Palestinians playing a dangerous game

Ben Levitas

This libel is being spread by Muslim religious leaders and even by moderate ones like King Hussein of Jordan. Even in Cape Town marches are being planned to demonstrate against the so-called “occupation” of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Fatah and even the moderate Palestinian leadership, has not missed an opportunity to inflame and incite Muslim passions about Al-Aqsa and the threat posed by Jews to their absolute sovereignty. They have consistently denied that Jews have any rights to this holy sanctuary.

They completely reject conventional and Biblical history, that Mount Moriah was holy to Jews more than 1 500 years before the birth of Islam and that the Jews built the First Temple on this site during the reign of King Solomon.

They deny that any temple ever existed, which conflicts even with Christian history that records that Christ prayed in the holy Temple.

Israel, on the other hand, is doing everything possible to de-escalate tensions, always acknowledging the sovereignty of the Muslim Waqf and has refrained from allowing Jews access to pray at their holiest site.

Recently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forbade any members of the Knesset, even its Palestinian members, from setting foot on the Temple Mount.

The tensions are only stoked by the stupid remarks from Western leaders like US Secretary of State John Kerry, that link the uprising to Jewish settler activities. This obfuscates the issues and provides further justification for the taking of Jewish lives.

This link between Al-Aqsa and the uprising was reinforced when Fatah brought soil from Al-Aqsa to the grave of a murderer who stabbed two to death in Jerusalem, “so that the dead body… can hug the soil for which he died as a martyr”.

The PA Ministry of Education plants trees in honour of terrorists, which they call-“martyrs” which, according to them, instils national and humanitarian values in the Palestinian youth.

After Palestinians murdered four Israeli civilians, Abbas said: “The Palestinian side… did not do anything against the Israelis… that is our right. We have to protect our holy sites.”

One of Abbas’ advisers said: “The stabbing and murder of two civilians in Jerusalem is a “heroic operation”.

Yet again Abbas lied when he accused the Israelis of the “cold-blooded execution” of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, after he stabbed an Israeli child. Hadassah University Medical Centre in Jerusalem, has released photographs and video footage of the Palestinian boy sitting up and smiling in his hospital bed. This is the latest in a series of hysterical and inciting remarks to fuel the cinders of the uprising.

In one incident, a Palestinian employee of Bezeq, the Israeli telephone company, used his work vehicle to mow down a group of Israelis waiting at a bus stop. After crashing the vehicle into the Israelis, he went on a wild stabbing frenzy.

Like many of the other attackers, these were not the actions of unemployed desperate people, but of people filled with hate for Jews, hoping to be national heroes, or “martyrs”.

Sadly, when reported in the media, it becomes a tally in a macabre game of death and invariable because the tally of Palestinian deaths exceeds those of the Israelis, the Palestinians are cast as victims of a brutal occupation. 

Moreover, because the initial deaths of Israelis go unreported, the media kicks in, only when the Israelis retaliate, and the headlines scream: “Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian”, as if there was no provocation.

To escape this cycle of violence, we need to hold the Palestinian leaders responsible for spreading lies, incitement and hate and have all parties commit to pursue the truth and life-affirming policies.

Cape Town