PA Street Naming in Honor of Terrorist Murders Challenges World

Weekly Commentary
Dr. Aaron Lerner
23 July 2009

The decision announced this week by the Palestinian Authority to honor the top Palestinian terrorist murderers now serving time in Israeli prisons by naming streets after them has received almost no attention either here or abroad.

And that's a pity.

For the Palestinians.

Because the lack of reaction reflects a view that the Palestinian leadership is a bunch of immoral savages who cannot be expected to be held up to any reasonable standard of behavior. Its one thing for the Palestinians to argue that when a final agreement is reached with Israel that, within the framework of reconciliation there is a wholesale release of prisoners - including the monsters - but far another to praise the monsters and name streets after them.

And while that may be a useful image if you are issuing demands as you hold hostages on a jet, its hardly what the Palestinians need today if they want to sell the story that they are peace loving folks who want to live in peace and tranquility in a Palestinian state side by side with Israel.

So here's the question: Is anyone going to say anything?

President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and the various and sundry American officials who have no problem slamming Israel at the drop of the hat can show that they don't actually think the Palestinians are monsters by demanding that the street naming outrage be halted.

The folks at J-Street, American Friends of Peace Now - and for that matter their Israeli radical left counterparts should do the same. Not only to help put the Palestinians on track, but also to show that they themselves aren't suffering from a partial blindness that prevents them from seeing anything but Israeli warts.

Even Arab "moderates" should join the chorus to help set the tone for a responsible moderate Palestinian leadership.

Will it happen?

Unfortunately, the odds are that it won't.

And this should serve as a warning to Israel at a time that all of the above gang up to turn the screws on the Jewish State. A warning that, rhetoric notwithstanding, the world will give a free pass to the Palestinians if we are naive enough to rely on international guarantees to facilitate the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.
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