U.S. State Department annual report on terrorism details how Palestinian officials say they want peace while encouraging terrorism.
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
Every year the U.S. State Department researches terrorism and produces a report on which countries are playing a part in fighting the scourge and which countries are guilty of encouraging violence.
The report is grim reading. It found that “Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis … included stabbings, shootings, bombings, and vehicular attacks.”
The Palestinian Authority (PA) came in for a scathing review as researchers saw through their rhetoric and exposed how the Palestinian Authority government under Mahmoud Abbas is more focused on terrorism than on peace.
According to the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch, the modus operandi of the PA is to speak in English and pretend to be peace-seekers when meeting foreign audiences, while speaking Arabic to their Palestinian home audience where they praise terrorists and “Martyrs” who died murdering and maiming Israelis.
“Official PA media, TV, and social media accounts affiliated with the ruling political movement Fatah have featured content praising or condoning acts of terrorism, and Palestinian leaders did not consistently publicly condemn individual terrorist attacks,” the report stated.
The State Department looks at how governments around the world are not just fighting terrorism, but also encouraging peaceful methods of conflict resolution. The Palestinians were again found wanting.
“The PA lacked comprehensive legislation specifically tailored to counterterrorism,” the report found, but also took exception to the poor job Palestinian leaders were doing.
“PA officials continued to make inconsistent statements about a commitment to non-violence,” the report said, and zeroed in on the words of Palestinian leader Abbas himself.
Although the Palestinian talks to Western leaders were about peaceful negotiations, claiming that they were promoting “peaceful protests,” the Americans found his actual words revealed a call for millions to embrace violence.
According to the report, “Abbas said on August 10, “So we say to them: ‘Every stone you [used] to build on our land and every house you have built on our land is bound to be destroyed, Allah willing…Jerusalem is ours whether they like it or not… We shall enter Jerusalem – millions of fighters!”