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Palestinian Authority Tag

Last night Israeli media (see here and here) reported the breaking news that four Palestinian men who had been detained since Thursday by their own government for visiting with their Jewish neighbors over the Sukkot holiday last week were finally set free. i24news reports:
The Palestinian Authority on Sunday released four Palestinians it had held in detention since Thursday after they attended a religious festival in a nearby Jewish settlement, Israel Radio reports.

Wrapping up its session in Paris that began several weeks ago, yesterday the United Nation’s cultural agency adopted a Palestinian and Arab state-sponsored resolution on Jerusalem that ignores both Jewish and Christian attachments to Jerusalem’s sacred sites. As we noted in a recent post, the resolution had already passed on October 13 at the committee stage when 24 UNESCO member states supported the measure (6 states, including the U.S., voted against; 26 abstained; and 2 state missions were absent for last week’s vote).

The United Nation’s cultural body—UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)—passed a resolution in Paris yesterday that challenges both Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem’s holy sites. The resolution was passed as Item 25 (titled “Occupied Palestine”) of the provisional agenda for UNESCO Executive Board’s 200th session. The document (full text here) was advanced by the Palestinians along with Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan. Twenty-four countries voted in favor of the resolution; 26 abstained; and only 6 voted against according to media reports. Those that voted against include: U.S., Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a KGB spy in the 1980s, recently surfaced Soviet documents reveal. Abbas, who was a long-time aide to Yasser Arafat -- the notoriuos Godfather of Arab terrorism -- was appropriately code-named the “mole” (krotov) by his Russian handlers. Abbas was most likely recruited by the Soviet spy agency back in the early 80s when he was a Ph.D. student at a Moscow university where he was polishing his credentials as an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, needed to rise through the ranks of Arafat’s Palestinian terrorist group PLO. Abbas, leader of PLO's main faction 'Fatah', took office in 2005 and appointed himself as the 'President for Life' of the Palestinian Authority -- refusing to call for any further elections -- very much in keeping with the democratic best-practices of fellow Arab despots.

Early Tuesday morning, roughly 60 ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews tried to make an unauthorized visit to Joseph’s Tomb, located inside the Palestinian city of Nablus near the biblical city of Shechem. According to multiple media reports (see here and here), the group had to be extricated by Israeli troops after their convoy came under attack by Palestinian rioters in the vicinity. [caption id="attachment_170045" align="alignnone" width="600"]Joseph's Tomb | 2011 | credit: YouTube screenshot Joseph's Tomb | 2011 | credit: YouTube screenshot[/caption]

Last Thursday, Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) reported that Arab-Israeli MK Yosef Jabarin traveled to Hadarim Prison to visit with top Palestinian terror mastermind Marwan Barghouti. After the visit, Jabarin reportedly claimed to be “impressed” by the terrorist’s “serious intention” to run for chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA), despite being holed up in an Israeli jail cell:
During their meeting, Jabarin and Barghouti discussed efforts to reconcile split Palestinian factions before the upcoming municipal elections, which are set for October. Barghouti emphasized that the success of the local government elections could pave the way for democratic elections in the Palestinian Legislative Council, and the office of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority after Abbas—which would give him a chance to supersede Abbas”.
Other than this brief mention in Arutz Sheva and an editorial in a website catering to religiously-observant Jews, I couldn’t find this news item covered by any other mainstream media outlet. That’s not surprising.

On this day 15 years ago, a Hamas terror gang based in the West Bank executed a bombing attack on a busy restaurant in the center of Jerusalem.  In the horrific act of savagery 15 people were killed, including 7 children. Two U.S. citizens were among those murdered. Four additional Americans were wounded — one severely. In total, some 130 were injured with varying degrees of severity by the “human bomb” and his team of accomplices. The mastermind was Ahlam Tamimi, relative of Bassem Tamimi, and a hero to this day in her home village of Nabi Saleh where international activists still protest the security barrier constructed in response to the Sbarro and dozens of other suicide bombings. Tamimi MEMRI revised 2012 In this post, I revisit the 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing.

On July 18, 2016, in a well-attended public ceremony in downtown Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority (PA) honored the life and work of Ahmad Ibrahim Jbara. Jbara, also known by his nom de guerre Abu Sukkar, was a terrorist who masterminded a deadly 1975 bombing attack in Jerusalem in which 15 people were murdered and nearly 80 wounded when a refrigerator packed with explosives detonated. For this heinous crime, Abu Sukkar was sentenced to life plus 30 years. In an Israeli prison, he would become among the most well-compensated individuals within the Palestinian community, benefiting from a generous monthly salary bestowed on him by the PA. In 2003, Israel released him along with 99 other prisoners as a ‘good will gesture’ to the PA on the eve of a summit meeting in Jordan.

A Palestinian shot and murdered Michael "Miki" Mark, an Israeli father of 10, as he drove near Hebron. His wife and two of their children sustained injuries in the attack. From The Jerusalem Post:
In Friday’s incident, the rain of bullets against the vehicle caused it to overturn. Paramedics who arrived at the scene found Mark in the upside down vehicle, while the other passengers had been managed to exit the car.

