Accessories to evil

The US and EU are conniving at murderous violence against Israeli Jews

By Melanie Phillips    May 9/21

Jerusalem tonight is very tense, with the planned Jewish celebrations of Jerusalem Day on Monday provoking fears of a further escalation of the recent violence that has been erupting in the city and which has rippled into attacks against southern Israel.

In the last few days, there have been violent Arab riots around Temple Mount, the Jerusalem religious site sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims; on Saturday night, a rocket was fired into southern Israel from Gaza, and two more were launched from there on Sunday; and incendiary balloons are once again also being fired from Gaza to attack Israeli civilians, their property and farmland, causing on Sunday some 39 fires, mainly in open areas.

On Friday, around 200 Arabs and 17 Israeli police officers were wounded when hundreds of Arabs rioted on Temple Mount. There were reports that, once again, the Al Aqsa mosque on the site was being used to store ammunition to use against Israelis.

On Saturday night, clashes continued around Temple Mount causing some 90 Arab injuries while Arabs rioted along the Gaza border fence with Israel, burning tyres and throwing explosives at Israeli troops before being dispersed by tear gas.

Times of Israel reported yesterday:

The central committee of Fatah, the movement led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, warned Saturday night that “the continuation of the settler attacks on the holy places and the homes of Palestinian residents, their expulsion and expansion of settlements — will lead to an all-out conflict in all the Palestinian territories.”

According to Channel 12, current discourse in the Palestinian street is of a “war for Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” The network also said Hamas is encouraging its West Bank operatives to carry out attacks there and inflame tensions.

In Britain and America, this is being mostly reported as Palestinian “resistance” to Israeli attempts to evict some 70 Palestinians Arabs from the contentious east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah — protests that have been met by what is being presented as brutal and heavy-handed reaction by Israeli security forces. Some seven Palestinians were injured in clashes there late on Sunday.

This media narrative is wickedly selective, twisted and misleading. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is currently in progress, is always a time of heightened tension. This has been deliberately stoked up this year through Palestinian incitement to violence, a situation exacerbated in turn by militant Jewish nationalists — and with the fuel to this murderous Arab fire supplied by none other than the White House.

The disorder started at the beginning of Ramadan with unprovoked Arab attacks on random Jews in Jerusalem’s streets and on its light rail — images disseminated on social media to incite further such attacks — and with Arab demonstrations against Israeli restrictions on attendance at Temple Mount. In response, hundreds of Jewish extremists marched through central Jerusalem chanting “Death to Arabs.”

This then escalated further.  The Times of Israel reports:

On Friday, three Palestinian gunmen opened fire on Border Police troops in the northern West Bank. Two of them were killed in the firefight and a third was critically injured. Israeli military officials said the three were en route to carry out a “major” terrorist attack on civilians inside Israel, with reports saying they were heading for Jerusalem.

Israeli yeshiva student Yehuda Guetta was murdered and two other students critically wounded in a Palestinian terror attack in samaria. Israeli security forces arrested a suspect in his killing.

On Wednesday, according to Palestinian health officials, 16-year-old Palestinian teenager Said Odeh was shot and killed by Israeli forces who said he was throwing Molotov cocktails at troops.

… In recent days, Palestinians have held demonstrations in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Over 70 Palestinian residents are threatened with eviction and could be replaced by right-wing Jewish nationalists, in a legal battle being waged in the courts. An Israeli court has ordered the families to leave, as the property was owned by a Jewish religious association before 1948. The Supreme Court is expected to convene on the families’ appeal on Monday.

Few of these facts have made it into the western media. What has also been omitted is the real cause of the Arab violence: the incitement by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. These organisations are currently fighting each other for political supremacy, with the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas having cancelled planned elections for fear that his Fatah organisation was about to lose.

This rivalry provides at least part of the context for the violence and incitement against Israel. As Palestinian Media Watch reports, in the run-up to Ramadan Palestinian Authority TV broadcast a video inciting terror 20 times between April 2 and 10, declaring:

We will defend Palestine with our bodies. Our bullets will make sounds of joy to herald signs of victory in order to cut off the invading occupiers, who came from across the sea and settled in our lands… My brother, throw my blood on the enemy like bullets.

Since then, Abbas and his Fatah outfit have been heavily ramping up the incitement against Israeli Jews with fabricated allegations of Israeli designs to take over Temple Mount rooted in fanatical Islamic paranoia.  Note: Israel is the only country in the Middle East to guarantee freedom of religious worship to all faiths. The people who are forbidden by Israeli law to pray on Temple Mount (out of fear of Muslim violence) are not the Muslims but the Jews, for whom the site of the ancient Temple is their holiest place. But said Abbas:

We salute our people in Jerusalem for their resolve against the Israeli plans to take control of the holy city.

