Sunday, April 24, 2016

24-Apr-16: Weaponizing children: Here's one way it's done in Jerusalem

Honored guests at the Jebel Mukaber school in March: the man in the center
is the very proud father of a murderer whose victims we name here
[From the Facebook page of the Jabel Mukaber school]
In understanding what happened about two weeks ago in an elementary school in an Arab neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, it will help to know that an incredible proportion of Palestinian Arabs profess to be opposed to terrorism while at the same time saying (as we pointed out in "03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?") that massacres of innocent civilians, and especially of Jews, aren't even terrorist acts to begin with.

Keep the mental gymnastics in mind as we take a look at what happened there about a month ago - but has only just now been reported.

The Jabel Mukaber elementary school [Facebook] is located in a part of Jerusalem that has that same name, immediately adjacent to the flourishing neighborhood of East Talpiot/Armon Hanatziv.

Family members of the honored jihadists at a Jerusalem elementary
school ceremony  [From the Facebook page of the Jabel Mukaber school]
For centuries, this was part of Turkey's Ottoman Empire holdings. It fell within the British Mandate from the early twenties until 1948. The name Armon Hanatziv is Hebrew for Governor's Palace, where the reference is to the head of the British occupation which took power after the Turks were defeated in World War One and chased away. Then it fell under Jordanian military occupation from 1948, when Jordanian forces invaded the infant state of Israel. The Jordanians ruled until June 1967 when the Jordanian monarch's military was repelled after launching another unsuccessful shot at conquering the Jewish state, Israel has been in charge since 1967.

The Jabel Mukaber school, for Arab children between kindergarten and grade 9, is funded, according to Ynet, by what it terms "Islamic officials". On the school's Facebook site, a series of photographs posted March 22 and March 24, 2016 [here and here - but we think both were removed within an hour of our uploading this post] mark a ceremonial visit to the school and its children by various family members of two young men, Baha Aliyan and Mohammed Ali.

A practical illustration of how the weaponization of children is
done: Jabel Mukaber school yard, March 2016, as children are taught
to pay homage to two dead jihadists, one who murdered 3 Jews and
one who was stopped in time [From the Facebook
page of the Jabel Mukaber school]
Who were they? Aliyan was a central player in the murderous attack on Israelis traveling on a Jerusalem city bus six months ago ["13-Oct-15: A bloody day and the malevolence behind it"]. He and an accomplice boarded the crowded Egged 78 line bus in Armon Hanaziv, wildly shooting and stabbing passengers.

They murdered Haviv Haim, 78; Alon Govberg, 51; and Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old former American school principal and civil rights activist, who was shot in the head and stabbed in the chest and died after a two-week struggle with his critical injuries.

Mr Lakin's son Micha Avni was later quoted referring to the hideous Palestinian Arab incitement that is found on the Facebook platform, saying of his father that “He died as a result of the same incitement and hatred he fought against his entire life.” Some days after the murders, Micha Avni was among 20,000 other plaintiffs who brought
a class-action lawsuit... in New York State Supreme Court...  against Facebook accusing the social media platform of ignoring widespread Palestinian posts calling for violence against Jews, which was filed Monday [and claiming] that Facebook posts have inspired many recent terror attacks and that “Facebook’s algorithms and platform connects inciters to terrorists who are further encouraged to perpetrate stabbings and other violence attacks against Israelis [Times of Israel, October 27, 2015]
The Islamic school in Jabel Mukaber
honors the life of the thug who murdered
the author of this book [Image Source]
Mr Lakin, one of Aliyan's innocent victims, was the author of a book titled “Teaching as an Act of Love”? Subtitled "Thoughts and Recollections of a Former Teacher, Principal and Kid", it's still available from Amazon.

Did the Jabel Mukaber ceremony note this, and the tragic irony of the circumstances in which Mr Lakin met death? Not exactly. According to Ynet ["Families of Palestinian terrorists visit East Jerusalem school", April 24, 2016],
After his son's attack, Mohammad Aliyan launched a commemoration campaign in honor of his son, which included among other things encouraging children to read. During an event held in memory of the terrorist at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, Aliyan explained that "if the nation isn't educated, it won't be able to confront the occupation. Baha is an idea, and an idea will never die. Today, I have more than 1,000 Bahas. The students will carry out his legacy."
If Aliyan senior condemned the vicious orgy of violence which was his son's final act in life, or suggested the late Mr Lakin's book as something work reading, there's not a word of that in the Arabic text on the school's Facebook or in any of the several reports we have seen online about the ceremonial visit to the school. 

Aliyan's son was a killer, and the father - at a ceremony for elementary school children honoring him - speaks of his life as an idea that will never die. Idea? Of course: the Jabel Mukaber school's Facebook page praises the terrorists and their families, and thanks the families for their visit. The idea is clear.

Another jihadist was honored in the same event. Family members of Mohammed Ali, shot by Israeli forces after he carried out a knifing attack at the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City, also took part. (We think he's the 19 year-old stabber in the video and photos here.) We don't know if anyone call Ali's life or death an idea. But we do know he was killed while carrying out an attempted murder.

Last and certainly not least, several representatives of the Palestinian Ministry of Education took part in the homage to a pair of terrorist thugs.

There's no rush among Israeli authorities to address the naked incitement-to-murder that's being drilled into the heads of many thousands of Palestinian Arab children in the suburbs of Jerusalem. Ynet asked the authorities what they were planning to about what we have just described:
The Jerusalem municipality responded by saying that the event took place at a private school that isn't regulated by the municipality or the Israeli Ministry of Education. Therefore, they don't have the ability to interfere with what is being taught there. There are many private schools in East Jerusalem which are not under the purview of the Israeli Ministry of Education, and they receive no funding from the ministry or from the municipality... School officials refused to comment. "Families of Palestinian terrorists visit East Jerusalem school", Ynet, April 24, 2016]
Sorry to have to point it out but that head-in-the-stand attitude is deadly, indefensible, and costs lives. Here, from a very brief scan of our own blog, are some recent acts of terrorist Arab-on-Israel murders in which the perpetrators were all residents of Jabel Mukaber - perhaps even graduates of the same school (we don't know):
For those with a mind for remembering such things, the vile killers of several rabbis in a synagogue in Jerusalem's Har Nof section came from Jabel Mukaber, a massacre of unarmed men at prayer that caused an eruption of celebration there in its immediate aftermath ["26-Dec-14: The ongoing search for Arabic-language outrage at the men with the meat-cleavers and knives"]. 

 And zero condemnation.

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