"A New Kind of Palestinian Terrorism"

It doesn’t take up as much media space as ISIS beheadings, but Palestinian terrorism should not be ignored. After all, the Palestinians have been world leaders in terrorism. Their world is the laboratory for terrorism.

Their death culture is dedicated to killing Jews and to destroying the state of Israel. They refuse to build a functioning economy because anything resembling success would take away from the righteousness of their cause. Obviously, it is not so obvious that they would know how to do so or would be capable of doing so. Either way, we should pay some attention to their latest “intifada.”

The Washington Post reports:

Young Palestinians with kitchen knives are waging a ceaseless campaign of near-suicidal violence that Israeli leaders are calling “a new kind of terrorism.” Four attacks occurred in the past 48 hours alone — two stabbings and two vehicular assaults.

There have been about 120 attacks and attempted assaults by Palestinians against Israelis since early October, an average of more than one a day. At least 20 Israelis have been killed; more than 80 Palestinians have been shot dead by security forces and armed civilians during the assaults.

There is a numbing repetition to the news: A knife-wielding Palestinian at a military checkpoint or bus stop is shot dead at the scene — or “neutralized,” as the Israeli news media say. Many of the assaults or their aftermaths have been captured on cellphone video.

A review of the violence, alongside interviews with Israeli and Palestinian officials, reveals attacks that do not fit past patterns. There is a sense on both sides that something unprecedented is happening, a shapeless rebellion of individuals driven by an unknowable combination of hatred and despair.

Apparently, this new form of terrorism is more difficult to stop because it is not organized and directed. It is random and spontaneous, the product of a culture that brings up its children to hate and to kill, not to work and to produce.

Of course, Palestinians blame it all on Israel. They are radically incapable of taking responsibility for their own behavior and for their own failure. The shining example of Israel causes them shame and their culture has only two ways of dealing with it: homicide and suicide.

Is the Palestinian cause being eclipsed by all the attention being given to ISIS? Not really. After all, the Palestinians know that they have a friend in the White House, a friend who sold out to the Iranian mullahs, and who has treated Israel’s prime minister with unprecedented contempt. Since Obama has only a year left in office, and since it is likely that the next American president will be far less sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, it makes sense for Palestinians to try to induce Obama to pressure Israel into rewarding them for being dysfunctional.

And, of course, Palestinians have made some progress during the Obama administration. The BDS movement has been growing on American college campuses. Recently, the National Women’s Studies Association voted by a large majority to support BDS. One imagines that they prefer the way Hamas treats women to the way Israel treats women. Or else, they are all a band of complete fools.

Students for Justice in Palestine members have taken to shouting down pro-Israeli speakers on American campuses. American college administrators are typically supine in the face of this assault on free expression. Thus, SJP has gained legitimacy on campus and in Obama's America.

And when European officials recently decided that any goods produced on Israel’s West Bank settlements needed to be labelled as such, American officials acquiesced.

The New York Times reported the story thusly:

In a stinging rebuke to Israel, the European Union insisted on Wednesday that some goods produced on land seized in the 1967 war must be labeled “made in settlements,” a mandate that added to Israel’s deep unease over a growing international boycott.

European officials tried to play down the decision, saying the guidelines merely clarified existing rules. But the move exacerbated already simmering tensions between Israel and Europe as Israeli politicians condemned it as an echo of the Holocaust-era branding of European Jews and their storefronts with yellow stars.

The European Union is Israel’s top trading partner, though products from the occupied West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem that will now require special labels amount to less than 1 percent of Israel’s $13 billion in annual exports to the bloc’s 28 countries. But while the immediate economic impact is expected to be minimal, there is fear that the logic behind the labeling could be extended to the broader economy by targeting businesses that have operations or affiliates in the contested areas, as many do.

Certainly, Palestinians see this EU action as recognition that their cause is just. The state department refusal to condemn the EU is an added success. Why would they not ramp up the terrorism and do everything in their power to deprive Israelis of the good life that they have built.

If the European Union is willing to respond favorably to terrorism and if it has in many places been willing to allow more and more Muslims into its cities and towns, why should Palestinians do anything other than what they are doing? They will not have to build their own country. They look forward to the day when they will be able to take over what someone else built. Right now they are in the process of invading Europe, under the aegis of Mama Merkel and Time Magazine.

One suspects that the EU believes that it buy off Muslim terrorism by siding with the Palestinians against the Jewish State. In that they are making a serious miscalculation.

David Goldman has noted that this form of terrorism seems to be unique in human history:

There have been many wars of extermination, but there is something uniquely horrifying about today’s terrorism. Never in the history of warfare have tens of thousands of individuals stood ready to commit suicide in order to harm enemy civilians. Never for that matter, has one combatant (Hamas in the 2014 Gaza rocket war) sought to maximize civilian casualties on its own side. The Japanese killed over 20 million Chinese during the Second World War, but committed suicide in combat in the attempt to sink enemy warships, not kill enemy civilians. The Nazis did not ask their soldiers to kill themselves in order to kill Jews.

This form of terrorism is a sign of extreme weakness. The real problem with ISIS and with Palestinian terrorists is that they are living in a dying civilization. Goldman has described it well:

That is how it feels to be trapped in a dying civilization. Rationality ceases to have meaning. Upon learning that you have an inoperable malignant brain tumor, you might cash in your insurance policy and go on a spree—but not if everyone who speaks your language and shares your memories already is extinct. In that case there is nothing to do with your money. You can sit at the bar by yourself and drink Chateau Petrus. Or you can go out and stab the next Israeli you run into.

If you can't construct, you can only deconstruct what others have built.