Official PA TV broadcast the call by a Fatah official who urged young people to join the Jerusalem riots and “to defend the holy sites”.

An official PA daily said the riots were the

clearest heroic examples of defending the sanctity of the capital and its holy sites.

What western media also refuse to reveal is the unambiguous Palestinian targeting of Jews because they are Jews. As PMW reported:

…Abbas’ Fatah Movement further promoted the antisemitic nature of the riots by posting a video with scenes of Arabs kicking a Jew on the ground, Arabs assaulting an ultra-orthodox Jew, and other scenes of riots and fires in the streets. A narrator introduces the video with the words “There is an uprising and intifada in Jerusalem”.

Abbas’s Fatah (which the US, UK and EU insist is “moderate”) also praised the murderous attack on the three yeshiva students, and called on Palestinians in the vicinity of the attack to delete security camera footage in order to thwart attempts by Israeli forces to arrest the attacker:

In a post made to its official Facebook page within hours of the attack taking place, Fatah’s Nablus branch wrote: “Our lauded people, honoured members of our people, we call on you to get rid of the contents that were stored in the [security] cameras of your homes or your businesses today, and not to transfer any media content among yourselves that the occupation (i.e., Israel) is spreading.” They added: “We salute you and your struggle” before signing off: “The Fatah Movement, Nablus branch.”

Yesterday, Abbas’s Fatah called for yet more bloodshed. PMW reports that this message was publicised on numerous Facebook pages including the official Facebook pages of Fatah, the PA Presidential Guard, Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul, and Fatah Central Committee member Rawhi Fattouh. In addition to Facebook, the announcement was publicised by WAFA, the official PA news agency, and in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, as well as in private news agencies. The message said:

“The Fatah Movement with all its elements and leadership calls to continue this uprising… [Israeli policy] will lead to a comprehensive confrontation in all the Palestinian lands, including a reexamination of the rules of engagement… Fatah calls on everyone to raise the level of confrontation in the coming days and hours in the Palestinian lands, the points of friction, and the settlers’ roads.”

To be sure Fatah’s call to violence received maximum exposure, it was publicized on numerous Facebook pages including the official Facebook pages of Fatah, the PA Presidential Guard, Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul, and Fatah Central Committee member Rawhi Fattouh. In addition to Facebook, the announcement was publicized by WAFA, the official PA news agency, and in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, as well as in private news agencies.

Moreover, to turn its attack on Israeli jurisdiction and rule of law in Jerusalem into an Islamic religious war, Fatah opened its statement with a quote from the Quran, and then commented that “Allah’s words are true.”

There is another factor, though, which is perhaps the most significant of all in provoking this violence. This is the signal that has been sent to the Palestinian Arabs by the administration of US President Joe Biden.

During the administration of former US president Donald Trump, Palestinian violence declined as a result of Trump’s refusal to pander to Palestinian blackmail. Not only did Trump move the US embassy to Jersualem, he empowered a rapprochement between the Gulf states and Israel which left the Palestinian cause abandoned. He also cut funding to the Palestinian Authority as a consequence of its continued incitement and support of terrorism against Israeli Jews.

The Biden administration, which is stuffed full of officials with a baleful record of hostility to Israel, immediately restored funding and diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian Authority, started to try to drive a wedge between Israel and Saudi Arabia and made clear that it would give Israel short shrift and empower its genocidal foe, Iran.

This US shift in support effectively gave a green light to the Palestinian Arabs to renew their murderous onslaught against the Jews of Israel.

And so what’s been the response by the Biden administration and the EU and various European states to this co-ordinated campaign of incitement, murder and other attacks on Israeli Jews? Far from condemning these Palestinian aggressors and inciters, the EU and US have instead condemned their victim, Israel. They have warned against its planned evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, and repeated their habitual and historically illiterate lie that Israel is in illegal occupation of Jerusalem, the ancient historic capital of the Jewish people — the only people for whom it was ever their capital city.

But hey — the Bidenites, EU states and western “liberals” promote the Holocaust-denying Jew-hater Mahmoud Abbas as a statesman; declare that his terrorism-supporting, Jew-demonising, Israel-exterminating Palestinian Authority deserves to run a state; give it the funds which enable it to continue its incitement and support for terrorism; require Israel to compromise its security to facilitate the creation of an entity which aims to destroy it; parrot the false narrative of Israeli illegality while conniving at the Palestinians’ attempt to hijack both international law and Jewish history; and label murderous Palestinian attacks on Jews as “resistance”.

And then they have the sheer gall to urge a return to “calm”. They are themselves accessories to evil.

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