Baby bomber backs Bush plan

The controversial image of a wide-eyed toddler provides unlikely support for the Bush initiative on the Middle East.

That photograph, distributed by the Israeli army and published around the world, shows a chubby-cheeked baby no more than 18 months old, wearing a red Hamas headband, two bandoleers of bullets, and a tiny explosive belt – the full regalia of a homicide bomber.

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The Israelis found the picture in a photo album in the West Bank city of Hebron, while searching the home of a wanted Palestinian militant. At first, local authorities dismissed the image as incendiary fraud. "This is cheap Israeli propaganda," declared Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. "These photos can easily be forged and distributed, and this has been done by the Israeli media several times before."

Within 24 hours, however, Palestinian leaders acknowledged the photo's authenticity and the child's uncle, filmed in low light to conceal his identity, even participated in an interview with British television. "It was originally taken during a rally or a graduation party at the university," he explained. A cousin of the child suggested that the family dressed the baby in the outfit of a homicide bomber simply "for fun." He told reporters: "What's all the fuss about? It was all a joke!"

Of course, most parents outside the death-obsessed culture of Palestinian terrorism might fail to see the humor in posing a toddler as a suicidal killer, but intifada "wit" often runs to the macabre. Last September, Hamas unveiled an exhibit at An Najah University, celebrating the homicide bombing at Jerusalem's Sbarro Pizza which killed 15 people, including six children. This "installation art" honored the Qassami Brigades (the Hamas military wing behind the bombing) with a replica of the devastated restaurant – complete with shattered tables splashed with fake blood, severed body parts dangling from the ceiling, and a mannequin of the dead bomber holding a Koran. A banner above the grotesque re-creation proudly proclaimed: "Qassami Pizza is More Delicious."

Palestinian officials not only indulge such repugnant humor, but try to blame the depravity on Israel. Concerning the baby bomber, Labor Minster Ghassan Khatib told the Associated Press that Israel had distributed the photo to "tell the world that the Palestinians are teaching their children how to hate Israel and how to act against Israel – and I just want to say that is correct." While insisting that he personally opposes suicide bombings, Khatib explained that they represent one "unfortunate but inevitable" result of Israeli policy.

If bloodthirsty attacks on women and children are indeed "inevitable," then Palestinians and their leaders bear no responsibility for shaping their offspring into suicidal mass killers. This argument turns individual Palestinians into something less than human – no more capable of controlling their own murderous instincts than wild beasts.

No wonder that President Bush unequivocally declared that progress toward peace remains impossible until Palestinians reject such logic, and "elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror."

The picture of the toddler terrorist, however, suggests some of the difficulties facing the U.S. in establishing new leadership. The president suggests that international aid could transform the situation by addressing the appalling poverty afflicting Palestinians. Yet a close examination of the photograph of the child in his "martyr" costume shows the cute, cuddly, matching baby outfit, and brand new toddler tennis shoes, you'd expect to find in a middle-class American family. The very presence of a camera, capturing color images in crisp detail, shows that the Palestinian home in question already enjoyed options all-but-unknown to the half the world's population rightly described as "the wretched of the earth."

In fact, United Nations' figures show that the Palestinian Authority, buoyed by generous U.S. and European aid, enjoyed one of the most rapidly rising standards of living anywhere in the Arab world until the current intifada deliberately disrupted the peace process and wrecked the economy. The Palestinians, in other words, chose mass murder over making money, and they might well do so again.

In demonstrating this preference, they honor an ancient but evil tradition. Despite skepticism from modern anthropologists and historians, Palestinians claim descent from the Canaanites of biblical times – particularly the warlike arch-enemies of the ancient Hebrews, the Philistines, who inspired the Greek name for the region, "Palestina." Among favorite forms of idol worship practiced by inhabitants of Canaan nearly 3,000 years ago (and repeatedly condemned in the Bible), local populations built a savage cult around the fierce deity Moloch, who demanded the fiery human sacrifice of innocent children.

Too many of today's Palestinians embrace the same cruel values, as mothers celebrate the death of their own offspring who joyously blow themselves up in order to slaughter strangers, and fathers scorn opportunities for prosperity in their obscene eagerness to sacrifice yet another generation to the barbaric flames.