By Andrew C. McCarthy 17,10, 2015
For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/npedha3
The next intifada is on, and the Obama administration, as one would expect,
is on the wrong side.
There has been a spike in Palestinian terrorism over the past few weeks.
One has to call it a spike because Palestinian terrorism is always thrumming —
there’s never a real stop. About 70 Israelis have recently been mauled, and
some killed, in over two dozen sneak attacks, mostly by stabbing.
The ultimate cause of the rampage is
the Palestinian determination to eradicate Israel’s existence as a Jewish state
by a two-track campaign of internal
violence and international political pressure. As I’ve previously detailed,
this is the “one-state
solution” preferred by Islamists and Leftists. It is abetted, wittingly or
not, by the “two-state solution,” a bipartisan Beltway obsession that entails
pressuring Israel to accommodate next-door neighbors who will be satisfied with
nothing less than burning its house down.
The proximate cause for the current bloodletting is incitement by
Palestinian political leadership, particularly Palestinian Authority president
Mahmoud Abbas (also known as “Abu Mazen”).
The ugly reality is that Islamists and the radical pan-Arab Left — those in
the Nasser-Arafat mold — are in competition to prove who is the most
anti-Semitic, a
coveted distinction in their culture. Abbas and his Fatah party must
compete with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian terror branch, whose
charter explicitly frames the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews as
dictates of Allah.
Over the past few weeks, he has incited rioting at the Temple Mount in the
Old City of Jerusalem, falsely accusing Jews of defiling and attempting to
seize the site. Among his gems is the admonition that Jews “have no right to
desecrate [the al-Aqsa Mosque and other Temple Mount sites] with their filthy
feet.” The purported secular moderate went on to out-Hamas Hamas, lauding
Muslims who physically attack Jews attempting to tour the area:
Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as
it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid [i.e., martyr] will be in heaven and
every wounded person will be rewarded by Allah’s will.
Abbas’s diatribe can have had no purpose but to ignite yet another round of
attacks — not a “cycle of violence,” as the State Department describes it, but
a unilateral terror campaign. Indeed, Abbas is merely repeating his performance
of a year ago, when he exhorted Palestinians to prevent Jews “from entering the
holy site in every way possible” — a summons to jihad that was broadcast
repeatedly on Palestinian television.
To describe as utter nonsense the claim that Israel is trying to seize the
Temple Mount would be an insult to utter nonsense.
The Old City’s iconic edifices are among the world’s holiest sites for
Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Under Israeli control, the sites have been
opened to tourists of all faiths. Yet, in deference to Islam’s notoriously
hair-trigger sensitivities, Israel placed the Temple Mount under the management
of a Muslim waqf (a Jordanian trust). Furthermore, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has repeatedly and emphatically committed to maintaining the status
quo.
So what did the Obama administration do? As the violence raged, a top State
Department spokesman, retired Navy admiral John Kirby, addressed the situation.
“Well, certainly,” he claimed (the word is a verbal tic for this highly
uncertain man), “the status quo has not been observed, which has led to a lot
of the violence.”
This statement was patently untrue and, under the circumstances, recklessly
irresponsible — so much so that Kirby ended up retracting his “certainly”
statement on Twitter, burbling about how he “did not intend to suggest” what he
had so clearly said.
Yup, those Israeli terrorists have
only themselves to blame.
Well, if moral equivalence is the order of the day, we should add that
Kirby’s boss, John Kerry, was just as reprehensible as Kirby. In a speech at
Harvard University, our redoubtable secretary of state opined that the
Palestinian rampage was catalyzed by . . . wait for it . . . “a massive
increase in settlements” purportedly built by Israelis over the past two years.
This, he says, threatens — all together now — the “two-state solution.”
Of course, Israel is not massively
increasing settlements; it is constructing additional housing on existing
settlements for growing communities. Moreover, the fact that the settlements
are unrelated to the ongoing violence is open and notorious: Abbas incited the
attacks, he is quite proud of having done so, and he continues to lionize the
attackers.
An outraged Netanyahu sized up the situation this way:
As far as settlements are concerned — this is not a result of a massive
wave of settlements because there’s not been a massive wave of settlements. . .
. And second, . . . the facts count. It is the very killers themselves who
explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. They leave behind Facebook pages
in which they cite and repeat Palestinian incitement about the al-Aqsa Mosque.
All the lies that are said about us trying to bring down the mosque or change
the status quo, they cite that as the reason for their activity. And you can’t
fit a false template on reality. . . .
This is what is driving this current wave. I’m sorry. The old models don’t
apply. There’s a Palestinian attempt to inflame violence based on the false
allegations that we are changing the Temple Mount, now on the false allegations
that we’re executing innocent civilians. It doesn’t wash. And I expect our
friends around the world to look at these facts, recognize them for what they
are and, I think, to condemn these Palestinian attacks and to demand from Abu
Mazen to stop the incitement and to restore calm.
Dream on, Mr. Prime Minister.
As to Kerry’s claim that settlement
building provoked the violence, it was left to Kirby to rationalize that the
secretary did not really mean what he said — an occupational hazard for Kerry
spokesmen, but one Kirby “certainly” is the perfect guy to handle. The problem,
alas, is that Abbas means exactly what he says: What Israel’s enemies want is
the one-state solution.
Video of the day: A Muslim Zionist Speaks out in the Knesset! http://tinyurl.com/plp8n8r
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