By Chloe Baker, Senior Opinions Editor
“I have friends in Palestine,” Naama Levy said in a video released seven months after her abduction. Her face is covered in blood as she pleads with the terrorists handcuffing and beating her for the slightest semblance of mercy. I can’t decipher which is worse – the heartbreaking irony of her words, or the gruesome state she is in – both haunting in my mind and the minds of many others who once believed in peace. On October 7, Hamas brutally destroyed countless lives, ripping apart and murdering entire families and communities. Yet, within the nightmare that unfolded that day, the most horrific crime Hamas committed was eradicating the dream of girls like Naama Levy, the dream that one day we will live in a world of everlasting peace.
Naama is described by her family as being “attentive to others,” and as having “always stood by the less fortunate and the different.” She graduated high school with a major in diplomacy and was part of the “Hands of Peace” delegation, which aims to “empower American, Israeli and Palestinian youth to become agents of change.” Naama was raised on the values of kindness and acceptance, and, like so many others, wanted peace with the other side.
On October 7, Naama’s readiness to love and accept others was crushed with hatred, brutality, and unimaginable violence.
While Naama was educated by Hands of Peace, many children in Gaza and other Palestinian territories are educated by UNRWA, an organization supposedly devoted to solving the Palestinian refugee crisis that has become a collaborator in Islamist terror and a radical soapbox which preaches death and destruction to impressionable Palestinian youth. Students in these schools are taught to admire terrorists, to deny Israel’s right to exist, and to aspire to be martyrs. A UN Watch report found that students were taught that Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist who brutally murdered 38 Israelis in 1978 during the coastal road massacre, was a hero. These children are taught that sacrificing themselves for the homeland is “the most precious thing,” and that in reality, the surface area of the “State of Palestine” is 27,027 kilometers – the surface area of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza all together.
Additionally, Palestinian children are taught to rejoice when Jews are murdered. A reading comprehension passage used in a UNRWA classroom celebrated the firebombing of a Jewish bus, calling it a “barbeque party.” In contrast, participants in Hands of Peace engage in “intensive dialogue” about solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and share their personal experiences in an “attempt to understand what it’s like to walk in the shoes of the other.”
In a document collated by Hamas’s Media Office, the terrorist organization claims that Palestinians have been denied the right to self-determination and that the Oct. 7 attack was to be expected after 75 years of “relentless occupation and suffering.” The document also claims that the attack was in response to the “Israeli Judaization plans to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,” ironic, considering that in reality, Israel has no such plans in the works. It isn’t just Hamas terrorists who believe that they must do all they can to capture Al-Aqsa. Students in UNRWA schools are also being taught this belief. On an exam for fifth graders, students were asked to mark true or false to the question, “Liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque and making sacrifices for it is an obligation for all Muslims.”
The correct answer was “true.”
The process of granting Palestinians a degree of self-determination was initiated with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, which established the Palestinian Authority and granted it limited self-rule in certain areas. This agreement set the stage for further Israeli withdrawals from areas in the West Bank, and although not directly related to Oslo, the unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005. After this disengagement, the Palestinians had the opportunity to create a positive future for themselves out of the land that was given to them. Unfortunately, this was not the route they chose to take. Instead, they backed Hamas, who uses international aid money to pay the families of suicide bombers, digs up water pipes to build homemade missiles that often land on their own people, and uses hospitals and schools as weapons caches, betraying the most vulnerable among them and destroying not only their own infrastructure but any chance of a brighter future as well.
Fast forward nineteen years later to October 7, 2023, the largest, most horrific attack on Jews since the Holocaust. On that day, the world saw what ultimate Palestinian self-determination really looks like.
Murdering hundreds, butchering and burning entire families, kidnapping dozens, celebrating these “accomplishments” with candy and fireworks, and broadcasting these atrocities for the entire world to see. Almost three in four Palestinians believe that the October 7 attack by Hamas was admirable, and seventy-two percent of respondents to a survey conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research believe that Hamas’s decision to launch the offensive attack against Israel on October 7 was an honorable choice.
Many Western governments, as well as President Joe Biden, insist that “the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are not Hamas,” and that “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” However, statistics beg to differ. Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians think Hamas should rule in Gaza, and 70 percent are satisfied with the role Hamas has played during the current war. Eighty-one percent of respondents to the survey above were dissatisfied with Mahmoud Abbas (the president of the Palestinian Authority), and 65% believed that the Palestinian Authority is a burden to the Palestinian people. A recent poll conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) found that 75% of Palestinians interviewed said they expected a victory in which “Gaza repels the Israeli invasion,” thus granting them the ultimate self-determination – from the river to the sea.
On October 7, the State of Israel and world Jewry got a glimpse of what Palestinian self-determination really looks like. It looks like violently invading a country and annihilating people in the most horrifying and gruesome ways possible. Aspiring to conquer from the river to the sea calls not only for expelling Jews from their homeland, but for finishing the genocide the Nazis started in World War II – ironically something Israel is being accused of doing.
Palestinian self-determination means more indoctrination of young children, taking us further away from lasting peace and feeding the cycle of violence that defines this conflict. Palestinian self-determination means that having friends on the other side doesn’t matter and won’t evoke mercy. Palestinian self-determination looks like October 7. Over and over again.
The obstacles that are truly in the way of the peace process run deeper than any Western government can understand. While there are many variables preventing the everlasting compromise that the West claims to want, none are larger than the indoctrination of Palestinian children from a young age by their “education” system, fueling hatred of Jews throughout the Palestinian community and eliminating the possibility of good faith negotiation. While Israel is not perfect, our children are not taught to rejoice when the “enemy” is killed and we are not raised to believe that martyrdom is the pinnacle of life’s achievements. Like the innocent Naama Levy, many Israelis are taught to love and to aspire towards peace. The gut wrenching irony and depravity of her kidnapping shows that the other side doesn’t want what we do, and perhaps never has. As Golda Meir said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
Photo Caption: A drawing of Naama Levy made by Zeev Engelmayer
Photo Credit: Chloe Baker