Ramallah has approved the construction of a memorial honoring the Palestinian terrorists who killed 11 Israelis in a 1975 attack on the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv. We are not surprised, but still horrified. The culture of death that is synonymous with the Palestinians, who make martyrs out of murderers, boggles the civilized mind. We’ve published countless stories like this before.
This week, the IJN interviewed Philippe Karsenty, a French Jew who decided to buck the culture of death and deconstruct the myth of the so-called martyred 12-year-old Mohammad al-Dura (see page 1).
On Sept. 30, 2000, France 2 broadcast a segment that “showed” a 12-year-old Palestinian boy dead in his father’s arms after a concentrated Israeli attack at the Netzarim Junction. Karsenty had no reason to doubt the report, but his heart rejected its veracity. After an Israeli friend shared evidence revealing that the scene was staged, Karsenty tried to expose the hoax in the courts and the court of public opinion.
There are many monuments to spurious martyrs in the Palestinian areas. Sometimes, these “martyrs,” like those who killed the 11 Israelis in 1975, actually pulled the trigger. Sometimes, the spurious martyr merely played dead. That’s hard to imagine, but that’s what happened on Sept. 30, 2000.
Good people should be remembered, whether they perished in Aurora or the Holocaust or a sterile hospital room. Those who murder the innocent or play dead for the camera deserve an unmarked grave. If we ever forget this, we can kiss our humanity goodbye.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
