MOSLEM HATE CRIMES

This past Sunday, September 11, Palestinian mobs torched and destroyed four synagogues left behind by Israel in the evacuated Gaza strip. The Palestinian Authority (PA) police did nothing to intervene, while the PA President – Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) – justified the violence as the people “expressing their emotions.”

The torching of houses of worship, just like the lootings, beatings and home burnings carried out against a Christian Arab town near Ramallah at the beginning of this month by Palestinians shouting “Allahhu Akbar” (God is Great) as the PA police stood by, bode ill for peace in the Middle East.

Religious hatred inspired by Jihadi Islam is clearly no local matter. It is part of a broad conflict unfolding between radical Islam on the one hand and Christianity, Judaism, the Bahai faith, and Buddhism on the other. There are also violent rifts between radical Islam and its moderate variety, and between extremist Sunnis and Shi’a.

The destruction of the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime in 2001 was another example of the kind of violent intolerance that radical Islam preaches.

The highly symbolic act of synagogue burning in response to Israel’s quest for peace should alert those who believe that the withdrawal from Gaza is “a step in the right direction” towards assuaging hatred with concessions. They are likely to wind up as bitterly disappointed as those who believed in the “peace process” of Oslo. The wrong message is being sent—terror and violence pay.

This past Sunday, hate crimes were once again committed in full view of the world- and the world kept mum. The major news agencies withdrew any mention of the synagogue burnings in less than twenty-four hours. This is not the first time a house of worship has been desecrated in the Holy Land.

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was occupied by Hamas and Tanzim Palestinian terrorists in the spring of 2002 and turned into a veritable pigsty, with priests held hostage.

In the end, Israeli negotiators allowed the terrorists free passage to Europe, and the international media barely covered what had been done inside the Church. Meanwhile, the fact that Israel had refused to storm the building because of its religious significance earned it no credit. The terrorist violence was essentially excused.

Nor is this is the first time that highly symbolic and brutal acts have been met with silent acceptance and appeasement. Just a few years ago, a Palestinian mob in Ramallah lynched two Israeli reservists, with the murderers triumphantly displaying their blood-soaked hands before the gleeful mob.

The Palestinian Authority, in an attempted cover-up, later confiscated tapes of the lynching from the Western media, which cooperated and stood down.

Hate crimes are acts aimed at the group represented by the individuals who are attacked, or their symbolic objects, like places of worship, rather than only at the individuals themselves.

These highly symbolic acts of violence, such as the murder of children, the bombings of buses and religious ceremonies (such as the Passover meal in Netanya in 2002), and now, synagogue burnings, are clearly aimed at demoralizing Israeli civilians.

In 2001, a ten month old baby, Shalhevet Pass, was deliberately shot by a sniper in the arms of her father.

In 2002, Kobi Mandel (age 11), originally from Silver Spring, Maryland, and a friend, were brutally murdered in a cave a short walk from their house in Gush Etsion, a pre-1948 rural area in Judean Hills.

Kobi’s head and body were smashed repeatedly with rocks, and the walls were scrawled with anti-Jewish slogans and curses written in the child’s blood.

The hate crime of synagogue burning is nothing new. The practice, prevalent in Europe for centuries, was enthusiastically embraced by the Nazis in Europe. During 1938 Kristallnacht, most German synagogues were smashed, and over 300 Jews murdered, a prologue to later horrors.

In the 1941 pro-Nazi riots in Baghdad, synagogues were destroyed and hundreds of Jews killed. More recently, Al Qaeda and its affiliates targeted the ancient synagogue on the island of Jerba in Tunis and the two Turkish synagogues attacked in 2003.

Radical Islamist clerics justify these barbaric acts. The Palestinian Clerics Association’s Sheikh Mohammad Ali said last month, that when “…even an inch of Moslem land is occupied, Jihad is a personal duty, a religious obligation incumbent upon everyone.”

Since the entire land of Israel is considered “occupied” by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terrorist organizations subsidized by Saudi Arabia and Iran, the stage is set for continued violent attacks.

Some Moslem clerics have declared that while suicide bombings in Arab countries are forbidden, they are “not suicide” in Israel. Others claim that “Andaluz” – Spain – is also occupied territory, to be liberated in due course.

Today, the West is willing to offer Abu Mazen over three billion dollars in economic aid – while the rhetoric of Jihad rings loud in the mosques and on the airwaves.

The Palestinian Authority leadership has done nothing to disarm Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or its own terrorist Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Instead, it is promoting genocidal hatred and then steps aside while the synagogues burn or Jews and Christians are attacked.

Not much at all has changed since Yassir Arafat failed as the leader of a would-be new state, but the stakes are getting even higher.

If a Palestinian state is founded on the lethal mix of Arab chauvinism and radical Islam, it will it will serve as a base for international terrorism against Israel, Europe and the U.S., with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah calling the shots.

Burying our heads in the sand is simply not going too bring peace one step closer. Terror must stop before any negotiations can be pursued.

Ariel Cohen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.