By FRIMET ROTH

Jun. 6, 2002

Last month, three US Congressmen flew to Israel on a morale-boosting mission. Among their encounters was an evening spent with several Israeli parents of terror victims. My husband and I told them about Malki, our 15-year-old daughter who was murdered in the Sbarro bombing last August. "Americans support you and feel your pain," they assured us, and I wanted to be convinced.

But it wasn't easy. Back at home, a recent New Yorker article about the Palestinian Authority's Sari Nusseiba referred to him as a "voice of restraint." It related his view of suicide bombings "People are so desperate, so crazy, so resentful, that it is natural to expect more of this." This is restraint?

On television, I heard American journalists stoking the ebbing Jenin fire. Arafat had already back-tracked on the massacre claim and reduced the death toll from 500 to 56. But he was now crying "war crimes" and the media gamely joined him. Of course, with Israel's losses at 23, it looked most like a straight-out battle. But, sssh... Using that term would mean apologizing.

Israelis have grown accustomed to biased news reports. I have even become inured to coverage that minimizes the tragedy of Malki's death.

Yet reading the latest issue of New York Magazine my armor cracked. I learned of American Jews who took to the streets with Palestinians; Jews who claim to care about Israel and embrace Judaism. I saw their "End the Occupation" and "Sharon = Hitler" placards.

I realize how easy it must be to judge a cause by its supporters, rather than on its own merits. After all, many pro-Palestinians happen also to be committed to fighting a myriad of worthy battles globalization, child labor, domestic violence, animal abuse, sexual and racial discrimination, environmental pollution. Could they be so wrong on this one?

Well, simply put yes. Many of them have been deprived of information that is readily accessible to us here. For instance, are they aware that the Jenin accusations are just the latest in a long line of libels? A previous case arose in 1983 when droves of Palestinian schoolgirls fainted in class and were rushed to hospital. The Israelis stood accused of having poisoned and thereby sterilized them in order to stem the Palestinian demographic growth. After its investigation disclosed no evidence whatever of poisoning, Israel concluded that this was an episode of mass hysteria, something not unheard of among teen girls. By then, all of the nearly 1,000 "victims" had been released from hospital, healthy and well.

Nevertheless, the uproar persisted. Palestinian doctors echoed the diagnosis of poisoning. The US ambassador to the UN even leveled similar accusations on her government's behalf. International organizations entered the fray from the start and proved unstoppable. Red Cross representatives conducted their own investigation. They unearthed no evidence of poisoning either, but an ambiguous report was the best they could produce. While it raised no anti-Israel allegations, it also failed to declare Israel innocent.

Fifteen years later, Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, concocted a fresh libel of her own, which she unveiled at a ceremony in Hillary Clinton's honor. Israeli poisoning by depleted uranium was causing cancer among her people, she claimed. While the speech won Suha a kiss from the First Lady, the libel never really took off. But in damaging Israel's image, it achieved its goal.

Libels are an adjunct weapon intended to clear the way for terrorist attacks. They grab headlines and depict Israel as evil. Their eventual disproof, on the other hand, goes unnoted. The Palestinians rely on them in order to practice their barbarism with impunity. And little wonder. The hundreds of Israeli intifada victims are evidence that the strategy works.

Today I received a new book published by Israel's Ministry of Education. It is entitled "Target Israeli Children Scores of Israeli Children Have Been Deliberately Murdered by Palestinian Terrorists". The booklet includes my own Malki's photo and a few lines about her. But with a toll of 70 children killed and 720 wounded in this war so far, space was limited. "Malki was filled with joie de vivre and was liked by all her friends," it says. But it fails to mention her passion for classical music and the magical way she played the flute. Nor does it note that she taught herself to play guitar and lugged one everywhere. Her friends tell us that she loved to pull it out and initiate folk-singing anytime and anyplace.

MALKI'S MURDER has been vividly re-enacted by Palestinian children. A video-tape, repeatedly aired on television, shows them enthusiastically destroying a Sbarro replica emblazoned with the words "Sbarro" and "Kosher" in Hebrew.

Until the Palestinian school system undergoes fundamental change, there can be no peace. As long as their theater of terror, like the Sbarro reenactment, is an encouraged activity for youth, my own children will not be safe. The steady supply of suicide bombers many of them mere teenagers will continue so long as Palestinian Arab leaders offer their people nothing but empty promises.

But positive change is nowhere on the horizon. The old priorities seem more entrenched than ever. A case in point the Palestinian Authority wish-list submitted this month to the European Union. According to a report in the German weekly Die Welt, high on the list was the sum of $ 20 million (out of a total of nearly two billion) to purchase weapons for the Palestinian police. Funds for health and education, the article pointed out, were low priority items.

Suicide bombers are being nurtured by the more than 50 percent of Palestinians who still support this tactic. They do not sprout "naturally" as Sari Nusseiba would have us believe. Only after the Palestinians decide to channel more money into instruments of music instead of into weapons of war will we see progress and that grant they are about to receive from the Europeans would be a good place to start.

To those protesting Jews, let me say this Much is in your hands. The Palestinians need your support to continue their reign of terror. They are relying on you to believe their libels. Your empathy with the Palestinian-Arab cause gives them carte blanche to murder more civilian Israelis. Please pause and consider this before you next reach for your placards and head for another anti-Israel rally. Then perhaps, one day, children on both sides will devote themselves to music and friendship the way my precious Malki once did.