Hate, Murder, Imprisonment: Palestinian Career Paths, Guest Post by Martin Slann, April 7, 2017:
The approximately 3.6 million Arabs living in Gaza and Judea and Samaria are dominated by criminal regimes: the Hamas terror gang in Gaza and the corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA) based in Ramallah. Neither regime has expressed any concern with improving the economic infrastructure. Neither cares about the misery of the unfortunate Arabs in these areas. Both readily blame Israel for any and all troubles experienced by the general population. To insure that all are in agreement that Israelis are at fault for anything that goes wrong, teachers, journalists, and Islamic preachers are enlisted to blame the Jews for the fact that Arabs are economically poor and culturally stagnant.
It is a winning formula that Hamas and the PA and their predecessors have successfully employed over the last seven decades. One generation after another understands that no progress in living conditions can be made until Israel is utterly destroyed. Once that occurs, all will be well and what is a backward and depressed society will finally move forward to a golden age free of the ancient curse of Jews.
To facilitate this process of nihilism and self-destruction, Hamas and the PA celebrate and reward not great teachers or physicians or even sports heroes. Nope, the only really way to gain celebratory status in this demented society is to become a murderer of Jews. Israelis take a dim view of terrorists and regularly sentence them to long prison terms after finding them guilty of slaughtering defenseless women and children. But that works out well for the terrorists. Many if not most serve their prison terms and then return to their families and friends or get released early in a prisoner exchange. After murdering or maiming defenseless civilians and going to prison these courageous freedom fighters typically become sought after public speakers and eventually wind up holding cushy and well paid jobs in one of several security forces used by Hamas and the PA to control the population and punish perceived or real collaborators. Imprisonment is one of the best career moves a young Arab can make in Gaza or in those areas controlled by the PA. As one scholar, Bassam Tawil, has written, Palestinian “President Abbas and his PA and Fatah [the main terrorist group that controls the PA] representatives have long lauded Palestinian prisoners held by Israel as ‘heroes” and future leaders of a Palestinian state.” A prison term served in Israel makes you a very special person in this culture.
The Obama Adminstration's Thankfully Unsuccesful Effort: These are the people, by the way, who the Obama Administration relentlessly (but, mercifully, unsuccessfully) pushed the Israeli government to offer concessions to in order to further the (happily, now dead) peace process. It was an interesting approach: trying to force America’s most dependable ally in the Middle East to placate professional killers who regularly insist that all Israelis must die. The fact that the Israelis have received thousands of rockets launched at their hospitals and schools during the decade since their withdrawal from Gaza was apparently lost upon the self-righteous, arrogant, and anti-semitic Obama officials who, after all, were convinced that they knew what was best for Israel.
None of this should be surprising. Arabs from childhood on who live in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria are indoctrinated by their parents, clergy, government, and schools to hate and want to slaughter Israelis. Becoming a murderer is an increasingly popular career path. Because Israel does not apply the death penalty and because Israeli prisons are among the most humane in the western world, the murderers housed in them are unafraid of their fate. They know when they are released, they’ll be on all the Palestinian talk shows boasting of the number of women and children they killed (and expressing remorse that they hadn’t killed more) to an enthralled audience as depraved as they are.
Martin Slann is Professor of Political Science at The University of Texas at Tyler.
He received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Georgia, and is the author, co-author, and co-editor of several scholarly books and introductory texts. He can be reached at
He contributor to the Dissident Prof collection, Exiled: Stories from Conservative and Moderate Professors Who Have Been Ridiculed, Ostracized, Marginalized, Demonized, and Frozen Out. Buy it HERE.
