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Palestinian Incitement Tag

Palestinian incitement to hate and attack Jews has been a frequent topic here lately. It is not just a key cause of the current so-called "Knife Intifada" (which also involves shooting and other forms of attack), but also an impediment to any chance of peace. It is a top-down (from the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and Hamas) and bottom-up (social media) phenomenon that is particularly focused on young children and teens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBtEDMsl_SM Here is another example, from PalMedia Watch:

We reported recently on the murder of 13-year old Hallel Yaffa Ariel while she slept in her bed, 13-year old Israeli girl stabbed to death in bed by 17-year old Arab terrorist. Hallel Ariel 13 year old Israeli girl stabbed to death with family The funeral was heartbreaking. You don't need a translation as Hallel's mother spoke at her funeral:
Sobbing, Rena Ariel caressed the blue shroud-covered body of her daughter Hallel Yaffa, 13, before uttering her final parting words to the girl who had been a brilliant student and who loved to dance.

The core problem in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is not "the occupation" of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") or the lawful Israeli military blockade of Gaza to keep out Iranian armaments. The problem, to which the Western world is just waking up, is the pervasive top-down and bottom-up incitement against Jews and Israel in Palestinian society in which even the youngest children are taught to hate Jews and to kill Jews by whatever means possible, including stabbing, shooting and ramming with cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnLIzNGb9gI We have highlighted this problem for years, including these recent posts:

We recently showed a video about how Palestinian incitement to violence is generated both top-down from the Palestinian Authority, and bottom-up through social media, VIDEO: No truly “Lone Wolves” in the Palestinian Knife Intifada A newly released video expands on the problem of incitement. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is notorious for helping to perpetuate the Middle East conflict, among other ways, by perpetuating the "refugee" status of Arab refugees created during the civil war and Arab invasion at the end of the British Mandate for Palestine. These refugees are unique in that other Arab countries refuse to integrate them or allow citizenship, while UNRWA uniquely counts even subsequent generations as "refugees." But UNRWA does much worse. It helps incite violence against and hatred of Jews through bigoted education. A recent film and study released (h/t Elder of Ziyon) demonstrates the problem, Filmmaker Calls for UNRWA ‘Self-Introspection’ Over Palestinian Classroom Incitement:

Earlier this year, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs released a report on the so-called Knife Uprising (Intifada), The Knife and the Message: The Roots of the New Palestinian Uprising (pdf. version here). The report explored various aspects behind the Palestinian violence, which included shooting and car rammings, among other tactics, with a focus on knife stabbings. Children and young adults were both the target of incitement, and predictably therefore, the main participants in violence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qqyyM2R5Ms Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary:

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.

This past Sunday more than 1,500 people—along with dozens of members of the media and press—attended The Jerusalem Post’s 5th Annual Conference in New York City. The one-day event, themed “Israel, the U.S. and the Free World Facing Global Terror,” was held at the Marriot Marquis Hotel in the heart of Times Square and Manhattan’s theater district. JPost annual conference 2016 logo According to the pre-conference publicity, the annual conference—which in the past has proved to be “both newsworthy and dazzling”—was predicted to be the “best and biggest yet”. It was indeed.

You may recall the name Janna Jihad. Janna is a member of the Tamimi clan from Nabi Saleh. Among the more infamous Tamimi members is Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who organized the Sbarro Pizza restaurant suicide bombing in 2001, and then broke out with a huge smile when she learned that more children actually were killed than she thought. The Tamimi clan also has a sophisticated media operation. Under the guidance of Bassem Tamimi and his wife, Tamimi and other village children are used as media props to confront Israeli soldiers for the cameras, including throwing rocks, hoping to create a viral image or video.

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.

Bassem Tamimi has been on these pages quite frequently in the past half year, most of it related to his appearance at an Ithaca, NY, third grade class as part of an anti-Israel propaganda event organized by local Jewish Voice for Peace activist Ariel Gold (now employed by Code Pink) and one of the teachers. Tamimi is best known for using children, including his own, to confront Israeli soldiers in the hope of creating viral video and photo images. He has been quite successful at this, and many of the images resulting from these provocations have become international hits, such as this video of his daughter from several years ago: And this more recent incident:

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.

There is no sadder commentary on why peace is not yet possible than the exploitation of children by Palestinians in the war against Israel. It's a lot more than the types of confrontations staged by Bassem Tamimi, where young children are sent to confront Israeli soldiers in the hope of creating a reaction that will generate a viral video or photo. A recent parade in Bethlehem in which a child paraded with a mock suicide belt reflects the pathology. MEMRI reports, Children Sport Dummy Explosive Belts, RPG Launchers In Bethlehem 'Fatah Day' Parade:

Is Facebook more tolerant of anti-Israel incitement than it is of anti-Palestinian incitement? That's something Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, sought to test. Shurat HaDin is a private Israeli law group that describes itself as follows:
Shurat HaDin is at the forefront of fighting terrorism and safeguarding Jewish rights worldwide. We are dedicated to the protection of the State of Israel. From defending against lawfare suits fighting academic and economic boycotts and challenging those who seek to delegitimize the Jewish State, Shurat HaDin is utilizing court systems around the world to go on the legal offensive against Israel’s enemies.
In 2014, The Tower Magazine profiled Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the founder and chief executive of Shurat HaDin, The Woman Who Makes the Jihadis Squirm.

