Violence Fueled By A Lie
Perhaps the main motivating factor for the current so-called Palestinian wave of terror is the belief that Jews pose a threat to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Many of the Palestinians who have carried out anti-Israel attacks first posted messages on social media regarding rumors of a pending Jewish takeover of the mosque and the associated compound, the Temple Mount.
The claims of a Jewish “threat” to the mosque were kicked into high gear by media outlets controlled by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.
Palestinian leaders have repeatedly alleged that Israel was drawing up plans to limit Muslim access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque or even destroy the site.
This even though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has given numerous assurances that there are no such plans and that the few times access was temporarily limited – to Muslim men above the age of 40 – were due Palestinian attacks against Jewish worshipers and police forces on the site.
“We support those who are protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque, those who suffer a great deal to protect Al-Aqsa,” Abbas said.
While Abbas referenced “those who are protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” in actuality, what has been happening for weeks is that the radical Islamic Movement has been mobilizing Arab youth to smuggle fire bombs, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and stones onto the Temple Mount to attack Jews ascending the site.
The youth themselves have used the Al-Aqsa Mosque as a staging base to attack Jews, drawing Israeli police forces close to the sensitive mosque compound and thus fueling the cycle of rumors of Israeli incursions into the mosque.
Israeli police have been careful not to enter the mosque itself even though the Palestinian instigators base their militant operations inside the site.
The Palestinian claim of Israeli plans to restrict Muslims from the Temple Mount does not coincide with the facts on the ground. It is Jews and Christians who are actually barred from the mount during most hours of the day and are never allowed to pray at the site or carry holy objects.
Those rules, enforced by the Israeli police, are imposed by the real custodians of the Temple Mount, the Waqf, which is controlled jointly by the Palestinians and the Jordanians.
The Palestinian claim that Israel is trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque is farcical, especially when it’s propagated by the same PA that has itself been caught on several occasions trying to destroy Jewish Temple-era antiquities on the mount. And last week, hundreds of Palestinian youth set fire to the Joseph’s Tomb complex, causing severe damage to the revered burial place, which is considered Judaism’s third holiest site.
In 1997, the Waqf conducted a large dig on the Temple Mount during construction of a massive mosque at an area referred to as Solomon’s Stables. The Wafq at the time disposed truckloads of dirt containing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods.
After media reported on the disposals, Israeli authorities froze the construction permit given to the Wafq, and the dirt was transferred to Israeli archaeologists for analysis. The Israeli authorities found scores of Jewish Temple relics in the nearly disposed dirt, including coins with Hebrew writing referencing the Temple, part of a Hasmonean lamp, several other Second Temple lamps, Temple-period pottery with Jewish markings, a marble pillar shaft and other Temple-period artifacts.
Hamas Officials Hail Comments By Obama’s Pastor
In comments made to this reporter last week, the leaders of Hamas supported the anti-Israel statements recently propagated by President Obama’s controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr.
Speaking at a Washington rally hosted by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Wright slammed Israel as an apartheid state that must be boycotted and declared “Jesus was a Palestinian.”
Two Hamas officials were contacted by phone for comment on Wright’s remarks. Neither had heard about Wright’s statements, but when the pastor’s full remarks were read to the jihadists, both were enthralled by his sentiments.
Senior Hamas leader Salah Bardawil, who is also a member of Hamas’s parliament, declared Wright was correct that “Israel is definitely an apartheid state.”
“It’s enough to see roads in the West Bank to see there are roads for settlers and for Palestinians,” Bardawil said.
The Hamas leader left out that there are main West Bank roads where both Israeli and Palestinian vehicles can travel. He also failed to mention that the cordoning off of some roads outside Palestinian cities for Palestinian vehicles only came in response to the Second Palestinian Intifada, in which Israelis were repeatedly killed in roadside shootings by Palestinians.
Bardawil continued: “It’s unanimous in human rights organizations that Israel is the only apartheid state left in world, and the least the international community can do is to declare Israel is apartheid, and it should have the same treatment to Israel that it had with the South African refugees and boycott Israel because Israeli policy goes against humanity.”
Bardawil was speaking about the only democracy in the Middle East and the only country in the region where Jews, Muslims, and Christians have full human rights.
The Hamas leader did not mention that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared Jews are not allowed to live in a future Palestinian state and that currently under PA rules Arabs who sell property to Jews are subject to death.
Also contacted by this reporter, Hamas senior spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said he didn’t hear about Wright’s comments but he supports any statements calling Israel an apartheid state.