Stab!

In a comment contained in The Wall Street Journal, the commenter, defending the palestinians as they continue their blood lust of recent weeks, suggests that it's all Israel's fault. He writes that Israel is guilty of a "theft of hope" from the palestinians. I responded to him in the following way:

The palestinians have had every opportunity to build a peaceful society in which "hope" would blossom. Instead they are consumed with hatred, predisposed toward violence at the slightest provocation, taught anti-Semitism beginning in Kindergarten, raped economically by their corrupt leaders, eager to subjugate (or murder) woman, gay people, and anyone who genuinely proposes peace with Israel, and used as pawns by other Muslim countries in the region. They have become professional victims, promoting an anti-factual historical narrative that is, unfortunately, supported by poetic dupes in the West who wring their hands at the self-imposed "plight" of the palestinians. Until the palestinians address the cultural decay that pervades their society, they have stolen their own hope.

Bret Stevens (read the whole thing) provides a bit more detail about the palestinians and the "plight" along with a few comments on anti-Israel media bias that has become as predicable as it is contemptible":

If you’ve been following the news from Israel, you might have the impression that “violence” is killing a lot of people. As in this headline: “Palestinian Killed As Violence Continues.” Or this first paragraph: “Violence and bloodshed radiating outward from flash points in Jerusalem and the West Bank appear to be shifting gears and expanding, with Gaza increasingly drawn in.”

Read further, and you might also get a sense of who, according to Western media, is perpetrating “violence.” As in: “Two Palestinian Teenagers Shot by Israeli Police,” according to one headline. Or: “Israeli Retaliatory Strike in Gaza Kills Woman and Child, Palestinians Say,” according to another.

Such was the media’s way of describing two weeks of Palestinian assaults that began when Hamas killed a Jewish couple as they were driving with their four children in the northern West Bank. Two days later, a Palestinian teenager stabbed two Israelis to death in Jerusalem’s Old City, and also slashed a woman and a 2-year-old boy. Hours later, another knife-wielding Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli police after he slashed a 15-year-old Israeli boy in the chest and back.

Other Palestinian attacks include the stabbing of two elderly Israeli men and an assault with a vegetable peeler on a 14-year-old. On Sunday, an Arab-Israeli man ran over a 19-year-old female soldier at a bus stop, then got out of his car, stabbed her, and attacked two men and a 14-year-old girl. Several attacks have been carried out by women, including a failed suicide bombing.

Regarding the causes of this Palestinian blood fetish, Western news organizations have resorted to familiar tropes. Palestinians have despaired at the results of the peace process—never mind that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas just declared the Oslo Accords null and void. Israeli politicians want to allow Jews to pray atop the Temple Mount—never mind that Benjamin Netanyahu denies it and has barred Israeli politicians from visiting the site. There’s always the hoary “cycle of violence” formula that holds nobody and everybody accountable at one and the same time.

Left out of most of these stories is some sense of what Palestinian leaders have to say. As in these nuggets from a speech Mr. Abbas gave last month: “Al Aqsa Mosque is ours. They [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.” And: “We bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah.”

Then there is the goading of the Muslim clergy. “Brothers, this is why we recall today what Allah did to the Jews,” one Gaza imam said Friday in a recorded address, translated by the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri. “Today, we realize why the Jews build walls. They do not do this to stop missiles but to prevent the slitting of their throats.”

Then, brandishing a six-inch knife, he added: “My brother in the West Bank: Stab!”

Hmmm. I wonder why the NYT, LAT, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, the UK Guardian, and virtually every other major media outlet seems incapable of reporting the words of Abbas or the Imam.  Oh, wait ... it's because palestinian words and deeds don't fit the media narrative about the palestinians being victims in all of this, right? Besides, the left-wing reporters and editors who write pro-palestinian garbage are weeping too hard to see it all clearly. Why? Because the palestinians' "hope" has been stolen. They really don't want to identify who the thief actually is.