Just days before the deadly attack in the Jerusalem synagogue, the PA targeted rabbis in its incitement. It continued with its agitation after the attack by praising and justifying the horrific violence.  

Only a week before the brutal murders of four rabbis and a policeman in a Jerusalem synagogue, the official Palestinian Authority (PA) daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida published an op-ed that demonized Israel and Jews, the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports.

The piece specifically singled out “the rabbis of the secret societies” as the ones instructing Israel to “set the foundations for an eternal hegemony”.  It continued,

“The danger posed by Israel remains the greatest and most significant of all, and the first [threat] we must come out against. For the Zionist settler ideology does not seek temporary influence or gains, and does not strive to exploit and exhaust resources, but rather sets the foundations for an eternal hegemony based on the instructions of the ‘rabbis’ of the secret societies. And all this is in order to take revenge on history and their minority and false persecution complex.”

These allegations bear a strong resemblance to the infamous anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Israel – Source of All Danger, Including ISIS

Having established that Israel is “the greatest and most significant danger,” the writer of the op-ed repeated the PA libel that Israel is planning and working on destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a libel that PA leaders are promoting as the main theme in the current wave of incitement of terror against Israelis.

To prove that Israel poses a great danger, the op-ed also reiterated the PA libel that accuses Israel of being behind all the world’s dangers:

“These are [our] enemies, and they have a hand in everything that is happening: in the issue of ISIS [Islamic State] and its arming, in importing explosives to the Arab lands, in the spread of extremist ideas and the deepening of the doctrinal conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. In addition, they are the ones creating the crises. They are the ones igniting the civil wars.”

In an effort to allay such accusations and lower tensions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly announced more than once that Israel has no aspirations to change the status quo on the Temple Mount.

Praise After the Attack

Palestinians scatter sweets in celebration of the attack on a Jerusalem synagogue. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

The PA official daily gave praise to the attack after it occurred, and stated that Israel was to blame for it.

In his column in the same publication, Adli Sadeq, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and a senior official in the PA foreign ministry, wrote of the two Palestinians who perpetrated the attack in the synagogue:

“[Their] perception of the reality in the land of their fathers and forefathers was shaped by despicable, shameful and deadly events that occur on a daily basis…As for the rabbis wearing the robes of Satan, who dispatch the extremists, murderers and terrorists…, they regard us all as if we were superfluous creatures or names traced in chalk on the board of life, which are easy to erase and must be erased…”

The two Arabs who massacred the four rabbis and policeman are not evil like those they killed, Sadeq asserts:

“I am confident that the culture of the two youths [who carried out the attack] is completely different from that of their victims. [These youths] do not exclude people indiscriminately, and are not indiscriminately wicked to people, and are willing [to accept] a settlement in whose framework the two peoples will coexist without one attacking the other… They do not hate anyone based on religion or nationality. As for the culture of their victims, it is inscribed upon the shattered gravestones, upon the walls of the attacked mosques and torched churches, and upon the trunks of uprooted trees (attacks Jews allegedly carried out on Arab property). ”

A Natural Response?

Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, an advisor to former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, stated in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida after the attack that the butchering of men in prayer was “a natural response.” He wrote, “The operation carried out yesterday morning at a religious institution in West Jerusalem…[This action was committed] in response to a series of Israeli violations and crimes…”

Al-Ghoul further threatened Israel, stating that other such attacks were in the planning.

“Israel and its leaders have learned nothing from previous experience. They did not grasp [the extent of] the Palestinian people’s ability to fight, and deluded themselves [into believing] in the option of ‘subjugating’ the Palestinians and ‘branding into their consciousness’ that they must accept the existing reality. But the evidence shows that the opposite is true. After the latest self-sacrifice operations, the Israelis had better grasp the reality, before it is too late.”

The PA is funded by the US and the European Union. We MUST end this. Click here to sign our Petition demanding that the United States and European Union stop funding the Palestinian Authority.

Author: United with Israel Staff
(With files form PMW and MEMRI)

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