“As time passes, it becomes more and more obvious that the Palestinians learned from Israel that the return of the bodies causes the country to close ranks.”
Emotions run strong in the debate over the efficacy and legality of withholding Palestinian terrorists’ corpses from their families for timely burial.
MK Anat Berko (Likud), a criminologist and counter-terrorism expert on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, defends the practice as an effective deterrent against funerals being used as a propaganda tool to recruit more killers.
“As time passes, it becomes more and more obvious that the Palestinians learned from Israel that the return of the bodies causes the country to close ranks,” Berko wrote in a piece titled, “Dead Terrorists and Palestinian National Imagery,” published by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The Palestinian leadership has cynically focused on the quick return of terrorists’ bodies as a “new national theme” to garner international support and sympathy, Berko said.
“In the foreseeable future, it will be integrated into the ideological indoctrination of children and adults subjected to the propaganda machine that serves Palestinian terrorism and its death industry of martyrs,” she wrote.
“The Palestinian leadership is attempting to turn a rabble of internecine terrorist organizations into a political entity groping its way toward a uniform identity and common narrative, which will help it meet the international criteria of a ‘people,’ as understood by the civilized world.”
To this end, Berko said, Palestinians go to great lengths to treat dead terrorists as celebrated freedom fighters, instead of depraved killers who target innocent noncombatants.
“The coffins are draped in flags to lend them the air of fallen soldiers, instead of calling them terrorists who died blowing up innocent people,” she wrote. Indeed, according to Berko, Palestinian families who receive relatives’ bodies are used by the “Palestinian propaganda machine, which is working day and night to stock its arsenals with potential martyrs who will murder Israeli civilians and glorify death and self-sacrifice.”
Former east Jerusalem portfolio holder and Meretz city councilman in the capital, Dr. Meir Margalit, denounced the practice as antithetical to Judaism, and a political weapon arming Palestinian killers. “I am secular, but I have to say that this is against Judaism’s philosophy,” he said on Thursday. “In Judaism you cannot hold bodies as a device for political gains. Secondly, people who hate Israel become even more extremist against the country because this is a kind of behavior that criminals carry out.”
While conceding that Hamas and Hezbollah routinely withhold Jews’ bodies as an inhumane means of bargaining, he contended that the government should not lower itself to that level of barbarism.
Moreover, although there is no authoritative data on its efficacy, Margalit asserts that the policy fuels a new generation of killers. “This will not reduce the number of terrorists; it will increase the number of people who want to attack Israel,” he said.
Although delaying funerals and ensuring limited attendance may prevent immediate violence, the strategy is short-sighted, Margalit said.
“Even if they block people from going [to funerals] held at night [as part of Israel’s conditions for releasing the bodies], the terrorists are still considered ‘shaheed’ [martyred] – so they will go to the family’s house and hold another ceremony a week later, so what is the difference?” he asked.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post