Ghazi Hamad, spokesman of the Palestinian government and senior Hamas official wrote an article for the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam. In it, he wonders whether violence has become a Palestinian disease.
“Has violence become a culture implanted in our bodies and our flesh?”
[…]
“We have surrendered to it until it has become the master and is obeyed everywhere — in the house, the neighborhood, the family, the clan, the faction and the university.”
[…]
“(Violence) has taken away the language of brotherhood and replaced it with arms … It has stolen our unity and divided us into two camps, or three, or ten,” he wrote.
[…]
“Are we all responsible? Yes. Do we all participate in this great sin? Yes, all of us have the desire not to see arms in the streets except with policemen.“We want to disown this disease, this cancer, which has damaged our brains and paralyzed our hearts.
“Have mercy on your people. Let us walk in peace, sit in peace, have a dialogue in peace and sleep in calm.”
You mean indoctrinating children to crave death and violence, militarizing every aspect of society, watching hate propaganda on television 24/7, and voting for a genocidal terrorist gang … might have consequences?
And wonders:
It’s tempting to see this as a tiny baby step toward self-awareness—but the intent of this self-examination is solely to become more efficient and PR-savvy in the ultimate task of wiping out Israel.
To a degree I agree with Charles on this one. However, it is far too easy to dismiss these two article by Hamad based on Charles’s reasoning. In the end, if Hamas choses to try to destroy Israel through political means… well, I still strongly object to them and to their goals, but at least Palestinians are not blowing themselves up in Israeli restaurants, or killing each other. Once the step towards the condemnation of violence has been made – whether for political purposes or not – at least one kind of immediate threat will be removed for Israel (and for the Palestinians themselves of course).
The problem, however, is that for now, even Palestinians speaking out against violence, do not seem to understand that it is quite logical that the Palestinians are quite hateful / violent: one only needs to look at some of the propaganda commercials / (music) videos broadcasted on PA TV…
For the violence to stop, the PA needs to stop feeding its people with hatred.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.