Council on Foreign Relations blog, citing PMW material, concludes that "peace is far away"

It is Israel’s Memorial Day today, a good context in which to note that still now–in 2014, and after months of negotiations led by Secretary of State John Kerry–the Palestinian Authority refuses to stop glorifying terror.

Palestinian Media Watch reports on the latest of the endless series of PA actions that do this. On August 9, 2001, at about 2 pm, a suicide bomber named Izz Al-Din Al-Masri blew himself up in the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, killing 15 people–7 of them children, as might have been predicted in a pizza parlor–and wounding 130. It’s hard to think of a better definition of a merciless terror attack than this. Al-Masri’s remains were transferred from Israel to the PA last week, so what did the PA do?

Honor him as a fallen hero. He received an official military funeral, and official government TV called him a “Shahid,” meaning martyr.

This is the kind of abuse covered by the pallid term “incitement.” While it continues as official PA policy, while Palestinian society is taught that blowing up a restaurant filled with parents and children is an act worth celebrating, it must seem to Israelis that peace is far away.

Elliott Abrams is senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House.