PALI CHILDREN: "BUILD A LADDER OF OUR SKULLS"

Songs in the Classroom and the Roots of Terror - Michael Gove
Just over a week ago the BBC screened footage of some girls in a Middle Eastern [ED. PALESTINIAN] school. Beautifully turned out, and with faces shining, the children sang a carefully prepared anthem for their parents, friends, and relatives. But the lyrics committed to heart by the girls of the al-Khalil al-Rahman Young Girls' Association sat a little incongruously with the innocence of their appearance. "We all sacrifice ourselves for our country," they sang. "We answer your call and make of our skulls a ladder to your glory. A ladder." We saw young girls dancing to music which proclaimed: "Fasten your bomb belt, oh would-be martyr, and fill the square with blood so that we get back our homeland."

The songs were recorded for a Panorama special presented by veteran BBC reporter John Ware investigating donations to the charity Interpal. Ware's painstaking work suggested that some of the institutions which benefit from the charity are linked to the Hamas terrorist organization. It is natural to believe that all one can do in the way of helping to end the suffering is simply to join the chorus demanding a cease-fire. But don't we owe our children, and the children of the Middle East, a few moments more reflection and questioning? What are the chances of a lasting peace when young girls are taught to celebrate suicide bombings in kindergarten? And what are we going to do about it? (Times-UK)

See also BBC Responds to Criticism of Panorama Documentary - John Ware
We said Hamas was "regarded by Western governments as terrorists." That's been the factual position since Hamas - both political and military wings - was proscribed as a terrorist organization by the European Union in September 2003. The program showed that some of Interpal's money had gone to charities like the al-Khalil al-Rahman Girls' Society and that over the years this had helped build Hamas. The contribution that charitable funds have made to the growth and popularity of the Hamas movement is something Hamas leaders themselves have consistently acknowledged.

Having asked the Israelis for their evidence, and having been persuaded by it, we could of course have come away and said: "These guys are Zionists. You can't trust a single thing Zionists say because they're, well, Zionists." But surely that would have been "agenda journalism" because it demands that information from one side should never be believed (even if it survives scrutiny), while the benefit of the doubt should generally be given to another side. The Muslim Council of Britain seems also to have expected us to discount Israeli-sourced documents simply because they came from Israelis. In fact, many of the documents on which we relied were not written by the Israelis, but by Interpal and the Palestinian Authority. It was the Israelis who seized the documents when they raided a number of charities in the West Bank.

What we invited viewers to consider was whether such charities were suitable organizations for British charitable funds to go to, given that violence directed at civilians has been a cornerstone of Hamas' ideology. The important point, surely, is that these young girls were learning that death - not life - is a goal, and to believe in the illusion of total victory, namely the elimination of Israel. Those girls were being given the oxygen to help keep this conflict going for another 60 years. (AIM Magazine-UK)

SEE ALSO: In the Name of Allah - Riad Ali
When the Palestinians adopted suicide bombing as their strategy, I concluded that their indiscriminate war on Jews had begun. The Palestinian people have lost their inner compass. A whole generation of children was born and reared in their midst, and all their hopes and aspirations are to die a holy death. A Palestinian moral-ethical debate on the status of the suicide bomber never took place. He was a "martyr," with all the positive attributes that the word carries in Islamic terminology. Palestinians who still opposed the bombings did so on tactical grounds; that is to say, if it had furthered their cause, they would have seen no wrong in it.

A similar process happened with Hizballah. If before 2000 it could claim it is fighting Israeli occupation of Lebanon, today it is clear that its war is against Jews wherever they may be.

It is clear to all that a Hamas-led Palestinian government and a Hizballah-controlled Lebanon will not bring democratic societies with a flourishing political and social pluralism. Arab citizens of Israel who truly believe in the principle of two states for two peoples and those who believe in a democratic liberal society must ask themselves if the Islamic ideology that is leading the war today against Israel and the West is representative of their ambitions. (Ha'aretz)