July 28, 2015: The Palestinians are hostile to ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and have recently been showing it by publishing numerous cartoons mocking ISIL suicide bombers. At the same time Fatah (the ruling group in the West Bank) regularly praises Palestinian suicide bombers who have killed Israelis. How can this be? In part it is because ISIL considers Fatah a corrupt and ineffective leader of the Palestinians and wants to replace Fatah leaders with more militant ones (more like Hamas in Gaza). Fatah has also been criticizing ISIL for enslaving non-Moslems, something Palestinians don’t do. And for enforcing strict lifestyle rules, something most Palestinians don’t like at all. So Palestinians see nothing odd about Fatah’s mocking attitude towards ISIL suicide bombers.

Welcome to the media madness of the Middle East. Fatah has been openly praising and publicizing Palestinian suicide bombers for over a decade. Nearly all this inflammatory stuff is published (or said on radio and TV) in Arabic, because the Palestinian officials know that this sort of thing is very popular with Arabs but hard to explain (or sell) to Westerners. In any event the main purpose of the pro-suicide bomber propaganda is to raise generations of Palestinians who are enthusiastic supports of this sort of thing. It is believed that idea came from the Cold War era when the Soviet Union were famously patrons of all manner of terrorists, especially Palestinian ones. The Soviets urged the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization, which Fatah now dominates) to reform their educational system so that after a few decades all the children going through it would be adults with a very different view of suicide bombings, Israel and the world. That worked and the result is that, in this fantasy world employed by most Palestinians, Israel does not exist and any Palestinian that kills Israelis via suicide attacks is a hero. Israel is obviously there for all to see, but in Palestinian schools the maps of Israel are not labeled Israel. What is Israel is labeled as Palestinian, with perhaps a footnote to mention that Zionist oppressors temporarily occupy a lot of Palestinian territory. The Israelis are depicted as bad people, who steal from the virtuous Palestinians and are assisted by other evil people, like the Americans. Everything bad that happens, including the rampant corruption of Palestinian politicians, is blamed on Israel. Even ISIL is considered an Israeli creation. At the same time, Palestinian terrorists who have killed Israeli women and children are hailed as heroes and children are encouraged to be terrorists, especially suicidal ones. It’s not just the terrorists who get this treatment. Yasser Arafat, who led the effort to create the Palestine people and the fantasy Palestine taught in schools, died of apparent natural causes in 2010. Soon Palestinian children were being taught that Arafat was poisoned by Israelis.

The basic problem is that, for the last two generations, it has been Palestinian policy to teach their children, and anyone that will listen to these Arab language screeds that Israel has no right to exist. The kids get indoctrinated with anti-Semitic propaganda at a young age and as adults they continue to be bombarded by anti-Semitic rants. Thus most Palestinians (unless they were educated outside of the Middle East) take it for granted that any peace deal with Israel is just a tactical move in the effort to eventually destroy Israel and drive all Jews from the Middle East. People outside the Middle East have a hard time comprehending this attitude. But it is very real, and can be seen on Palestinian web sites (not so much on the non-Arabic language ones, although even there the anti-Semitic line is leaking through more and more). Israel goes through the motions of negotiating, to keep its Western allies and trading partners happy, but few Jews in Israel see any chance of real peace with the Palestinians, given the current attitudes within the Palestinian community.