Anyone who lives near an Arab village can tell you about gunshots on a warm summer night. It’s not about murder – it’s the finale to celebrating the wedding of a relative. When major nationwide celebrations take place, the entire country rings out with gunshots. Israeli police rarely intervene. Frankly, there’s no need.
But then, there are the blood feuds — those long-held grudges that spring up between clans and run for generations if not resolved. The Council of Sheikhs strives to avoid that because wholesale murder results otherwise.
All this has nothing to do with the Jews.
But now consider that passion directed towards the “outsider.” The intruder. The Jew, whose presence contaminates the purity of the Noble Sanctuary, Al Aqsa Mosque. Jerusalem.
It takes very little to redirect the blood lust, transform it into rage. In fact, official Palestinian Authority unity government media called for a “day of rage” in Jerusalem to be held on Friday Nov. 14 – the second such “call to arms” by PA leadership. Just a day earlier, Netanyahu, Kerry and Jordanian monarch King Abdullah II had met in Amman to explore ways to de-escalate the rising tensions on the Temple Mount that followed an attempted assassination of a Jewish activist by an Islamic Jihad terrorist. The would-be murderer called Rabbi Yehudah Glick an “enemy of Al Aqsa” before he shot him at point-blank range and nearly killed him.
“Abu Mazen must halt the incitement that leads to acts of violence,” Netanyahu said that Sunday morning following the ‘Day of Rage.’ “This is one of the roots of the inflamed moods that are fueled by Islamist extremist propaganda and propaganda by the Palestinian Authority.”
Fatah’s government partner Hamas, meanwhile, has not taken responsibility for the massacre at the synagogue in Har Nof.
But senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad promised Al Jazeera, “There will be more revolution in Jerusalem, and more uprising.”
Speaking to journalists at a briefing following the massacre, Israel’s prime minister blamed Abu Mazen and PA incitement for the attack, and for those that preceded it.
Netanyahu labeled it a “blood libel” against Israeli Jews. And he is right. There is nothing new under the sun. It worked in Eastern Europe.
