Michael Oren: An inconvenient truth

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren was in New York last week in connection with the doings at the United Nations. Oren’s memoir is the invaluable Ally, which we interviewed him about on the Power Line podcast posted here.

Oren is now a member of the Knesset from the Kulanu Party and deputy minister for diplomacy. During his visit last week Newsweek posted Oren’s latest piece laying out the massive hate campaign continually pumped out by the Abbas government. With rumors of renewed “peace initiatives” floating around, it’s imperative that Americans of good will confront the reality that the Israeli government promotes reconciliation with the Palestinians while the Palestinian leadership foments hatred and glorifies violence. Under such circumstances, no meaningful negotiation can occur.

Among the examples Oren cites are the–literal–celebration of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. The website of Abbas’s own political party praised the atrocity as a “heroic action.” The PA will not cease the incitement until the world demands that it does, and there will be no meaningful movement toward peace until the Palestinians aren’t educated to hate their neighbors.

Oren’s column is “Palestinian celebration of Munich Olympic massacre shows they are not ready for peace.” I wanted to post it here for Power Line readers. Courtesy of Michael Oren, here it is (with our thanks):

The 2016 Olympics remembered the 11 Israeli athletes massacred by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich games, but the Palestinian Authority (PA) is praising the atrocity. The International Olympic Committee erected a memorial in Rio to the slain Israeli sportsmen and honored them at the closing ceremony. Yet on September 5, the anniversary of that horrific event, the official website of Fatah, the organization headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed the outrage as an “heroic operation” and “one of the most important actions in modern history.”

The Munich Massacre took place on September 5, 1972, when members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group closely allied with al-Fatah, infiltrated the Olympic village with explosives and automatic weapons. They took 11 Israeli athletes hostage, brutally beat and tortured them, while shooting two of them to death. The rest they killed with gunfire and grenades when German forces attempted a rescue. A German policeman was also murdered.

And the PA takes pride in that as indeed it does in all acts of terror against Israelis. Recently, after the stabbing and shooting of three Israeli civilians—among them Richard Lakin, an American citizen and devoted peace activist—the PA lauded the Palestinian killers as ”heroic martyrs” who promptly “ascended to heaven.”

PA officials have named summer camps, scouting troops, and even soccer tournaments after terrorists. According to Palestinian Media Watch, the name of Dalal Mughrabi, who led a single attack that killed 37 Israelis, including 12 children, today adorns West Bank streets and public squares as well as two elementary schools, a community center, and a kindergarten.

Official Palestinian support for the killing of Jews intensified over the past year in which at least 33 Israelis and two American tourists were murdered, many of them by young Palestinians wielding knives. The PA and Fatah websites encouraged these youths to embark on stabbing rampages that in most cases resulted in their deaths. Like the murderers of Richard Lakin, these suicide terrorists were branded “martyrs.” Extoling violence against Israelis in their nation’s capital, Abbas declared: “I welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.”

By closely monitoring Palestinian websites and other intelligence methods, Israel’s security forces have preempted many of these attacks. But the PA’s determination to instill hatred in Palestinians erases hopes of resolution. Bred on a constant curriculum of denying Israelis the right to life, much less to freedom in their homeland, generations of Palestinians are unlikely to reconcile with them. Israel, by contrast, names its streets and schools after Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and other champions of peace. While we prepare our people for co-existence, the PA is educating Palestinians for bloodshed.

Such incitement must and can be stopped. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner publicly condemned the “Fatah Facebook post that glorified the terrorist attacks on the Munich Olympics where 11 innocent Israeli athletes were killed.” Shortly after Toner’s denunciation, Fatah took down the post.

The world must follow America’s example. After rightly memorializing the Munich massacre at the Rio games, the international community must insist that the PA refrain from praising all acts of terrorism, past and present. Only then can Palestinians be truly educated about peace.

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