20-Apr-16: After Monday's Jerusalem bus bombing, questions (again) about education, children and money

Handing out candies on an Arab street hours after a Jerusalem bus bombing
[Image Source]

The debris and wreckage has barely been cleared from southern Jerusalem's Moshe Baram Street in the aftermath of Monday's Egged Line 12 bus bombing and it's already possible to identify several clear lines of reaction.

Among Israelis, there's concern for the victims, several of whom are still hospitalized and wondering at what hit them and their loved ones: "11 still hospitalized, 1 critical, after Jerusalem bombing", Times of Israel, April 19, 2016; "Bus bomb survivor: I looked for my daughter, found her ‘all burned’", JTA, April 19, 2016; "Bus attack victim survived 2001 Sbarro's bombing", Israel National News, April 19, 2016. The current speculation, but not backed any official statements, is that the most severely injured of the victims now being treated intensively in a Jerusalem hospital, is the person who carried the bomb.

There's also growing Israeli anxiety at the prospect that bombings, and the hideous things that generally accompany them, are going to be come a larger part of our lives in the coming days and months. The Arab-on-Israeli violence of the past seven months has been rich in shootings, vehicle-rammings and stabbings with multiple murders and many maimings as a result, It's been clear from the outset that things will get more serious when the Arab leaders want them to.

From a page full of similar photos capturing the celebrations, marked by candies,
of Arabs in Jerusalem this past Monday [Image Source: Alquds News]

So how have the Arabs responded?

From the Islamist savages of Hamas in Gaza, they don't claim to have been behind it (though no one on the counter-terror side thinks bombings of this sort are beyond Hamas' capabilities or agenda), but they are perfectly comfortable with sitting back and watching it unfold. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, quoted here by Hamas, portentously described the attempt at a massacre of Jews as a “natural response to the Israeli crimes and in particular the executions and defiling of the Al-Aqsa Mosque”. Near-identical language is attributed to a Palestinian Arab "human rights" figure, speaking [here via an Iranian news site] seven months ago. We strongly believe statements of this sort ought to be believed. Nothing, given their education and cultural and ethical values, is more natural to terror-addicted Palestinian Arab "militants" than killing Israeli civilians in public places.

Hamas "welcomes the Jerusalem operation", while warning that exploding the bus is “just the beginning”. But in reality, it's just another chapter. The beginning was generations ago, and the interruptions have been few and short.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad called the terror attack "a qualitative development in form and substance of the blessed intifada" [here, via Khaled Abu Toameh].  Fatah, headed by the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and the largest faction in today's PLO, called it [here in Arabic] a "Nabil Massoud martyrdom operation" though no one appears to have been martyred, and even though Fatah calls itself secular as opposed to the Islamists for whom martyrdom is a supreme religious value. But who are we to judge other people's theologies? Fatah called the bus bombing attack

"a new focal point in the history of the conflict with the occupation, and the beginning of a new phase of confrontation with him six months after the outbreak of the Jerusalem uprising... Martyrdom operations are the military option supported by all the Palestinian people and its different components... among our strategies to defend our people... It is a confirmation of the victory of the resistance option and the failure of the settlement project, a painful blow to (PA/Israel) security coordination,.." [Al Resalah (Arabic), April 19, 2016]

Video of the first dramatic minutes after the explosion were captured by Arik Abuloff, a firefighter of the Israel Fire and Rescue Service, via his helmet-mounted wearable video camera

Towards the end, we see Abuloff entering the destroyed hulks of the two buses, searching for victims and to see if the cause of the explosion could be identified. The official count of injured people is 21 , two of them seriously, and that the conflagration was caused by a bomb detonating on board one of the two buses, setting the adjacent bus on fire. A third bus near by, and a car, also went up in flames.

We mentioned Khaled Abu Toameh a moment ago. He has an overview of the Arab reaction to Monday's barbarism ["Celebrating Terrorism, Palestinian Style"], Khaled Abu Toameh on Gatestone Institute website, April 19, 2016] which, like most of his published analysis, is among the most valuable things a person wanting to understand the Arab perspective from an Arab cultural standpoint - but free of any addiction to jihadist thinking.

The Palestinian jubilation over yesterday's terror bombing in Jerusalem, the first of its kind since the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada more than a decade ago, is yet another reminder of the growing radicalization among Palestinians... The public statements of the Palestinian leaders and groups after the Jerusalem terror attack are yet another sign of how they continue to incite their people against Israel. These are the type of statements that prompt Palestinian men and women to grab a knife (or in this case an explosive device) and set out to kill the first Jew they run into... The major obstacle to peace with Israel remains the absence of education for peace with Israel. In fact, it is safe to say that there never was a real attempt on the part of Palestinian leaders and factions to prepare their people for peace with Israel. On the contrary, the message they send to their people remains extremely anti-Israel. [Abu Toameh, yesterday]

Caption in Arabic informs that these happy campers living in
Nahr al-Bared, a Lebanese "refugee" camp are celebrating the news of
a bus filled with Jews being bombed in Jerusalem [Image Source]

In his customarily mild way, Abu Toameh notes that the public manifestations he mentioned call into doubt

the Palestinian leadership's and people's willingness to move toward peace and coexistence with Israel... Within hours of the attack, Palestinian factions seemed to be competing with each other over who would issue the most supportive statement of the terror explosion... Palestinian factions rushed to issue statements applauding the "heroic operation" and urging Palestinians to pursue the path of armed struggle against Israel. The Palestinian jubilation over the terror attack, the first of its kind since the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada more than a decade ago, is yet another reminder of the growing radicalization among Palestinians. This radicalization is mostly attributed to the ongoing anti-Israel incitement and indoctrination by various Palestinian factions and leaders... Hamas leader, Hussar Badran, also praised the terror attack. He said his movement was determined to pursue the resistance to "expel the occupation from our Palestinian lands." When Hamas leaders talk about "expelling the occupation from the Palestinian lands," they mean that Israel should be eliminated and replaced with an Islamist empire. [Abu Toameh, yesterday]

That last point is little appreciated or understood outside of the neighbourhood where we live. Occupation is a code word for these people.

Again: "The major obstacle to peace with Israel remains the absence of education for peace with Israel". Education means not only, but mainly, children. 

It's a constant wonder to us that the very-well-funded children's rights industry, a classification that includes multi-million dollar/euro global behemoths like UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development and others remain unmoved, and uncriticized, in the face of their complete failure to address what Abu Toameh has just mentioned. The news media look the other way, the funders keep giving without pausing to think what they are enabling, and the managements go merrily down the path of ignoring - and therefore de facto supporting - a process we have called the Palestinian Arab weaponization of their own children.

What will it take for this scandal to be addressed in a responsible and child-sensitive, education-focused way? Why does nothing constructive continue to get done about it for decade after decade? Anyone seriously suggesting these things are unknown is blowing smoke. They're known, and they're ignored.

Are you paying attention, UNICEF?