{Originally posted to the author’s website, Emes Ve-Emunah}
Jews get stabbed in Israel and the Secretary of State says it’s about the settlements.
I am so sick and tired of this nonsense coming out of the mouths of high ranking officials when it is clear that settlements had nothing to do with why Jews are being stabbed. Although I have said (and still believe) that the current spate of terror could have been avoided, the real reason Jews are being stabbed is because of the Jew hatred instilled in the Arab mind in virtually all walks of their lives.
Hatred that dates back to pre-state Israel. Hatred that is preached and taught at all levels of Arab society. In mosques, schools, news and entertainment media… decades upon decades of it!
When an innocent Jew gets stabbed, the Arab street cheers. When a rocket from Gaza injures or kills some Jews, the Arab street cheers. When a teenage suicide bomber blows himself up and takes a few Jews with him, his mother feels proud.
Settlements?! Jew hatred is part of their culture.
One need not look any further than a miniseries broadcast in Egypt a few years ago that promoted the ideas contained in the infamous ‘Protocols of the Elder of Zion’ Jews were portrayed as an evil Cabal plotting to take over the world by any means necessary. It was no doubt watched by millions of Arabs who soaked it all in. Children’s programs in the Arab world are rife with antisemitic references and images.
I’m surprised that there are any Arabs that would see Israel and the Jewish people in anything but a completely negative light. (There are such Arabs. They have somehow overcome the propaganda and see the truth. But most see us the way we are portrayed in their mosques, in their media, and by their political leaders.
Palestinian leaders may pay lip-service to wanting peace with Israel. And sure – they mention settlements all the time as the big impediment to peace. But their leaders prefer (and in many cases advocate) violent resistance – as does Hamas and other Islamist Jihadists. PA president Mahmoud Abbas renounced the violence but urged continued peaceful (wink, wink) resistance. Right! Peaceful my foot!
And yet the world – even the US Secretary of State ignores all of this and at best makes it about moral equivalency. Or worse just blames it all on Israel – as he did in this JTA article.
And it is all fueled by a media quick to take up the moral equivalency banner… as though a Palestinian who stab a 70 year old innocent woman is the same thing as an Israeli soldier or police officer shooting a knife wielding Palestinian about to attack someone. They are both the same – to the media. And the American public can’t tell the difference because the trusted news anchors on TV news are saying it is so.
Kerry claims to be pro-Israel. Well, if he is, he has a funny way of showing it. Blaming Jews for being stabbed by Arabs does not instill confidence in that claim.
I know he is America’s chief diplomat. And diplomacy has to show even handedness. But even handedness does NOT entail blaming one side for the terror spree against it by the other.
From the JTA article:
“I will go there soon, at some point appropriately, and try to work to reengage and see if we can’t move that away from this precipice,” Kerry said at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “We’re working on trying to calm things down.”
That’s nice. If he really wants to help calm things down, it would help if he told the truth. It’s not about settlements. (And I am AGAINST settlement expansion!) It’s about a century old culture of hatred that is constantly being exacerbated in every corner of the Arab world.