In May 2001, teenagers Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran were kidnapped by Arab terrorists, taken to a cave near their homes in Tekoa, Israel, and savagely beaten to death with rocks.

Koby’s mother Sherri Mandell has a powerful op-ed piece in today’s Jerusalem Post about the summer camp named for her son—and how it differs from the death cult summer camps of the Palestinian Authority: Hate is the choice we reject.

TOO many Palestinians teach their children to translate their pain into anger and vengeance. And though many argue that the Palestinians are powerless and in despair and thus forced to resort to vengeance and violence, the short-lived hudna showed us that Palestinian powerlessness is a myth.

The Palestinians can control their so-called desperation. Their calls for vengeance, their hatred is a choice. And their leaders keep choosing hate. You can see that hate expressed blatantly in Palestinian summer camps.

What is supposed to be a time for innocent adventure is instead manipulated into a period of political and moral indoctrination of the worst kind. And it is the children who are being manipulated; some would say, abused.

Camp songs might be dismissed as irrelevant, yet if the Palestinian children are singing songs of hate, those are the songs that will fill these children’s hearts for decades.

There is a chasm between the Israeli and Palestinian cultures, and though some want to ascribe it to politics, the tragic truth is that no political solution can dampen the flames of hatred that have been kindled in Palestinian society. The hate is too deep, too insistent, and too accepted.

Few journalists want to touch the story of Palestinian hate. Major media like The New York Times and The Washington Post avoid our camp - perhaps because it reveals the deep- seated difference in the two cultures.

Israelis are trying to process their grief - the Palestinians are exploiting theirs.

UPDATE: Here’s another moving piece from Sherri Mandel: Why We Stay In Israel. (Hat tip: selpaw.)