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Understanding the Language of Murder
(Daily Telegraph-Australia) Alex Ryvchin - Palestinian cleric Muhammad Salah stands at the pulpit of his mosque in Gaza clutching a large kitchen knife. His hand repeatedly comes down in a violent stabbing motion as he delivers a very specific command: "Form stabbing squads. We don't want just a single stabber. Attack in threes and fours. Some should restrain the victim, while the others attack him with axes and butcher knives. Cut them into body parts." He lists Israeli cities where they are to strike: Afula, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, two Palestinians board a bus, one opens fire, the other begins hacking at passengers. We have seen images of an Israeli man with a knife lodged in the base of his skull. A clearer connection between incitement and the act could hardly be conceived. Israelis are coping, as they always have. Meanwhile, a sick and corroded Palestinian society, reared on the sermons of maniacal preachers and increasingly detached from reality, descends into an orgy of criminal violence which is destined to turn in on itself. The writer is public affairs director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.