U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney visited with Israeli and Palestinian leaders last weekend to try to once again breathe some fresh air and forward motion into the limp sails of the peace negotiations between the two sides.
Bilateral discussions had slowed down considerably after the Palestinians expanded their campaign of rocket terror into Ashkelon and surrounding areas.
Cheney used the occasion to restate and re-emphasize America’s commitment to Israel’s security and to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
True to past form, however, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas carped about Israeli behaviour. He criticized Israel’s expansion of “settlements” in the suburbs of Jerusalem, the ongoing checkpoints in the West Bank and the military operations targeting Palestinian gunmen. And, of course, he utterly ignored Palestinian behaviour. He seemed little bothered by the constant terror raining down on Israeli civilians from Gaza, the attempted terror from the West Bank and the unceasing incitement against Israel and against Jews from official PA educational and media organs.
In their fourth report on Palestinian educational material, according to JTA, the American Jewish Committee and the Center for Monitoring Peace in the Middle East found little mention of the State of Israel in Grade 11 and 12 schoolbooks and described hatred of the West as a “prevalent theme.”
“Many Palestinian children are exposed to a rigid, narrow worldview in which Israel does not exist and Jews are considered subhuman enemies,” said AJC executive director David Harris. “A negotiated settlement cannot succeed until Palestinian children are taught to live in peace with their Israeli neighbours.”
And worse. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported last week on an “educational” exhibit that depicted Israel burning Palestinian children in a crematorium. Young children are seen standing beside dolls being placed into a model of a crematorium. The exhibit included an oven. Inside the oven, small children are being burned. Another part of the exhibit, PMW reported, was a black platform with the words, “Stop the Israel’s Holocausts [sic].”
Such “education” of children is perfidious and a prescription for never-ending war.
But Cheney appeared not be moved by Abbas’ finger-pointing. “The U.S. remains strongly committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state,” he said. But he continued: “Achieving that [state] will require tremendous effort at the negotiating table and painful concessions on both sides. It will also require a determination to defeat those who are committed to violence and who refuse to accept the basic right of the other side to exist.” Rockets and terrorism against Israelis, Cheney pointed out, “do not merely kill innocent civilians. They also kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people.”
Thankfully, the U.S. government is not swayed by the complaints of a hypocrite.
