Arabs have been waging an "arson intifada" against Jews for 100 years ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, May 01, 2025

Arabs have been waging an "arson intifada" against Jews for 100 years

The devastating wildfires in Israel appear to have been deliberately set.

“It’s a terror attack on Israel,” Eli Beer, president of the United Hatzalah emergency response organization, told The Media Line. He noted that fires were started in 20 separate locations. A security source also confirmed to The Media Line that a terrorist act was likely behind the fires, adding that several people had been arrested.

A map circulating in Israeli security circles depicts the locations of the fires, almost all of which are marked on the Israeli side of the Green Line separating the West Bank from Israel and Gaza—not in the areas inhabited by Palestinians. Hamas posted on social media a call for Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel to “burn whatever you can of groves, forests, and settler homes” and “set their cars ablaze.”

This is hardly a surprise. Arabs have been setting fires in Israel and in Jewish areas for a hundred years.

During the 1936 Arab riots, setting fires was a popular method of attacking Jews.

Palestine Post, May 31, 1936:

Setting fires in forests became especially popular during the first intifada - you know, the one that was supposedly non-violent: From JTA, June 9, 1988:

Forest fire damage since the beginning of summer is running five times ahead of all of last year, and much of it is the result of arson linked to the Palestinian uprising, Jewish National Fund spokesman David Angel said Wednesday.

He urged the police and fire departments to do their utmost to prevent the torching of forests that JNF Chairman Moshe Rivlin has called the “intifada against trees.”

There have been 160 fires since the beginning of May, which have destroyed about 120,000 trees and thousands of acres of grasslands, the JNF spokesman said. The police have arrested nine arson suspects.

One third of the forest fires in Israel in 1988 were deliberately set.

1989:

Ten suspects have been detained for questioning in connection with the fire Tuesday that destroyed at least 2,500 acres of forest and underbrush on the Carmel range, south of Haifa.

There is no question that arson was the cause, according to police and fire officials, who linked it to the Palestinian uprising. They said the arsonists started the fire simultaneously at five different spots at about one-mile intervals.

An anonymous caller speaking in Arabic told Israel Television’s Arabic service Tuesday night that the fire was the work of a group called “Direct Revenge.”

This pattern continued through the early 2000s and continuously to today. I reported on arson forest fires set by Arabs in 2011, 2012, 2016, and Hamas sending incendiary balloons into Israel through the late 2010s as well.

In 1936, the fires were so heartbreaking for the indigenous Jews of the Land of Israel that David Shambadal, a young electrician who was viciously murdered was found to have written a poem about the arsonists and the desire to replant all the trees that were destroyed only hours before his murder. I cannot find the original Hebrew version; it was translated into English this way:

Plant!

Sycamores they cut down

Cedars we shall plant;

Foes in the open

Shall never find us scant.

The vandal of the desert,

Destructive is his hand;

With faith and fortitude

We shall build the Land.

Onward, onward

We shall ever go;

Pave in the desert