In a report submitted to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the chief of the Shin Bet clandestine police Ronen Bar, Jewish terrorism inflames the Arab terrorism in Judea and Samaria, to the benefit of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
On Erev Shabbat, hundreds of Arabs from the village of Burqa in Samaria attacked Jewish shepherds in the grazing area outside the Oz Etzion outpost. The event quickly escalated with the Jews finding themselves surrounded and significantly outnumbered. One Jewish man fired his weapon in the air, but that did not stop the encroachment, and he was hit with a soccer ball-size rock in the head. He fired into the lynch mob in self-defense, killing one 19-year-old Arab.
Only then did IDF forces show up to pull the two sides apart. They made arrests – of Jewish suspects only. Not a single Arab out of the murderous mob was detained.
When right-wing MKs protested the IDF’s failure to show up in time to do anything about the lynch, and accused the local IDF brass of running a policy that equates Arabs and Jews in Judea and Samaria, those politicians were attacked by the press and by the IDF brass for daring to criticize what has been the IDF anti-settler policy for as long as anyone can remember.
And then, on Sunday morning, Israeli media was fed an unrestrained propaganda sheet leaked by the Shin Bet, about Bar’s report to the PM, about the rise in “Jewish terrorist attacks” that have doubled since the same period last year.
The leaked report equates “price tag” acts by Jews of setting fire to Arab property and cutting Arab car tires with Arab murders of countless innocent Jews. It’s all the same to the Shin Bet, which is starting to sound like the British Mandatory Police before May 14, 1948.
The argument about “Jewish terrorism” being the reason for Arab terrorism was bought lock stock and barrel by Israel’s mainstream media, which suggested the murder by an Arab terrorist of a Jewish security guard in downtown Tel Aviv was caused by Friday’s clash. Never mind that the terrorist in question left a letter he composed in February to explain his murderous mission and that he had been wanted by Israel for months now and was hiding in Jenin.
Likud MK Boaz Bismuth tweeted in response: “There are probably some who need to be reminded of something that should be obvious: there is no Jewish terrorism, there are isolated marginal cases, which are handled by the law enforcement authorities. I trust the security forces to do their job and bring the truth to light. For over 100 years, we have been dealing with a population incited from infancy to murder Jews and rewarded for it – in contrast, we want to sit safely in our historic land and live in peace. The terror is Palestinian, the victim is Jewish and any attempt to present the opposite – is both political and sick.”
Yes, apparently it needed to be said.
And Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot stated: “You can name on one hand murderous attacks carried out by Jews. There is no symmetry. When you put out a list of Jewish terrorist acts that include arson and damage to property alongside a list of Arab terrorism that mainly includes shooting attacks and murderous attacks, there is no such symmetry.”
