In August, a Palestinian teenager took a large knife, traveled to a nearby Israeli town, and began stabbing Jews.
One resident of the town of Adam was murdered, and two others wounded, before Mohammed Yousef himself was shot dead. Yousef was 17 years old.
Last year, 19 members of Congress, led by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minnesota), introduced legislation to prevent U.S. aid to Israel from being used to arrest “Palestinian children” – that is, any Palestinian under 18, no matter what his or her crime. Like Mohammed Yousef.
Congresswoman McCollum has not issued any statement on this latest murder committed by a Palestinian child. I’m not really expecting her to say anything. Advocates of the Palestinian cause like to yell slogans (“Stop arresting children!”) and then run away, without ever having to answer for the consequences of the causes they champion.
J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace tell us that Palestinians who stab Jews are just “fighting against the occupation.” The only problem is that Mohammed Yousef wasn’t living under occupation. Yousef comes from the village of Kobar, six miles northwest of Jerusalem, which is ruled by the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. The Israeli “occupation” of Kobar ended back in 1995.
Yousef spent his entire life under the rule of the PA. He didn’t stab Jews because of the non-existent occupation. He stabbed Jews because he hated Jews.
Yousef was not born hating Jews. Nobody is born racist or anti-Semitic. He attended PA schools where he was taught that Jews are evil. He went home after school, turned on the television, and watched programs about how Jews are evil. When he went to the movies or picked up a novel or saw a play, he got the same message. Every day.
In fact, on the very day that Yousef carried out his murderous rampage in Adam, the ruling Fatah movement – which is headed by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, now in the second decade of his four-year term – announced that the recent fall of a chunk of stone from the Western Wall was part of a Jewish plot to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque.
These kinds of insane conspiracy theories are part of mainstream Palestinian thinking and promulgated by the most respected Palestinian leaders. It’s no wonder that Palestinian teenagers grow into adulthood saturated with hatred and bloodlust.
The PA media and schools send young men like Mohammed Yousef another message, too: If you murder Jews, you are a hero. If you lose your life while murdering Jews, you are a martyr. And the more Jews you murder, the more money you and your family will be paid, by the “moderate” PA.
The name of his village, Kobar, may sound familiar. It’s the home town of the terrorist who stabbed three Jews to death at their Shabbat dinner table in the town of Halamish last year.
Kobar was also the scene of another atrocity last year. When several dozen Jewish hikers happened to pass near the town, the locals reacted by trying to stone them to death. The Israeli Army had to send troops to drive back the rock-throwing mob and rescue the hikers from being slaughtered.
A few years ago, Hillary Clinton wrote a children’s book called It Takes a Village. In the case of Kobar, it took a village – a society with a particular, pervasive culture – to raise a generation of young haters and killers.