Yasser Arafat Murdered Hallel Yaffa Ariel and Michael Mark. I pray for the future.

I have been deeply troubled and distressed since the end of last week. My heart was broken first by the brutal stabbing of Hallel Ariel as she slept in bed Thursday morning. Then, just before shabbat, Michael Mark, a father of 10, was murdered by Palestinian Terrorists as he drove to his mother’s home for Shabbat. Mark’s wife is in critical condition (please pray for her) and his children were both physically wounded in the attack and, likely, emotionally scarred for life by witnessing their father’s murder.

These terrorists do not exist in a vacuum. They are cultivated and paid for by the dead Yasser Arafat. Arafat was a sick genius. He put in place two mechanisms by which terror and murder of Jews would continue long after he was buried in his famous army fatigues.

The first mechanism was well covered by Bloomberg this weekend:

The origins of these payments goes back a long way. Before the Palestinian Authority was established in the 1990s through the Oslo peace process, the Palestine Liberation Organization paid the families of “martyrs” and prisoners detained by Israel. That practice became standardized during the Second Intifadah of 2000 to 2005. The Israelis even found documents in the late Yasser Arafat’s compound that showed payments to families of suicide bombers.

This continues to this day under Mahmoud Abbas’ directives and the blind eyes and loose checkbooks of the European Union. However, while the family and sickeningly proud mother of the 17 year old murderer of Hallel Ariel enjoys her lifelong stipend, the terrorist himself does not. Ergo, posthumous money is an insufficient explanation for the terrorist’s motives. No 17 year old wakes up one morning and says to himself “let me murder an Israeli or a Jew.” It requires years of indoctrination to desensitize someone sufficiently that they can brutally stab a 13 year old sleeping girl.

The truly depressing explanation is that Arafat set in motion 23 years ago the most diabolical education program since the Nazis. Arafat systematically built a curriculum that demonized Israelis and Jews. While he held his Nobel Peace Prize, Arafat ensured that generations of Palestinian school children would grow up assuming Israel would go away, believing that Jews and Israelis were dirt and ensuring there would be no peace. This is from a report to the US Congress on Palestinian textbooks:

“In the book, Our Beautiful Language, Grade 7, Part 1, 2001, p.81, there is a poem entitled The Martyr that, in part, reads: “Hearing [weapons’] clash is pleasant to my ear and the flow of blood gladdens my soul/ As we as a body thrown upon the ground skirmished over by the desert predators/ … By your life! This is the death of men and whoever asks for a noble death — here it is!”

In the book Readings and Texts, Grade 8, Part 2, 2003, p. 16, it says, “Your enemies killed your children, split open your women’s bellies, took your revered elderly people by the beard and led them to the death pits ….”

In Reading and Texts, Grade 8, Part 1 (2009), p.66, it states: “O brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and Jihad and sacrifice [fida] are imperative ….”

This 17 year old murderer was indoctrinated by nursery rhymes that murder and terror is noble. He was been conditioned that salaries flow commensurately with Jewish blood. And all of this occurs under the watchful eye and budget of the “Quartet”, The EU and the US Congress who fund Palestinian education and government and countenance these payments with no consequences. Of course, Abbas will not condemn this terrorist, he is schooling him in the ways of Yasser Arafat, an unrepentant arch terrorist with a Nobel Prize granted by the same blind Europeans.

I fear that we are up against 20+ years of indoctrination that is coming to roost today in teenagers. I fear those 20 years of education and I believe that my Palestinian friends fear for their lives if they speak up against this zeitgeist of evil. But speak up they must and we must help them.

I pray that my Palestinian friends will rise up against their government and the legacy of Arafat and look forward. I pray that they will build a forward looking society and not one ground in grievances. I pray that when they look at the proud mother of a 17 year old terrorist they will ostracize her from society and make sure she cannot spend a shekel of the payment. I pray that they will re-educate these brainwashed children. The alternative is further deterioration. Nothing will bring back Hallel Ariel and Michael Mark. Their loss will hurt forever. But I want to look forward in hope.

Today, the great Elie Wiesel passed away. The lesson I took away from Elie Wiesel and a generation of Holocaust survivors is that while we must never forget, it is more important to build for the future. Anger and grievance will not and did not rebuild the Jewish people and the modern State of Israel. Humanity, caring for “the other”, ingenuity, innovation and a deep belief in a better future will and did. The converse is also true: a grievance driven society will hate forever and achieve little. A society that looks forward will find peace and rebuild, much like Israel and the Jewish people rebuilt after the Holocaust.

While Yasser Arafat beat his peace prize into a sword and turned his prize money into terror bribes, Elie Wiesel beat his prize into a pen of compassion and his influence into a global crusade against injustice.

I pray that the Palestinian people and mothers will seek the future, find love instead of hate. I pray that they will adopt Elie Weisel as their model of human rights. All of the Palestinians I know personally are building a future. They are investing in technology and innovation. However, they are fighting an uphill battle against a growing zeitgeist of evil, a depraved leadership and dehumanization of the “other.” As their holiday of Eid Al Fitr approaches, I pray that they will rise against their internal forces of evil and venomous textbooks and join in building a better future for all of our children.