The "Big Lie" technique of propaganda traces, most agree, back to Nazi Germany. According to Hitler and Goebbels, if one simply and baldly states a big enough lie and repeats it often enough, it'll eventually enter into the collective consciousness and become accepted as fact.

It seems that the Palestinians learned very well the technique of their old allies. Two stunning examples of this came to my attention recently.

First up, the world touted the "Prisoners' Document," a so-called "peace plan" put together by a group of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails for various and sundry terrorism-related charges. This, the media told us, could be a great breakthrough; it was favored by Hamas, and contained a recognition of Israel's right to exist.

But that lasted only as long as it took people with two neurons to rub together to get their hands on the actual text and read it. Then it was downgraded to an "implicit recognition" of Israel. THAT spin held right up until Hamas itself came out and said openly uh-uh, nope, no way, it don't say that.

What the "Prisoners' Document" was, plain and simply, was a proposed peace agreement betweeen Hamas and Fatah. In essence, it said "let's stop killing each other and go back to killing the Jews." The peace-at-any-price crowd saw "peace plan" and stopped reading and thinking right there.

But that was mere abuse of semantics. let's go on to something a bit more substantive.

The ever-worthy Captain Ed noted that Hamas, greatly exercised over Israel's extreme overreaction to being invaded, its soldiers killed, and one corporal kidnapped, is threatening even more violence if Israel doesn't back down. They say that if Israel doesn't comply with their demands and release a whole bunch of prisoners, not only will it kill Corporal Gilad Shalit, but they'll escalate their attacks and go after previously-untargeted places such as schools and hospitals.

This struck me as odd when I read it. As I recall, according to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists, all Israelis are legitimate military targets. The rationale they use is that since Israel has universal military conscription, every single Israeli is a soldier -- either past, present, or future. That's how they justify shooting a pregnant woman and her four children driving on a highway.

And I was right. Not only have schools been hit by Qassam rockets in the past, but there has been a planned attack on an Israeli hospital.

Wafa al-Biss is a Palestinian woman who suffered severe burns on her face and neck in a cooking accident. She was being treated for free at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba by Israeli doctors. Then, one day barely a year ago, when she was trying to cross the border for more treatments, she provoked the interest of some of the guards. They forced her to remove her outer clothing. Then, when she realized she was not going to get away, she tried to detonate the bomb sewed into her underwear. It failed, and along with it her dream of blowing herself up inside the hospital, killing the sick, the injured, the infirm, the newborn infants, and most of all the medical staff who were trying to repair her scars out of the goodness of their hearts.

Accounts of the Wafa al-Biss story:
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So, Hamas is saying they'll go after schools and hospitals? Nothing new there. The real challenge would be to find some atrocity, some obscenity that they haven't tried yet. Sending retarded children as suicide bombers? Check. Surrounding terrorists attack position with children? Check. Brutally murdering a pregnant woman and her children, shooting her in the stomach and the children in the head at point-blank range? Check. Blowing up religious gatherings? Check. Invading and desecrating Christian holy places? Check. Using WMDs (poison gas) in attacks? Unconfirmed, but claimed.

After the Beslan school massacre in Chechnya, I thought long and hard about what would be the next Islamic atrocity. What would they do next to top the obscenity of the school attack, and I came up with "hospitals." Not even a year later, Wafa al-Biss tried to fulfill that one.

Someone else can try to figure out the next obscenity. I've had it.

My sympathy for the Palestinians is, admittedly, very, very low. But if they start deliberately targeting schools and hospitals, and succeeding, that may diminish and vanish entirely.

I've lived through 38 New Hampshire winters. I am quite familiar with the concept of "below zero," and my sympathies just might end up looking like an outdoor thermometer in Colebrook in January.