The notebook is open and the hand is writing. In the shadow of history being written these days, once again, for the who-knows-how-many times, Palestinians are taking to the streets of Nablus, Gaza, Ramallah, and Hebron to dance on blood and celebrate the murder of Jews. Every Iranian missile that sows death and destruction here, every building that collapses on its residents, fills their hearts with joy, and as has been their custom for many years, they honk horns, launch fireworks, shriek with glee, and distribute candies and baklava.
The Palestinians danced on rooftops when Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at us during the first Gulf War (1991), and also on September 11, 2001, after nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered in the world's greatest terror attack. Palestinians also celebrated the "small" events – when five people were murdered in Bnei Brak, they celebrated at Damascus Gate, and in Jenin and refugee camps in Lebanon (March 2022). After the murder of seven people in Jerusalem's Neve Yaakov neighborhood a few years ago, residents in Hebron were beside themselves with joy.
The celebration of that specific murder also spilled over to the Lebanese refugee camp Nahr al-Bared, where masses took to the streets. Palestinians in Jordan also joined the dance of hatred after the murder of three Israelis at the Allenby crossing last September. Even in Ramallah, capital of the "moderate" Palestinian Authority, they celebrated the murder of two Israelis on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv three years ago.
The examples are countless and space is limited, but the bottom line is that many Palestinians, not to mention Palestinian society, dance on Jewish blood, and often also on "Western" blood – dancing on blood literally. Not as a metaphor or image – but as a disturbed dance, devoid of morality and without restraint.
Israeli Arabs
On the margins, this barbarism also spills over to a small part of Israeli Arabs. Just in recent days, they celebrated in Umm al-Fahm, in Kafr Kanna, and in Silwan the fall of Iranian missiles in Bat Yam and Rishon LeZion. This happens to Israeli Arabs who define themselves as "Palestinians" and explain that they are not really "Israeli Arabs," but rather "Arabs living in Israel."
Palestinians rejoice even when Iranian missiles fall near them or among their houses. The hatred runs so deep. Incidentally, the Jewish song "May your village burn" after the Iranian missile hit the village of Tamra, and the death of four women there, is equally reprehensible, but in the Jewish sector, it is exceptional, and does not constitute a phenomenon.
This accounting with the Palestinians must be done mainly for ourselves, because in a month, or half a year, or a year, when the country may be quiet, again people will rise from among us – they never tire – who will speak to us about "shared life," "in the shared land," with the "neighbor" and the "partner," and about "the two-state solution," as if October 7 never happened, as if the axis of evil – of which the Palestinians, as a population and as a society, are an integral part – was not severely damaged.
Open a file
So, despite the fact that Palestinian culture sanctifies blood and glorifies murderers, this has developed a tradition of many years – we must not tire of dealing with it. Open a file and preserve in it the documentation from these days of war, and from hundreds and thousands more attacks in which families, elderly people, women, and children were murdered, whose deaths brought Palestinians so much satisfaction.
We probably cannot prevent this phenomenon, it is too deep and widespread. Israel will not establish a thought police and is not capable of controlling such fires of hatred-joy on such a scale. But what is possible is to record this before us in bright letters so that we do not forget and do not forgive, and especially so that we do not delude ourselves again with illusions about our "partner."
