH90) |
So, when the students at Birzeit University elected Hamas
representatives to 28 of the 51 student council seats, they were making a clear
and unequivocal statement: they want to “destroy, in whole or in part,” the
seven million Jews in Israel.
This was supposed to be the generation of peace. The 1993
Oslo agreement was based on a Palestinian leadership commitment to raise their
young people to embrace non-violence and peaceful coexistence with the Jewish
state. They promised to change their old hate-filled textbooks so that
Palestinian classrooms would become incubators of peace instead of training
facilities for war.
The fact that young Palestinian Arabs voted for a genocidal
group shows that the Palestinian educational system has never changed. No new
curriculum has been instituted. No textbooks have been changed. Palestinian
Arab boys and girls have been raised since 1993 in the same way they were
raised before 1993: to hate and kill Jews.
LET ME say that again: to hate and kill Jews - not to hate
and kill Israelis, and not to hate and kill settlers.
The distinction is crucially important because it goes to
the motives of Hamas and its voters. If their motive was simply to secure some
territory and live in peace next to Israel, then many people would see some
justification in Hamas violence against settlers.
If, however, Hamas’s motive is simply to kill Jews, then
their actions are genocidal. Nothing can justify it. And no surrender of territory
will ever put an end to it.
Obviously, not everyone who has been harmed in Hamas attacks
has been Jewish. But, we know who they are trying to kill. And we know it for
the simple reason that Hamas terrorists never try to murder Israeli Arabs.
Israeli Arabs are Israeli citizens. So, if Hamas is against
Israelis and not Jews, why don’t they ever attack Israeli Arabs?
If Hamas’s grievance is against the policies of Israel and
not against Jews, then they should be attacking Israeli Arabs, just as they attack
Israeli Jews, but, they don’t.
If they were merely against “Israelis,” Hamas newspapers,
and radio and television programs would be inciting Palestinians to hate
Israeli Arabs with the same vehemence that they hate Israeli Jews. They would
be accusing Israeli Arabs of being evil and Nazi-like. Their political cartoons
against the occupation would be showing Israeli Arabs as monstrous occupiers.
Instead, their cartoons show occupiers with huge, hooked noses, side curls,
beards and yarmulkes.
Hamas doesn’t plant bombs in supermarkets in Israeli Arab
neighborhoods. They don’t machine-gun bus passengers in Israeli Arab towns.
They don’t kidnap Israeli Arab teenagers from hitchhiking posts and murder
them. The reason is simple, and there is no other plausible explanation, their
goal is to murder Jews and that makes it genocide.
It’s time to acknowledge the true nature of what Hamas and
other Palestinian terrorists have been doing to Jews for more than a century.
It’s not about politics. It’s not about policies. It’s not about territories or
settlers. It’s genocide.
That’s what the young leaders of the Palestinian Arabs voted
for last week. That’s the sad and ugly reality that Israel and its supporters
will have to confront in the years ahead.
The writer is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow,
who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.
He is the author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian
Terrorism.
This post originally appeared on JPost.Com
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