18-Nov-13: Behind the celebration of terror, a pervasive darkness

Children in Palestinian Arab society are in the dark in more
ways than one. Why? [Image Sources]

Today's nauseating news reports ("Palestinians shower freed prisoners with handsome cash payments, perks" in the Jerusalem Post; "Palestinian Authority gives freed prisoners $50,000 each" in Times of Israel) reiterate how the Abbas regime competes with Hamas to put the lowliest of thugs on a well-spotlighted pedestal.

What does this do to Palestinian Arab society?

Measurably, it ties up a huge proportion of their budget. They are already chronically unable to pay their own bills as a government. They make themselves basket cases who cannot function without huge handouts from obliging outsiders, mainly from the West. They mortgage the future of their children (excluding the children of the innermost circle who do just fine) by failing to invest in their own infrastructure and facilities. That aspect is even more striking in the case of Hamas who leave much of their budget expenditure to the PA to provide, while investing in military tunnels and in offensive weaponry. They demand little or no income taxes from their citizens, hundreds of whom are wealthy, and even millionaires.

And when the UN declares a day for honoring toilets, they quickly point to the sewage that flows through their shacks and village squares because of a failure to invest in water and waste infrastructure and - most of all - electricity generation, transmission and distribution, and say: We're the real victims, over here, look, look.

They are a self-parody.

But even more than their scandalous money and infrastructure practices, the embrace of small-time killers as national figures of emulation impoverishes the Palestinian Arabs educationally, spiritually, culturally, ethically. They are in a self-inflicted race to the bottom of the evolutionary pile while parts of the civilized world look on and applaud.

Is there a historical precedent for such large-scale, lethal buffoonery?