Sbarro and my Palestinian moment

The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is a microcosm of the worldwide struggle between Judeo-Christian civilization and Islam. Even before I was a Christian, I found the tactics employed by the Palestinians against the Israelis repulsive. Airline hijacking, suicide bombing, taking hostages, and attacks targeting Jewish civilians have long been the staple of Palestinian 'diplomacy'. Palestinian culture was infested with anti-Semitism. Even the public face of Palestinian culture was repulsive. Yasir Arafat was a transparently evil man.

But there was a moment of illumination when the Palestinian enterprise specifically, and the Islamic menace more generally, showed itself, in a way that made my blood run cold.

On August 9, 2001 a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt containing nails, nuts and bolts in a Sbarro's pizza restaurant in Jerusalem. It was crowded with families and children, which seemed to be the main reason it was chosen.

These are the dead; notice the ages and the families:

- Giora Balash, 60, of Brazil

- Zvika Golombek, 26, of Carmiel

- Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, 31, of the U.S.

- Tehila Maoz, 18, of Jerusalem

- Frieda Mendelsohn, 62, of Jerusalem

- Michal Raziel, 16, of Jerusalem

- Malka Roth, 15, of Jerusalem

- Mordechai Schijveschuurder, 43, of Neria

- Tzira Schijveschuurder, 41, of Neria

- Ra'aya Schijveschuurder, 14, of Neria

- Avraham Yitzhak Schijveschuurder, 4, of Neria

- Hemda Schijveschuurder, 2, of Neria

- Lily Shimashvili, 33, of Jerusalem

- Tamara Shimashvili, 8, of Jerusalem

- Yocheved Shoshan, 10, of Jerusalem

A family of five was murdered, among with ten other innocents, targeted for death merely because they were Jews.

But no, this bloodthirsty attack wasn't my Palestinian revelation. It was one of countless attacks on innocent Jews and others by Palestinian killers. Homicidal Islamic performance art.

This was my Palestinian revelation:


(From the Jewish Anti-Defamation League)

Palestinian Students Glorify Terrorism with Exhibit in Nablus

Palestinian students at Al Najah University walk under a replica of a Sbarro pizza restaurant sign, which reads "Kosher" in Hebrew

Palestinian students at al-Najah University in the city of Nablus marked the anniversary of the outbreak of Palestinian violence with an exhibition entitled "The Sbarro Cafe Exhibition," celebrating the August 9, 2001 suicide bombing of the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, which killed 15 people and wounded dozens more.

According to reports in the Israeli media and The Associated Press, the exhibition was comprised of a series of rooms. The Sbarro section of the exhibit was replete with body parts and pizza slices strewn across the room. The walls were painted red to represent spattered blood.

Another part of the exhibit glorified the "martyrs" who carry out suicide operations shown with a Koran and Kalishnikov in hand. A third section depicted a Palestinian behind a rock placed in front of a mannequin of an ultra-Orthodox Jew, with a taped recording broadcast on the loudspeakers saying "O believer, there is a Jewish man behind me. Come and kill him."

Note that al-Najah University isn't some terrorist store-front, a University of Phoenix for Nakba-fixated sociopaths. It's the leading university in the Palestinian Territory-- the Harvard of the West Bank. It educates the Palestinian elite. This hellish celebration of mass murder was put together by the savants of Palestinian culture. The Palestinian cognoscenti pulled out all the artistic stops. How to make the explosion fresh, how to draw the visitor into the celebration of Jewish carnage? The exhibit featured plastic severed Jewish limbs and flesh suspended by wires in the air, to simulate the exact moment of the explosion.

It was taken down, belatedly, at the direction of President Arafat (Palestinian Nobel Peace Laureate and father of airline hijacking) to assuage international outrage.

The exhibit was a searing indictment of Palestinian culture, and a searing indictment of Islam. The atrocity is not merely that some Palestinians kill, or that Islam condones killing, or that Islam condones killing of innocents, or that Islam condones killing Jews qua Jews. The atrocity is that Islam's elites revel in the murder of innocents. The evil is not merely that the Palestinian baby boom-- the suicidal sociopath rabble-- murders Jewish families. The evil is that the Islamic intelligentsia, the tenured Islamic educators, the revered Islamic visionaries celebrate-- celebrate-- the murder of Jews.

For the petroleum-greased Islamic propaganda machine, the al-Najah University Sbarro exhibit was a Freudian slip. A moment of startling clarity.

If you want to understand the moral rot in Islam, understand the Sbarro exhibit at al-Najah University.