.@USAmbIsrael Tom Nides gets it exactly wrong

In a recent interview in Hamodia, US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said, when asked about a recent poll that showed 72%  of Palestinians support terror groups like Lion's Den, "I firmly believe, and you might disagree with me, but the vast, vast majority among the average Palestinians doesn’t wake up in the morning wanting to kill someone who happens to be Jewish. They want to live just like you and I do."

Stephen Flatow responded quite nicely in JNS to this.

I would like to add my own observations.

Nides was careful in his words. He didn't say that the vast majority of Palestinians don't support terror, only that most of them don't want to personally kill Jews.

I've been closely following Palestinian polls for over 15 years.  I suspect Nides knows that polls show consistently over the years that a majority of Palestinians support terror attacks as part of a strategy to gain independence. Those questions are asked in the abstract.

But when Palestinians are asked about specific terror attacks, support goes way up.

In 2008, a terrorist entered the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and started mowing down students. 8 were killed, including 4 children. When Palestinians were asked if they supported that attack, an astonishing 84% said they did.

You can see how Palestinians consistently support specific terror attacks that murder Jews more than general attacks in the abstract from that March 2008 poll.

This is more than simply supporting terror for political gain. This is bloodlust against Jews. 

Nothing has changed since then. In 2014, after a string of stabbing attacks including the massacre of four rabbis in Har Nof, not only were celebrations shown on Palestinian TV. A survey shortly after the event asked, "Recently there has been an increase in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in attempts to stab or run over Israelis. Do you support or oppose these attempts?" Four out of five Palestinians supported murdering Jews, and one in three emphasized that they strongly support such attacks.

Although the media and government officials try hard to wave this away, the truth is in these surveys.

It goes beyond that. You will never find a Palestinian official on Arabic TV condemning these attacks - besides when Mahmoud Abbas is pressured to do so by the US. On the contrary, the murderers are "martyrs" and "heroes," virtually every time. 

Do well-meaning lies and obfuscations from people like Nides, and New York Times reporters, and Europeans, help the cause of peace? No, they don't. When the West gives Palestinians who support terror the benefit of the doubt, they learn an important lesson: that the West is on their side. By downplaying explicit and overwhelming Palestinian support for terror, they leaves the door open for "human rights" groups and Western parliaments to demonize Israel as the obstacle to peace, and the Palestinians as hapless, defenseless victims. 

This emboldens the terrorists and results in more dead people on both sides.

It is important to note that Gulf countries, in Arabic, have been criticizing Palestinians for nearly a decade now, even as their own support for suicide terror has plummeted in other surveys. The Abraham Accords is in no small part a result of a refreshing honesty in parts of the Arab world about the real situation. 

The West needs to stop its default stance of "don't upset the Palestinians." It hasn't worked and it has empowered them to be more intransigent, thinking that the West is doing their bidding. 

Palestinians live in an honor/shame society. Therefore, upsetting them is exactly what needs to be done. Palestinians must be shamed into stopping support for terror in their schools and media.  

If Tom Nides really wants peace, that is the most effective tool he has. 

Coddling and covering up Palestinian support for terror does the exact opposite - and we see how well that has worked.

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11/23 Links Pt1: Israeli-Canadian teen killed as terror bombings target 2 Jerusalem bus stops; Palestinian gunmen steal body of Israeli from hospital; U.S. creates special representative for Palestinian affairs

From Ian:

Israeli teen killed as terror bombings target 2 bus stops at entrances to Jerusalem

Two explosions at two bus stops near entrances to Jerusalem on Wednesday morning killed one person and left another 22 people injured, police and medics said.

Police described the explosions as a terror bombing attack.

The first explosion occurred close to the main entrance of Jerusalem in Givat Shaul, shortly after 7 a.m., peak commuter hour.

Eighteen people at the bus stop were injured in the blast, including two critically and two seriously, medical officials said. The victims were taken to two hospitals in Jerusalem.

One of the victims injured in the first blast later died at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, hospital officials said. He was named as 16-year-old Aryeh Schupak, a yeshiva student from Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood, and a dual Israeli-Canadian national.

A second blast occurred shortly after 7:30 a.m., at Ramot junction, another entrance to Jerusalem.

Five people lightly hurt by shrapnel or suffered from anxiety in the second explosion were taken to the Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center, hospital officials said.

A bus at the station was damaged by the explosion. It was unclear if the victims were at the station or on the bus itself.

Deadly ‘high quality’ Jerusalem bombs planted by organized terror cell, police say

A senior officer said police were hunting for an organized terror cell that detonated two “high quality” explosive devices at two bus stops near entrances to Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.

Speaking to reporters, the head of the police operations division said the “two high-quality, powerful explosive devices with a high level of damage” were hidden behind the bus stop and in a bush.

