30-May-16: Barbarism, bigotry and blood-lust: What a UN-provided education delivers

Palestinian Arab girls being educated UN-style in an UNRWA school
in Jerusalem [Image Source]

If you have not already viewed the video clip we showcased in another post of ours ["30-May-16: Listen to the children to understand who is weaponizing them and how [Video]"] earlier today, doing that now may help you make sense of the report that now follows.

It was released for publication this morning (Monday) that Israel Police have cracked the stabbing attack that took place in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv neighbourhood on the evening of Remembrance Day, May 10, 2016. Here's part of what we wrote about that notably savage (even by the standards that apply in our part of the world) and cowardly attack three weeks ago:

The victims, according to Haaretz, are a pair of "elderly women", reported to be "aged in their 70s"who "had gone for a walk in the neighborhood, also known as East Talpiot, on Tuesday morning when they were attacked by two masked individuals." Their injuries would be serious enough for younger, more robust people but they sound quite worrying, knowing what we know of their ages: "One of the women sustained stab wounds to her limbs and upper body, while the other sustained wounds to her upper body." Ynet reports that they described their attackers as two masked Palestinians wearing jeans and black shirts. The two women, described by hospital staff in the Ynet report as aged 86 and 80, were walking with three other friends when they were attacked from behind. This is frequently how "resistance" operations are done, reflecting on the inherent courage required by such acts. [From our blog post "10-May-16: Practitioners of "resistance" inflict serious stabbing injuries on two elderly Jerusalem women"]

Those earlier suspicions were well-founded: the attackers now under arrest all live in Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian Arab community with a well-deserved reputation for savagery, nestled in the southern suburbs of Jerusalem. All three of the arrestees are minors, aged 16-17. Children.

Ynet gives this background:

Jabel Mukaber as it appears in a Times of Israel article here

The three decided to meet at a small supermarket in Jabel Mukaber. Armed with knives and an ax which they took from their homes, the three proceeded in the direction of the promenade where they waited for their Jewish victims. A third suspect left the scene after becoming afraid that the attack would lead to the demolition of his parents’ home. As the women passed the two boys, they began stabbing them and striking them with the wooden handle of the ax. The two then fled the scene in the direction of their village while throwing and hiding their weapons on the way. One made it home and the other took refuge in his school...

Times of Israel adds:

After the attack,the suspects are believed to have stashed the weapons nearby before one went home and the second went to school. Later on, one of them returned to the scene, retrieved the knives and cudgel, and hid them in Jabel Mukaber... Throughout the day, the two suspects “spoke with one another through WhatsApp and Facebook messages and planned to carry out another stabbing attack in light of the ‘success’ of the Peace Forest attack,” the police said. However, the pair were arrested before they could carry out such an attack, a police spokesperson said.

And this small postscript:

During the investigation, it also emerged that the mother of one of the suspects was arrested one week ago [meaning after her son had been arrested for the Peace Forest attacks] for attempting to carry out a stabbing attack at the Zeitim Checkpoint at the entrance to Jerusalem... [Ynet]

What does it take to turn teenage Jerusalem Arabs into stabbers, plotters and would-be murderers? Of Jabel Mukaber and its predominantly-Jewish neighbours in Armon Hanatziv, an article a year and a half ago ("Arabs and Jews at odds in East Talpiot", Times of Israel, August 3, 2014) said this:

The main entrance to the neighborhood is adjacent to the Armon Hanatziv Promenade, the terraced park popular with locals and tourists for its views of the Old City, including Mount Zion, the Temple Mount, the Kidron Valley, the City of David and the Mount of Olives. Relations are generally good between the neighborhood residents and the villagers, say locals. The Arab residents are often visible in East Talpiot, shopping in the local Co-op supermarket, stopping in at the local bank branch and using the local medical clinics.

Since that time, a long list of terror attacks, including several mind-numbingly savage instances of extreme Arab-on-Israeli violence, have been executed by residents of Jabel Mukaber. They include the November 2014 attack on men at prayer in a Har Nof synagogue ["20-Nov-14: In the face of savagery, what do you do?"] in which four worshipers and a security guard were hacked to death. And, less than a year later ["13-Oct-15: A bloody day and the malevolence behind it"], the murders on a city bus of Haviv Haim, 78; Alon Govberg, 51; and Richard Lakin, 76. (Click here to view some other of our previous Jabel Mukaber terrorism posts.)

As the postscript above shows, another thing that can turn a teenager into a murderer is a mother who seeks to do the same herself.

But the major factor - the one that, year after year, delivers barbarism, bigotry and blood-lust directly into the veins of Arab children, the one that instills life-changing attitudes - is education.

Which is why we want to point out, in the wake of the Jabel Mukaber murder bust revealed this morning, that every single one of the sweet-faced Arab schoolchildren being educated in UNRWA schools and interviewed in the simply-shocking video we mentioned above, lives in Jerusalem where we do, and is educated here.

Mr Gunness, UNRWA spokesperson, on the right, from a YouTube posting
entitled "UNRWA's Chris Gunness Embarrasses
Himself on 'The Kelly File'", August 5, 2014

Not in Gaza. Not in Hebron or Jenin, but in the precincts of Israel's capital city, and by means of an annual budget provided by the United Nations and its UNRWA arm, of which a third is funded by taxpayers of the United States and most of the rest by Western, non-Arab countries.

Can nothing be done? Never say never.

We offered a practical suggestion not long ago, and urge our readers to look at it (again) now: "06-Aug-15: Educating their children: a modest, peace-focused proposal".

We sent it off last summer to UNRWA's official spokesperson and were pleased that he responded right away with what seemed like some politely mild, though appropriate, enthusiasm. Then, for reasons that are beyond us even now, he inexplicably went silent on us. If you're reading this, Chris Gunness, we hope you still plan to give us a call.

Holding our breaths, we're not.