How many myths can one Palestinian Arab terrorist attack shatter? Five, if we’re talking about this week’s massacre of five Israelis in Bnei Brak. And that’s just in the first 24 hours since the killing.“FATAH IS MODERATE”: Let’s start with the organizational affiliation of the murderer, 27-year-old Dia Hamarsha. He was a member of Fatah. That’s the largest faction of the Palestinian Authority, and the largest member-organization of the Palestinian Authority’s parent body, the PLO. The chairman of Fatah is the head of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas.The entire premise of the Oslo Accords was that the PLO had forsaken terrorism. Again and again since 1993, we have been told that Fatah is now “moderate.” The Clinton administration removed Fatah from the America’s list of terrorist groups. Yet Fatah members have been repeatedly caught carrying out terrorist attacks.Fatah’s official website and Facebook page constantly praise individual terrorists and celebrate the anniversaries of terrorist attacks. The Facebook page already features this tribute to Hamarsha: “Mercy, pardon, and peace to your soul. We bow before you in honor and admiration. We promise you, heroic Martyr, that we are continuing until victory or Martyrdom …” (Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)“THE OCCUPATION IS THE PROBLEM”: Hamarsha was a lifelong resident of the Palestinian Arab village of Ya’bad. He was born in 1995, the year the Israeli occupation of Ya’bad ended. That was when the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, withdrew all Israeli troops from Ya’bad and the other cities and towns where 98 percent of the Palestinian Arabs live.There are no Israeli soldiers, “settlers,” or administrative officials in Ya’bad. It has been governed by the Palestinian Authority for nearly three decades. Thus Hamarsha’s turn to terrorism could not have been caused by the “Israeli occupation,” because he never lived under Israeli rule.“TERRORISTS CAN BE REFORMED”: Hamarsha was convicted in 2015 of membership in a terrorist organization (Fatah) and weapons trafficking. Sociologists and ivory tower “experts” tell us that criminals can be reformed with the proper amount of counseling and education. That may be true for some ordinary criminals, but it’s almost never true for terrorists. “POVERTY CAUSES TERRORISM”: Israel’s critics claim that poverty is the root cause of Palestinian Arab terrorism. That’s the theory they use to justify American aid to the Palestinian Authority — more than $10 billion since 1993, with another $350 million now in the pipeline.After a visit to the region last year, Secretary of State Blinken declared that terrorism can be defeated by giving the Palestinian Arabs more American money. Terrorism “thrives, unfortunately, on despair, misery, desperation, on a lack of opportunity,” he said. Well now, Dia Hamarsha was not unemployed or starving. According to multiple press reports, he was gainfully employed as a construction worker in Bnei Brak, and he also owned and operated a cellphone store in Ya’bad. Yet that did not stop him from picking up a gun and slaughtering every Israeli he could find.“MOST PALESTINIAN ARABS WANT PEACE”: The case for creating a Palestinian state rests on the claim that most Palestinian Arabs want to live in peace with Israel. That argument is crucial, because almost no Israelis would ever agree to setting up a Palestinian state next door if they believe that most of its residents still want to destroy Israel.Yet we get an illuminating snapshot of Palestinian Arab public opinion every time there is a terrorist attack, by looking at the response by those in the terrorist’s home town and in nearby Palestinian villages. Are the residents there ashamed of the murderer? Do they stage rallies condemning terrorism and urging peace?Here’s how a major Palestinian Arab newspaper, Al Quds, described the reaction in Ya’bad this week: “The town witnessed massive rallies to express pride in the perpetrator of the Bnei Brak operation…. The celebrations included the distribution of sweets in celebration of the operation.”The Oslo accords require the Palestinian Authority to abstain from anti-Israel propaganda and educate Palestinian Arab children to embrace peace. Instead, for the past 27 years, the PA has financially rewarded terrorists and relentlessly glorified terrorism in government publications, school textbooks, and PA-controlled newspapers, television, and radio.The celebrations of the Bnei Brak massacre demonstrate that the PA has never sought to promote peace. Nor any effort to stop the celebrations of murder. Even though the PA has one of the largest per-capita police forces in the world, it failed to shut down those rallies or to arrest any of the cheer-leaders for murder.Five foundational myths about the Palestinian Arab war against Israel. All five shattered to pieces by the latest terrorist attack. What more do we need to know?
