When Israel bombed a few high-rise buildings in Gaza shortly before Hamas finally accepted the ceasefire that had been offered for weeks, anti-Israel activists took to comparing what happened in Gaza to the terrorist attacks in New York on 9/11. Writing at his Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah claimed that “the overall death toll in Gaza since Israel’s bombardment began on 7 July proportionately far exceeds those attacks” and – on the basis of whatever mathematical exercises he was doing – he concluded that “Gaza has experienced about 125 ‘9/11s’ since 7 July” because “Israel has dropped the equivalent of an atomic bomb on Gaza.”
In a second piece on the same subject, Abunimah presented an “infographic” entitled “The Five Stages of Grief” that supposedly “reflects on the shared experiences of grief of Americans [after 9/11] and Palestinians in Gaza, while contrasting the stages of healing and recovery.”
If so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists have the chutzpah to make this comparison, it’s only fair to recall that the Palestinians were among those who cheered and celebrated on 9/11. While there were later attempts to claim that this was not true and while the Palestinian Authority made every effort to suppress reports of Palestinian jubilation, the respected Pew Research Center monitored Muslim public opinion about Al Qaeda and bin Laden for a decade after 9/11, and the survey results document that throughout this decade, Palestinians remained bin Laden’s most ardent admirers.
These results are all the more shocking in view of the fact that participants in the survey were asked if they had “confidence” in bin Laden “to do the right thing in world affairs.” Appallingly, in 2003, almost three out of every four Palestinians expressed “confidence” in bin Laden “to do the right thing in world affairs” and every third Palestinian would still feel this way shortly before bin Laden’s death in 2011.
Pew surveys also show that Palestinians have long been the most extremist Muslim public when it comes to support for terrorism and suicide bombings. As noted in the relevant survey published exactly a year ago:
“Support for suicide bombing and other violence aimed at civilian targets is most widespread in the Palestinian territories, with 62% of Muslims saying that such attacks are often or sometimes justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Support is strong both in Hamas-ruled Gaza (64%) and the Fatah-governed West Bank (60%).”
This puts the results of a of Palestinian public opinion in perspective. While the survey documents a dramatic spike in support for Hamas, many other results simply reflect the always high support for terrorism among Palestinians. Thus, the survey shows not only overwhelming support for the launching of rockets from Gaza, but also widespread support for the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teens that preceded the recent fighting between Hamas and Israel. According to the poll,
“57% of the public say that they supported the June 2014 kidnapping of the three Israelis in the West Bank when that incident took place. Support for the kidnapping reached 67% in the Gaza Strip and only 45% in the West Bank.
Similarly, a majority of 54% supported the killing of the three kidnapped Israelis and 42% opposed it. Support for the killing reached 69% in the Gaza Strip and only 42% in the West Bank. 52% of the West Bankers opposed the killing of the three kidnapped Israelis.”
But the poll also shows that Palestinians feel they should be allowed to engage in terrorism, kidnappings and killings without having to face the repercussions: fully 79 percent of Palestinians “believe Israel was responsible for the eruption of the Gaza war.”
Unsurprisingly, anti-Israel activists like Abunimah push the same ludicrous notions. The “infographic” posted at Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada that suggests that New Yorkers fared incomparably better after 9/11 than Gazan’s after their many “9/11s” includes the complaint that “Palestinians are stuck in a repeating cycle, they cannot heal, nor can they accept the continuation of Israeli violence and blockade.” The statement that “Palestinians are stuck in a repeating cycle” is actually one of the few true pieces of information conveyed in this graphic, but as so many surveys show, this vicious cycle is entirely the Palestinians’ own making. When almost three quarters of a population have confidence that Osama bin Laden would “do the right thing in world affairs” and almost 80 percent believe a war that resulted in more than 2000 dead, more than 10 000 injured and considerable destruction was a “victory” for the terrorist organization that started it, there is unfortunately no basis for any constructive development.