Fogel suspects’ arrest exposes dangers of incitement

On Sunday, Israel announced the arrest of Amjad Awad, 19, and Hakim Awad 18, both from the Palestinian village of Awarta, in connection with the murders of the Fogel family in March. Both have reportedly admitted to perpetrating the murders. Awad reportedly told the Shin Bet that he wanted to “die a martyr’s death.” (See page 22.)

The indoctrination of Palestinian youth to “martyrdom” is systemic, according to Brooke Goldstein (pictured above), New York attorney and filmmaker. In 2004, Goldstein traveled to the west bank and interviewed the parents of a teenage suicide bomber and the terrorists who recruited him. Her award-winning film, “The Making of a Martyr,” exposed the effects of indoctrination on a 15-year-old would-be suicide bomber who surrendered at an Israeli checkpoint.

Regarding the suspects, Goldstein told The Jewish Standard: “It is highly likely that both were influenced by the systemic indoctrination and recruitment of Palestinian youth toward violence as promoted through schools, television, radio, print media, and by religious and political leaders. An 18-year-old does not wake up one morning and conceive a plan to infiltrate someone else’s community and brutally murder a family, including children, in cold blood, without having been inculcated to hate.”

Goldstein visited west bank schools run by Islamic Jihad, but she was denied entry to schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the U.N. agency that serves Palestinians. More recently, she said, she has gotten the runaround from UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority when trying to access their curricula, despite the fact both receive funding from the U.S.

The web site http://www.palwatch.org, run by the watchdog organization Palestinian Media Watch, documents the glorification of terrorists and dehumanization of Jews in official Palestinian Authority media.

Through years of peace summits and road maps, Palestinian incitement has continued.

Aid to the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA from the U.S. should be contingent upon complete transparency and an end to incitement. No peace process or road map will ever stand a chance when children are being systematically brainwashed to hate.

This entry was written by Heather Robinson and posted on April 29, 2011 at 6:23 pm and filed under Commentary. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: human-rights, Israel, media, terrorism. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>