Palestinian incitement is the cause of Palestinian terror, not despair or settlements

BDS LIES when it says that Palestinian violence and terror are caused by “the despair of occupation and oppression.” If this were true why is it that it was the Muslim youth that perpetrated all the random knifing, stoning and driving attacks against Israelis in the months following the Jewish New Year but not Christian Arabs? Are they not suffering from the same despair? Or does BDS imply that “occupation and oppression” is selectively aimed at Muslim Arabs only? It’s absurd!

Could it be that Palestinian violence and terrorism is integrally linked to the incitement and propaganda couched in Islamic terms that is fed to them by both rejectionist wings of the Palestinian leadership? Like it or not, and most reasonable-minded people do not, Hamas is the predominant force in Palestinian politics. Diplomats, the media and, of course, BDS prefer to downplay Hamas, converting them into representatives of the downtrodden people of Gaza suffering under an Israeli blockade but, in truth, Hamas represents the real face of Palestine, the one that has ghosted over all the targeted Arab hate for Israel for over a hundred years. It shamelessly announces its ultimate goal publicly, it is enshrined in its evil Mein Kampf of a Charter that uses religious, political and even introduces humanitarian reasons why it is essential to kill Jews and destroy Israel. It elevates the Islamic nature of Palestinian society to successfully bond the people in a higher spiritual aspiration to achieve its gruesome aims. The corrupt Palestinian Authority has been robbing their people blind for decades. One only has to see the palaces of its leaders to see the blatant cronyism of its leaders. Arafat is reported to have stashed away over a billion dollars in overseas bank accounts. According to Martin Indyk, the Clinton Administration Middle East negotiator, who knew Arafat intimately well, Arafat was always traveling the world, looking for handouts.

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“Arafat for years would cry poor, saying, ‘I can’t pay the salaries, we’re going to have a disaster, and the Palestinian economy is going to collapse.’ At the same time he accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars.” Arafat used some of that money propping up rival terrorist groups each competing against the other to gain favor from their corrupt and patronizing leader. Arafat was in word and deed the second Islamic arch-terrorist, the first being Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem whose evil raison d’etre was the destruction of Jews. In a real sense, Arafat followed closely in his footsteps. One of his many inspired terrorist outrages against Israeli civilians was called the Al-Aksa Intifada which began in September 2000. Over a thousand Israelis were killed by Palestinian suicide bombings and shootings which resulted in an Israeli response and ultimately an Israeli distrust of Arafat as a peace partner. Although assumed to have been a spontaneous reaction to the visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, statements by people close to Arafat show that the Palestinian violence was premeditated by Arafat following his rejection of the generous peace offerings of Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton at Camp David. Imad Faluji, the Palestinian Authority Communications Minister at the time, admitted months later that Arafat had planned the violence two months before the Sharon visit to the Jewish holy shrine as blowback over his failure at Camp David. Ten years later, Mahmoud Zahar, one of the evil heads of Hamas, said that Arafat had instructed his organization to launch terror attacks following Camp David. Even Arafat’s widow, Suha, admitted, “I met him in Paris after Camp David and he told me, ‘You should remain in Paris.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘I am going to start an intifada.’” What follows sounds eerily similar to what Mahmoud Abbas created in 2015. Just prior to Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year, of the year 2000, the Palestinian Authority ‘Voice of Palestine’ radio station began to put out calls “to all Palestinians, come and defend the Al-Aksa mosque.” The PA closed all their schools and bused Palestinian students to the Old City to participate in the organized riots. When hundreds of Jews were praying below at the Western Wall, thousands of Arabs began hurling rocks and bricks at worshippers and police. The rioting spread to towns and villages throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Arafat continued his incitement to violence. In January 2004, he called upon Palestinians to draw blood in an impassioned speech in which he whipped up the crowd by repeating the chant, “With our souls and our blood, we will redeem you, Palestine. Until Jerusalem! Towards Jerusalem are marching millions of martyrs!” This speech was given after bus bombings in Jerusalem by his suicide bombers that killed forty Israelis and injured hundreds. Not exactly the speech of a peace maker calling for “peace of the brave.” For Israelis, he was calling for and giving “peace of the grave.” Not only has Mahmoud Abbas followed n Arafat’s footsteps with his incitement to kills Jews, an incitement couched in Islamic terms, but other members of his administration have also used inflammatory language. Jibril Rajoub, his sports minister, infamously said that if the Palestinian had a nuclear weapon they would nuke Israel. Denis Ross, a former Palestinian-Israeli negotiator and an ardent two-state solution advocate criticized his own government for ignoring Palestinian incitement; “The Palestinian systematic incitement in their media, an educational system that breeds hatred, and the glorification of violence made Israelis feel that their real purpose was not peace.” You’d better believe it, Denis. In fact, incitement to genocide is, in itself, an international crime. When propagated by an authority claiming statehood, it makes it state-sponsored incitement to genocide. Generally speaking, incitement means encouraging others to commit an offense by way of communications such as broadcasts, publications or speeches. Incitement to genocide needs to be proven to be direct, namely that both the speaker or inciter and the listener understand the implications of the call to action. There can be no doubt what the implications of Abbas’s call to spill blood meant to the knife-wielding Arabs targeting Jews. The fact that genocide did not occur is no defense for the inciter. Public incitement to genocide can be prosecuted even if genocide does not occur. A proof of result is not necessary for the crime to have been committed, only that it had the potential to spur genocidal violence. It is the intent of the speaker that matters, not the effectiveness of the speech that caused the criminal action. As such, Palestinian leaders including Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniya should be brought to trial for incitement to genocide. As such, they cannot be considered in the international community as peace partner, but as criminals. As such, they are the cause for Palestinian unrest, not Israelis building homes on land they consider legally theirs.