The first explosion occurred close to the main entrance of Jerusalem in Givat Shaul, shortly after 7 a.m., peak commuter hour. The second blast occurred shortly after 7:30 a.m., at Ramot junction, another entrance to Jerusalem.

A 16-year-old yeshiva student, Aryeh Schupak, was killed and 22 people were hurt in the two attacks, including one listed as critical and another three in serious-moderate condition, according to medical officials.

Schupak, who was killed in the first bombing, was a Canadian national as well as an Israeli citizen, according to Canada’s ambassador to Israel.

The remotely detonated devices were packed with nails to maximize casualties, according to police officials.

Due to the nature of the attack with two near-identical bombs exploding within half an hour of each other at two bus stops, Deputy Commissioner Sigal Bar Zvi said police suspected an organized cell was behind it, rather than just one person.

“I believe we will capture the terror cell,” she said.

‘We saw people running, children crying’: Witnesses describe J’lem attack aftermath

Victims and witnesses described the terrifying moment they were caught up in the twin bomb attacks at Jerusalem bus stops on Wednesday morning.

Aryeh Schupak, 16, was killed, and at least 20 injured in the two blasts at entrances to the city.

Many of those caught up in the terror were children and teens on their way to school.

The first explosion hit a bus stop at the entrance to the city at around 7:05 a.m., and barely half an hour later another bomb went off at another stop near the Ramot neighborhood in the northwest of the capital.

Shahar Sorkis and Neta Varshavski, both 14-year-olds who attend a school in Ramot, saw the second explosion as they traveled with other schoolkids on a nearby bus.

“We saw loads of shrapnel flying off the bus… it was a mess,” Varshavski told the Ynet news site. “We heard a noise and then we saw a lot of people running, a lot of children crying.”

“When we saw the explosion a lot of the girls began to cry. There was a lot of stress,” Sorkis added. Police and security personnel at the scene of a terror attack in Jerusalem, on November 23, 2022. (Olivier Fitoussil/Flash90)

The explosion damaged a No. 67 bus that was passing at the time. The driver, Motti Gabay, told Ynet that he quickly realized it was a terror attack.

“There was panic,” he said.

Gabay, who has been a bus driver for 23 years, including the period of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s when Palestinian terrorists frequently targeted buses with bombs, said he had expected that such attacks would one day return.

“First of all, I opened the doors and people got off,” he said, noting that Israelis “are used to this already.”

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When a Palestinian journalist @HosanSalemG says that all Palestinian journalists support terror, is he an anti-Palestinian racist?

A photo of Hosam Salem from his Facebook page

Yesterday, Gaza photojournalist Hosam Salem tweeted that his contract with the New York Times had been terminated. Here's his thread:

After years of covering the Gaza Strip as a freelance photojournalist for the New York Times, I was informed via an abrupt phone call from the US outlet that they will no longer work with me in the future. 

I began working with the newspaper in 2018, covering critical events in Gaza such as the weekly protests at the border fence with Israel, the investigation into the Israeli killing of field nurse Razan al-Najjar, and more recently, the May 2021 Israeli offensive on the Gaza strip 

As I understood later, the decision was made based on a report prepared by a Dutch editor - who obtained Israeli citizenship two years ago - for a website called Honest Reporting. 

The article, which the New York Times had based its decision for dismissing me, gives examples of posts I wrote on my social media accounts, namely Facebook, where I had expressed support for the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation... 

... My aforementioned posts also spoke of the resilience of my people and those who were killed by the Israeli army - my cousin included - which Honest Reporting described as “Palestinian terrorists”. 

The editor later wrote an article stating that he had succeeded in sacking three Palestinian journalists working for the New York Times in the Gaza Strip, on the basis of us being "anti-Semitic”. 

Not only has Honest Reporting succeeded in terminating my contract with The New York Times, it has also actively discouraged other international news agencies from collaborating with me and my two colleagues. 

What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army 

He doesn't link to the Honest Reporting article that shows that he praised the massacre of four rabbis and a Druze policeman in 2014, that he has repeatedly praised suicide bombers that killed 10 in 2004, and he has continued to explicitly support terror attacks even after starting his work with the Times:

On November 18, 2014, Hosam Salem again used Facebook to express his joy over the massacre of four rabbis and an Israeli-Druze police officer in a synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof.

Citing the Quran, he encouraged his followers to “smite the necks” of unbelievers, adding: “[This is the] summary of the Jerusalem operation [sic] today.”

There’s more. In 2015, Salem applauded two acts of terror (see here and here); a shooting at the Gush Etzion Junction that killed an American teenager, an Israeli man, and a Palestinian bystander; and a Jerusalem stabbing that killed three.