Recently we posted videos documenting the incitement to violence against Jews in Palestinian Arab media, political spheres, social media, and schools, focused on "children": That incitement particularly focuses on urging children to carry out knife attacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnLIzNGb9gI

The victim-blaming narrative that says that Israel’s so-called “occupation” of the West Bank is responsible for Palestinian violence has been getting a lot of air time since the murder of four by a terrorist in Tel Aviv earlier this month. It has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Politico, and has even been parroted by the mayor of Tel Aviv himself. This narrative ignores decades of history, and has no more truth to it than the vile claim that LGBT people deserved the Orlando attack. Israel’s military presence in the disputed territories of the West Bank is the result of Arab violence against Israel, and not the cause of it.

Since 1967 — when Israel liberated the Jewish holy sites in eastern Jerusalem — the Temple Mount has been administered by agreement through the Islamic Waqf, a Jordanian-funded trust which oversees the site’s day-to-day religious functions. The Temple Mount is the most sacred site in Judaism, sanctified as the place where the Jewish Temples existed in biblical times. It’s a place where Jews should have basic rights, including the freedom of movement and worship. But as we’ve noted in several prior posts (see here, here, here) because of the profoundly discriminatory “status quo arrangement” set in place in 1967 and subsequently upheld by Israel’s courts, Jews are prohibited from praying there for fear of potentially upsetting Muslim worshippers, stirring up tensions, and triggering violent Muslim backlashes.

Several media watch dog groups (see here and here) have blasted reports published in The Independent, International Business Times, Times of London, and other news outlets for falsely accusing Israel of cutting off drinking water to Palestinians in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Each of these news outlets picked up a blatantly incorrect Al Jazeera report that initially included no response from Israel. They ran their own stories with it, accompanied by headlines denunciating Israel for maliciously working to deprive Palestinians of water. https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/742968004686778368

The official Palestinian Authority television celebrated the death of U.S. tourist Taylor Force, calling his murderer a martyr 11 times in the broadcast. From the report:
Official PA TV newsreader: "In Qalqilya, hundreds of citizens accompanied the body of Martyr Bashar Masalha [to his burial]..." Official PA TV reporter: "After delays by Israel in the transfer of his body, Martyr Bashar Masalha’s family, from the village of Hajja, east of Qalqilya, received their son in the evening... The Martyr Bashar returned from Qalqilya to his village Hajja in a procession... His family, friends, and people of the region took it upon themselves to ensure that this [burial] would be a large national wedding (i.e., to the 72 Virgins in Paradise) befitting of Martyrs... The Martyr was accompanied to his last resting place in the cemetery for Martyrs in Hajja..."

This past week during Passover, Palestinians rioted and assaulted several Jews on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site. As we highlighted in an earlier post, the mere sight of Jews at their holiest place was seen by Muslims there as an affront. Two Jewish men who dared to pray were beaten up. Other Jewish visitors were harassed with verbal taunts and Israeli police and border patrol units also came under attack. But the Temple Mount wasn’t the only place where Muslims rioted against Jewish worshippers this Passover. On April 27, Jews making a pilgrimage to Joseph’s Tomb, located near the biblical city of Shechem, were also set upon by Muslim rioters.

Even before the smoke could settle over the site of yesterday’s bus blast in Jerusalem that left 21 people wounded -- two of them seriously -- the Palestinian leadership is praising and celebrating the  terror attack. The armed-wing of PLO-Fatah, active in the territory under Palestinian Authority control, applauded the Jerusalem bus blast, calling it the beginning of a new phase in Intifada, the renewed campaign of terror against Israel. Hamas, the Islamist outfit controlling Gaza said it “welcomed” the Monday’s terrorist attack, calling it “natural reaction” to supposed Israeli crimes. In the eyes of these terrorist groups, the mere presence of Jews in their historic homeland amounts to a provocation and the Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel constitutes a crime -- severe enough to justify a deadly campaign of terror and incitement that started much before the State of Israel was even proclaimed.

Great Britain's Foreign Office and Department for International Development ("DFID") have funneled million of Pounds, at least, to terrorists.  The report from the Daily Mail details how the UK's policy of spending .7% of revenue on foreign aid distorts priorities and leads it to fund terror.  The Daily Mail report builds on a broader investigation from Palestinian Media Watch ("PMW") evidencing the Palestinian Authority's ("PA") attempts to hide banned payments to terrorists from Western donors.

Palestinian Media Watch blows the whistle

In its exposé, The Daily Mail cites PMW's recent report discussing the PA's deception of Western donors.  According to the Daily Mail, "a devastating new report to be released this week by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli NGO, suggests that Western donors have been duped by assertions that the Authority no longer funds terrorists." Drawing on original Palestinian media, PMW documents the PA's fraud on international donors.  In 2011, PMW exposed that the PA was funneling foreign donations to terrorists and their families.  Following international outcry, in 2014, the PA formally placed funding for convicted terrorists in the hands of the Palestine Liberation Organization - the parent of Fatah and the PA itself.

Palestinian Media Watch is an indispensible resource for monitoring and documenting incitement on official Palestinian Authority and Hamas television. We often embed and link to its YouTube postings of Palestinian TV broadcasts. Because they are fluent in Arabic, they perform the function not only of pulling the video but also providing English language translation in the video captions. Pal Media Watch thus documents the two-sided statements of Palestinian leaders like Mahmoud Abbas, who preach peace to Westerners, but hate and violence to their own people.