Mark Silverberg

Inside the bustling new Hamas television headquarters in Gaza, Saraa Barhoum, 11, the sweet face of Tomorrow's Pioneers, an immensely popular hour-long Hamas television children's show says she wants to be a doctor. If she can't, she'd be proud to become a martyr. 'Of course,' Saraa says, 'it's something to be proud of. Every Palestinian hopes to be a martyr.' One can dismiss this as the ranting of a brainwashed child, but how does one dismiss the fact that this is the most popular children's TV show in Gaza? How does one dismiss Palestinians sending nine year-old children to retrieve used Kassam missile launchers knowing they will be killed by Israeli retaliatory responses? How does one explain a demonology expressed by editorial cartoons in the Palestinian press that portray Israelis as ogres who devour babies and draw on medieval and Nazi imagery? How does one dismiss 'martyrdom' operations conducted by children or a society that has revived the pagan ritual of human sacrifice for Allah? How does one dismiss stories, poems, riddles, puzzles, magazines and even video games that incite Palestinian youth to jihad, martyrdom and the glorification of terrorist operations? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that there is a serious pathology loose in Palestinian society - one that is not subject to negotiation, discussion or accommodation as we would like to believe. ....