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A Culture that Celebrates Kidnapping Is Not Fit for Statehood
(Wall Street Journal) Bret Stephens - The mother of Amer Abu Aysha, one of the accused kidnappers of the Israeli teens, told Israel's Channel 10 news: "If he did the kidnapping, I'll be proud of him." What kind of society produces such mothers who cheer on their boys to blow themselves up or murder the children of their neighbors? I'm not the only Western journalist to encounter the unsettling reality of a society sunk into a culture of hate. I have yet to meet the Israeli mother who wants to raise her boys to become kidnappers and murderers. As for the Palestinians and their inveterate sympathizers in the West, perhaps they should note that a culture that too often openly celebrates martyrdom and murder is not fit for statehood, and that making excuses for that culture only makes it more unfit. Postwar Germany put itself through a process of moral rehabilitation that began with a recognition of what it had done. Palestinians who want a state should do the same.