PA daily op-ed: Abbas’ rejects youth knife attacks; remarks will “not find favor” with Palestinian supporters of violent youth uprising
Headline: "Abbas' children – on the future's path, and not as firewood"
Excerpt of op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Committee member and regular columnist for the official PA daily
"President Mahmoud Abbas' words about childhood and protecting the children of Palestine do not find favor in their eyes, and his firm standpoint regarding their being pushed into a bloody conflict will also not find favor in their eyes, as they cannot see themselves except within the [children's] spilled blood, and they are not able to exalt their names except by climbing ladders whose rungs are made of their (i.e., the children’s) soft bones. The professional (swindler) [parentheses in source] 'revolutionaries' and 'patriots'' arrows are beating down upon the president after each opportunity at which he repeats his standpoint regarding the pushing of Palestinian children into the furnace of violent conflicts. Those who opened fire on the president after his interview on Israeli TV Channel 2, after he said that the Palestinian security forces are careful to check children's backpacks and confiscate knives that one of them might be carrying, so that they will not be needlessly killed at Israeli checkpoints… ignore the moral collapse in most of the countries of the world, and are trying to convince us that whoever sees the children of Palestine in the 'Israeli occupation's holocaust' will rise against the state that defies international law. This is while no one refers to the tens of thousands of pictures of the children of Syria and Iraq…
It is easy for those whose feelings have dried up as a result of the conditions of the environment and the false inherited social and cultural climate to see children's brains spraying out of their heads, or to see tragic pictures of young children helplessly bleeding from deep wounds in their bodies, after being denied any assistance. The brains of these people are not capable of finding a way for [the children] to live, and therefore they see their death as the solution, which will allow them to steal the position of ‘deputy hero,' the child, the innocent victim, they turn into a hero, and then they create the image of the deputy and don it, after being struck with the intoxication of glorifying the 'tragedy.' There is no worse tragedy than to desire the death of children…
Gentlemen, you must know that the primary mission of President Mahmoud Abbas, and of every leader or ruler leading his people to life, freedom, and independence, is to protect the future. Otherwise, what is the benefit of the ways and means of the entire national struggle? And why do you not see that the future is in the children of our land? Or do you think that they are born to serve as firewood for the flames of furnaces of personal and party projects?"
Excerpt of op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Committee member and regular columnist for the official PA daily
"President Mahmoud Abbas' words about childhood and protecting the children of Palestine do not find favor in their eyes, and his firm standpoint regarding their being pushed into a bloody conflict will also not find favor in their eyes, as they cannot see themselves except within the [children's] spilled blood, and they are not able to exalt their names except by climbing ladders whose rungs are made of their (i.e., the children’s) soft bones. The professional (swindler) [parentheses in source] 'revolutionaries' and 'patriots'' arrows are beating down upon the president after each opportunity at which he repeats his standpoint regarding the pushing of Palestinian children into the furnace of violent conflicts. Those who opened fire on the president after his interview on Israeli TV Channel 2, after he said that the Palestinian security forces are careful to check children's backpacks and confiscate knives that one of them might be carrying, so that they will not be needlessly killed at Israeli checkpoints… ignore the moral collapse in most of the countries of the world, and are trying to convince us that whoever sees the children of Palestine in the 'Israeli occupation's holocaust' will rise against the state that defies international law. This is while no one refers to the tens of thousands of pictures of the children of Syria and Iraq…
It is easy for those whose feelings have dried up as a result of the conditions of the environment and the false inherited social and cultural climate to see children's brains spraying out of their heads, or to see tragic pictures of young children helplessly bleeding from deep wounds in their bodies, after being denied any assistance. The brains of these people are not capable of finding a way for [the children] to live, and therefore they see their death as the solution, which will allow them to steal the position of ‘deputy hero,' the child, the innocent victim, they turn into a hero, and then they create the image of the deputy and don it, after being struck with the intoxication of glorifying the 'tragedy.' There is no worse tragedy than to desire the death of children…
Gentlemen, you must know that the primary mission of President Mahmoud Abbas, and of every leader or ruler leading his people to life, freedom, and independence, is to protect the future. Otherwise, what is the benefit of the ways and means of the entire national struggle? And why do you not see that the future is in the children of our land? Or do you think that they are born to serve as firewood for the flames of furnaces of personal and party projects?"