Hate, Terror, and the Holy Places in Jerusalem

We all know that from the time they emerged as a political group claiming a separate identity from other Arabs, the Palestinians have never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity. Now, they’re ignoring the valuable political wisdom that when you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Their hole grows greater as a result of the falsehoods and perverted remarks by Palestinian leaders who ignore or defend the increasing terrorist attacks by Palestinians against Israeli civilians. A number have recently occurred. On October 1, 2015 two Israelis, husband and wife, were killed by rifle and handgun in their car in a terrorist attack, a drive-by shooting on the road near Elon Moreh in the West Bank. Their four children also in the car were only slightly injured.

The leadership of the terrorist group Hamas, as expected, did not offer an apology for this horrendous murder. Instead it praised the murderers as individuals responsible for “heroic resistance,” and called on Hamas members to carry out more attacks on Israel. Later, the leadership of Fatah did accept responsibility for the murders. They were carried out by members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, Fatah.

On October 3, 2015 Palestinians carried out two terror attacks in Jerusalem. One assailant killed two Israelis by stabbing, one of whom was 41 and the other who was 21. The latter’s wife and two-year-old child were wounded. The assailant was a 19-year-old law student at Al-Quds University and was a member of Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group that is financed by Iran.

In his Facebook message of October 2, 2015 the assailant, named Muhannad Halabi, had written that the “third Intifada had begun,” because of what was happening to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He was implementing the hateful inflammatory presentation of the Palestinian leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas who lauded “every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem.”

In the second incident on October 3, an assailant stabbed an Israeli teenager near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. Both of the Palestinian assailants of October 3 were killed after their attacks.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas on October 4, 2015 kept digging its black hole of infamy. It blamed the innocent victims, condemning Israel for its policy of “escalation” for killing the two murderers, and criticized its raids in searching for the killers of the October 1 murders.

In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 30, 2015 Mahmoud Abbas sounded the “alarm about the grave dangers of what is happening in Jerusalem.” The trouble is that the bells were ringing a different tone from what he said.

He did not hear the sound of the killings by the Palestinian terrorists. Instead, he spoke of the Israeli groups committing “repeated systematic incursions” against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He told the UN delegates that the “brutal Israeli force” was imposing its plans to undermine the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries and that these actions would convert the conflict from a political to a religious one, thus creating what he called an explosive situation in Jerusalem and in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Even the UN delegates, many not friendly to Israel, must have been aware that it was the Palestinians who had made the conflict a religious one and created the explosion. They knew that on September 16, 2015, Abbas had blessed Ribat, the Palestinian religious conflict/war to protect land that claimed to be Islamic. The delegates also knew that Abbas omitted to say that it was the Palestinians themselves who were desecrating the mosque and their own Muslim religion by barring themselves inside it while throwing stones and fireworks at the Israel police who were trying to keep order on the Temple Mount.

The international community must challenge the preposterous lie that Israel is planning to harm or destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is disturbing that this lie, absurd as it is, has been accepted by Islamic leaders in a number of Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia (Sheikh Saleh Bin Hamid), and Lebanon (Abd Al-Latif Daryan), and by Palestinian supporters elsewhere.

It is not surprising that the familiar digger of holes, Christian PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, who for some unaccountable reason is called on by CNN and other TV networks for comments on the Middle East, should state on September 15, 2015, that “Israel was playing with fire for its desecration of the holy places.” Why does CNN take seriously a PLO spokesperson who engages in the fantasy of the Israeli “Judaization scheme to annex the Al-Aqsa Mosque and its surroundings?” At least CNN might know that Jews cannot even pray on the Temple Mount where the Mosque is located.

Any hopes that Palestinians are preparing for peace with the State of Israel are dispelled by their educational programs, that in general do not promote reconciliation or normalization with Israel.  Schools continue to be named after terrorists who are celebrated as role models. Unfortunately, the educational process is also instilling attitudes of anti-Semitism, with Palestinian children being instructed to honor Hitler and being intellectually poisoned by reciting that Jews are descended from monkeys and pigs, and are the “most evil of creations.”

The Palestinian Authority opposes or prevents opportunities for Israelis and Palestinians to cooperate, whether it is in sporting events for children, football games, or women’s groups. It was saddening that the Palestinian Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in August 2015 condemned the music festival at Aix-en-Provence in France for inviting an Israeli band to play there. Perhaps even Said, the bitter opponent of Israel, would not have agreed with the Conservatory that the performance of the Israeli band was “intended to promote Zionist ideology.”

The international community must try to stop the Palestinians from digging ever more holes, and inform them that Israel, the “Zionists,” are not declaring war on the Al-Aqsa Mosque nor on Islamic identity. It is not the fault of Israel that the Islamic world is presently engaged in a state of enmity, separation, and terrorist sectarian war.

First published in the American Thinker.