Drawing on the stories of the annunciation of the birth of Jesus, Christmas is viewed as a time of peace and goodwill to all. But for anti-Israel activists and organizations, the holiday season is a perfect occasion to conduct political warfare against the Jewish state.

NGOs, The PA, and The Hijacking

For years vehemently anti-Israel NGOs (non-governmental organizations), charities, and even church groups have been exploiting Christmas symbols, themes, and traditions in order to promote one-sided narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Exploiting Christmas for anti-Israel These recast religiously-themed narratives situate Israel and Jews as the villains and omit any mention of terrorism, or Israel’s need to protect its citizens from harm. Palestinian Christians in these narratives are depicted as undeservedly maltreated by Israel. Special attention is given to how Palestinians are allegedly hurt by the security barrier surrounding Bethlehem and its adjacent communities.

This would be funny, if it didn't represent a sad reality. We have focused repeatedly not just on incitement to violence in Palestinian society by the Palestinian Authority leadership, but particularly on the indoctrination of children. Here is another example, involving both the PA and children. Israeli customs just seized 4000 dolls being imported to areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The dolls idealized rock throwing and had a rock in hand, as reported in The Times of Israel:
Some 4,000 plush toys of rock-throwing men dressed in Palestinian garb were intercepted Tuesday at the Haifa port by Israeli authorities, who said the dolls were headed for the Palestinian Authority and were part of an incitement campaign. Each toy has its face hidden by a keffiyah, with one arm raised and clutching a tiny toy rock. They hold banners in Palestinian colors proclaiming “Jerusalem is ours” and “Jerusalem we are coming.” Customs officials found the dolls in a container that arrived from the United Arab Emirates and destined for the Palestinian Authority. According to the accompanying paperwork, the shipment was supposed to be clothing, rugs, and plastic products.
Rock throwing is deadly in itself.

Israelis have endured yet another week of nonstop terrorism. As we’ve noted in a number of prior posts, the ongoing attacks are a consequence of a “systematic Palestinian incitement to violence”. Really it’s nothing new. But in recent weeks it’s involved much of the Palestinian political and spiritual leadership preaching a visceral hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. In recent posts (see here and here), we also highlighted how virulently anti-Israel, and even anti-Semitic, views permeate Palestinian civil society. As noted in a report published this week by The Tower, which describes nearly a dozen “outrageous” types of incitement, the reality is that both Palestinian leaders and the public support brutal terror attacks against Israelis, routinely lionize murders, and view Israel as fundamentally illegitimate.

The Knife Intifada has demonstrated, once again, that the core conflict between Israel and Palestinians is not over final borders or "the occupation" of Judea and Samaria by Israel. As Prof. Miriam Elman has pointed out at Legal Insurrection, What Do Palestinians Really Want? New Study Reveals Disturbing Answers, Palestinians hold deeply anti-Jewish views and do not accept the legitimacy of any Jewish national entity. Those findings are consistent with some inconvenient history: The Grand Mufti, Hitler and the “Knife Intifada.” [caption id="attachment_146826" align="alignnone" width="600"][Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler (December 1941)] Der Führer empfing in Gegenwart des Reichsministers des Auswärtigen von Ribbentrop den Grossmufti von Palästina, Sayid Amin al Husseini, zu einer herzlichen und für die Zukunft der arabischen Länder bedeutungsvollen Unterredung. 9.12.41  Presse Hoffmann [Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler (December 1941)][/caption]So it was of great interest for me to read An interview with Benny Morris by Prof. Gabriel Noah Brahm at Fathom Journal.  Morris is the "controversial" Israeli historian who first pissed off the "right wing" by questioning some of the foundational beliefs as to how Israel came into being, and then equally pissing off the left by focusing on the role of anti-Jewish hate in the Arab opposition to the creation of Israel. Morris' views were explaind in the Middle East Forum in this interview in 2010 Benny Morris: "The 1948 War Was an Islamic Holy War" (emphasis added):

As we’ve noted in a number of prior posts, for weeks Palestinian politicians and religious authorities have been invoking wild conspiracy theories in official print, TV and social media channels often centered on claims that Jews are putting Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque in danger. In reality no Jews are “violently invading” the Al-Aqsa mosque, much less praying there. But the campaign of lies is encouraging Palestinian young people to believe that their community is under attack, and that Islam’s honor and its holy sites need defending. So Palestinian leaders are a big part of the problem. But now a new study suggests that elites aren’t just instigating the terror — they’re also reacting to deep-seated attitudes popularly held among “ordinary” Palestinians.