Some three years later, after being hired by The New York Times, Salem called for more violence following an attack that killed two IDF recruits in the West Bank. “Shoot, kill, withdraw: three quick operational steps…to bring peace to the hearts of sad people like us,” the inciting post read.

Finally, he has repeatedly eulogized Mohammed Salem and Nabil Masoud. The two were responsible for a 2004 suicide bombing that killed ten workers at the Ashdod port, Israel’s second-busiest harbor (see here and here).

(It is possible that suicide bomber Mahmoud Salem was a relative.)

Now let's look at Salem's words defending himself again. "I had expressed support for the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation..." That is an admission that he considers praising murdering innocent people to be "supporting Palestinian resistance." 

And he concludes by saying that "What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity..."

Salem is positioning his explicit support of terror as being a mainstream view among all Palestinian journalists. He says that exposing his praise of terror attacks is an attack on all Palestinian journalists. 

In other words, he is saying that his opinions are mainstream, not anomalous. 

If a Zionist would say that all Palestinian journalists cannot be trusted to be objective because they all support terror, the Zionist would properly be branded a bigot. Each journalist must be judged on their own merits and their own words. Stereotyping them is wrong.

But what does it mean when a Palestinian journalist insists that all Palestinian journalists like him support terror? When he claims that his noxious support for murdering rabbis and others is simply the same "covering human rights violations" that all reporters supposedly do? He isn't apologizing for his views - he is claiming that he, like all Palestinian journalists, is just covering the news. Praising the murders of Jews is indistinguishable from journalism.

He puts all Palestinian journalists in the same bucket as himself. (And so does Al Jazeera.)  Does that make him a racist? 

The reality is that support for terror is a mainstream Palestinian opinion, across multiple surveys for decades. Sometimes the majority support terror, other times is drops to less than 50%, but it is always an accepted, popular opinion. Assuming that all Palestinians support terror is indeed racist, but understanding that there is a high chance that a random Palestinian who is hired for a position at a major Western media outlet might indeed be a terror supporter is prudent. As the New York Times has learned, vetting one's social media posts before hiring anyone is essential.  

As far as the many who are claiming that Salem is the victim of anti-Palestinian racism, they are the ones who are racist - because they are claiming that all Palestinians support murdering Jews. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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10/24 Links: Jerusalem Synagogue Massacre claims sixth victim; BDS activists guilty of discrimination

From Ian:

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11 months on, rabbi dies of wounds from Jerusalem synagogue massacre

Almost a year after Palestinian terrorists killed four worshipers and a policeman at a synagogue in Jerusalem, Rabbi Haim Yehiel Rotman, who was critically injured in the attack, died from his injuries Saturday evening.
Rotman had been in a coma ever since two East Jerusalem terrorists armed with a gun, axes and meat cleavers stormed the Bnei Torah Synagogue in Har Nof last November and began attacking worshipers.
Rotman, 55, suffered a number of blows to his head from an axe.
Rotman is survived by his wife and their 11 children. He was being laid to rest at 10 p.m. Saturday night at Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery.
“He was one of the most special people in our community who always had a smile on his face,” a member of the Bnei Torah Synagogue told Israeli daily Yisrael Hayom.
“He was so loved by everyone in the community, and his death represents another blow to the community that was broken almost a year ago.”

Bassem Eid: Barbaric violence and the Palestinian failure of leadership

I am disheartened and worried about the violence being perpetrated in Israel by some of my fellow Palestinians. This latest wave of violence started at the Al Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem. It has extended to the rest of East Jerusalem, then to the West Bank, and then to all of Israel. My biggest worry is that we Palestinians appear to have no responsible leaders, neither in the Palestinian territories nor at the Knesset. These leaders, instead of calming the violence, are fanning its flames.
This wave of violence will not help the Palestinians’ economic situation. It will not help our ability to convince anyone, let alone Israelis, that we deserve a state. And it will not help grow our civil society which we badly need to do if we are to ever be taken seriously as a peace partner. All that this achieves is to push us further back. Yet our leaders are content to preach hate then sit back and enjoy their financial perks while Palestinian society is crashing and burning.
Not surprisingly, Hamas is engaged in inciting violence. The IDF reported that Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas, is “actively instigating and inciting terrorism and publicly encouraging and praising the execution of attacks against Israelis.” This is expected from Hamas unfortunately, but the problem does not stop at Hamas.
At the start of this wave of violence, Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas said “The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours… and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. […] We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing”. What kind of responsible leader would make such anti-Semitic and violent statements? The only conclusion one can draw from this is that Abbas is out of control and undeserving of the title he holds. Americans have denounced his rhetoric and so has the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who is not exactly known for his pro-Israel bias.

