Arabs have been murdering Jews in the holy land since 1920, when the British took over the region from the Ottomans. The number of Jews killed by local Arabs spikes during riots such as those in 1929, from 1936 to 1939 and from 2000 to 2004.
Jews have been deliberately targeted for death every year. In some years, the Arabs are more successful.
In 2014, the U.S.-sponsored peace talks collapsed and the Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas abducted and killed three teenagers which sparked Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. The Palestinian Arabs in Areas A and B in the West Bank soon joined the carnage in what became known as the “stabbing and car-ramming intifada,” using an Arabic term that means “resistance” to whitewash the anti-Semitic blood lust.
In September 2015, Mahmoud Abbas, acting-President of the Palestinian Authority called for a holy war for Jerusalem, blessing Muslim Arab “activists” who harassed Jews visiting the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. He said “We bless you; we bless the Mourabitoun and the Mourabitat. We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every shaheed (martyr) will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward. All of their steps, we will not allow them. All these divisions, Al-Aqsa is ours, and the (Church of the) Holy Sepulcher is ours, everything is ours, all ours. They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won’t allow them to.”
Thirty-three of the 37 people killed by Palestinian terrorism in 2015 occurred after Abbas’s incitement.
Fortunately, Palestinian terrorism was less successful in the following years. The four years of the Trump Administration – which included the United States recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving its embassy there – had the lowest toll from terrorism in any four-year period over the past many decades.
Regrettably, the trend would not continue.
In May 2021, more Palestinian Arabs took up arms against their Jewish neighbors. On May 5th, Palestinians shot three 19-year-old Jewish students on the road, killing one, Yehuda Guetta. Israel commenced a search for the killer near Nablus with the assistance of the Palestinian Authority which angered many Palestinians. That action, together with Jews purchasing homes in the Sheik Jarrah-Shimon HaTzadik section of Jerusalem, set the region aflame once again.
While Hamas was launching rockets into Israeli towns from Gaza, two new terrorist groups were born in the West Bank. Jenin Brigades (or Battalion) and the Lion’s Den have been attacking Jews in Israel, Judea and Samaria ever since.
While not directed by the PA, they have broad public support on the Arab street. According to a December 2022 Palestinian poll, while 59% think that the PA is a burden for Palestinians, 72% support the two new terrorist groups, and 87% are against the PA arresting anyone from those groups.
The poll also alarmingly showed that fifty percent of Palestinians support killing Israeli civilians inside of Israel (57% in Gaza and 46% in the West Bank).
That eleven percent gap between Gaza and the West Bank is important.
During the 2000-2004 Two Percent War / “Second Intifada”, the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank had very similar approaches to murdering Israeli Jews, with Gazans favoring murder by about ten percentage points. That gap began to widen with Israel’s completion of the separation barrier, and really opened up between 2018 and 2020 to over 40 percentage points when terrorism plummeted.
As described above, that gap now stands at only 11% as of December 2022, a level not seen since the Second Intifada.
Hamas-controlled Gaza has long supported terrorism against Israeli Jews, and while the Palestinian Authority incited terrorism, the territory under its control moved away from supporting it in 2021. Those days are now over, and the new terrorist groups in the West Bank have the people’s support of slaughtering Israeli Jews with impunity.
Related articles:
Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians
Quantifying the Values of Gazans
Time for King Abdullah of Jordan to Denounce the Mourabitoun
{Reposted from the author’s blog}