Bassam Tawil: The Palestinian Jihad: Lies, Lies and More Lies

First, we are not seeing anything "popular." We are not seeing, as before, thousands of Palestinians participating in the violence or protests.
It is just another wave of terrorism: targeting Jews for being Jews. The terrorists and their apologists do not distinguish between a Jew living in the city of Beersheba, and a Jew from a West Bank settlement. For the Palestinian leaders and media, these Jews are all "settlers" living in "occupied territories."
The appropriate term for the current wave of terrorism is "jihad". The attacks on Jews in Israel and the West Bank are part of the global jihad that has been waged for many years against Jews in particular, non-Muslims in general, and even against other Muslims who might not agree with a differing version of Islam.
This jihad is not aimed at "ending occupation" or protesting against misery and checkpoints. The terrorists do not see a difference between a "left wing Jew" and a "right wing Jew." They do not ask their victims about their political affiliation before knifing them.
In a grotesque rewrite of history, UNESCO declared that two Jewish holy sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, were Muslim holy sites.
This is a wave of terrorism based on lies. Palestinian leaders, including Abbas his officials in the Palestinian Authority and his Fatah faction, have been lying to us for months. They told Palestinians that the Jews are "invading" and "desecrating" Islamic holy sites with the purpose of destroying them. Abbas and his officials are urging Muslims to join the jihad against the Jews.
The leaders are now telling us that most of the terrorists were, in fact, innocent civilians who were shot dead by Israelis while on their way to buy food or going to work. Lying has become an integral part of the jihad against Jews. The campaign of lies, distortion and fabrications is not less serious than the terror attacks.
This is yet another phase of the worldwide jihad against all the "infidels" and "enemies of Islam." Those who are murdering Jews today do not hesitate to murder other non-Muslims tomorrow, especially those who are seen as Israel's friends, such as the U.S.

'The mufti planned to build crematorium in Dotan Valley'

The controversy over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks on Jerusalem Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini's role in the extermination of European Jewry has promoted veteran journalist Haviv Kanaan to recall the malicious plan the mufti devised.
Kanaan published an article in Haaretz in 1970 in which he reviewed the senior Muslim clergyman's actions in 1942, when the Jewish community in then-British Mandate Palestine was preparing for the possibility of a Nazi invasion. Kanaan said that in 1968, while researching his article, he met with Faiz Bay Idrisi, a senior Arab officer in the Mandate Police, who spoke of al-Husseini's intention to build a crematorium in the northwest Samarian hills.
"Even today, as I recall what I heard from police officials and mufti supporters, chills go through my body," Idrisi told Kanaan at the time, recalling how in case of a German invasion "Haj Amin Husseini was gearing to enter Jerusalem at the head of the Muslim Arab Legion squadron he'd created for the Third Reich. The mufti's plan was to build a huge Auschwitz-like crematorium in the Dotan Valley, near Nablus, to which Jews from Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and North Africa would be imprisoned and exterminated, just like the Jews in the death camps in Europe."
This should come as no surprise in light of al-Husseini's known views and actions during the Holocaust, and prior to it. (h/t blue sky)

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Another UNRWA teacher who supports axing Jews to death

On the same day that four rabbis were murdered while at prayer in Har Nof, Jerusalem, UNRWA teacher Eiad Hindi posted this:

The text says:

This is the way
#Intifada_of_Jerusalem
#Jerusalem's_Elite
The time is near, oh Jerusalem

Will UNRWA condemn this posting? They sure haven't condemned any of the many others I've uncovered!

And I still have more...

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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UNRWA teachers laugh about Har Nof massacre of four rabbis

Last November 19, the day after Arab terrorists murdered four rabbis with axes and knives as they were praying in Jerusalem,, UNRWA teacher Omar Hussein posted this "joke" on Facebook:

The caption has the Jewish man saying "Oh Lord, let me die (as a result) of a stroke, and not (as a result) of an ax" - which rhymes in Arabic.

The second commenter, Mohammed Abu Amra, said "Amen" and added other methods to kill Jews.

Abu Amra says that he works for UNRWA as well as a technology education manager. He also posted a photo of a young girl with an automatic weapon with the caption "Everything in Gaza is beautiful."

Does UNRWA condone its teachers laughing about the murder of rabbis? Based on their lack of action from the other disgusting Facebook posts I have uncovered, one can only conclude that the answer is "yes."

And their claims to take these charges seriously is nothing but a smokescreen for their underlying antisemitism.

(h.t Ibn Boutros)

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Hamas students proudly pretend to murder praying Jews

Hamas claimed on Saturday that there is "no justification for killing innocents."

Too bad that they didn't mention that by their definition, Jews are never innocents.

From the Hamas student bloc at Al Quds University, translated by Palestinian Media Watch, we have what is probably meant to be a re-enactment of the Har Nof massacre, showing proud Muslims murdering praying Jews.

Will this be reported as widely as Hamas' fake "condemnation" of terror?

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