What you read in the mainstream media about the recent violence in Jerusalem is wrong.
Last week I participated in a conference call on the growing violence in Israel/Palestine. The call included Palestinians and Jews who were either on the ground or had been recently. The picture they painted about the deteriorating situation was very grim. Although, at some level, I knew much of what was discussed, several things stood out for me.
1. What you read in the western mainstream media is wrong. Whether you read the New York Times, the Washington Post or any other mainstream media outlet, the underlying approach to the coverage is that the violence is being perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists and Israel is responding to these terrorist attacks. The reality is that the violence did not begin in the past few weeks. For years there has been a series of attacks by radical settlers in the West Bank on Palestinians, their homes, farms and businesses. These attackers have, in many cases been protected by the Israeli occupying forces. Over time the racist attacks have spread to Israel proper.
2. It is not about access to al-Aqsa mosque. Although many of the recent confrontations have taken place at the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) as radical Jews have attempted to gain access to al-Aqsa and the Israeli government has responded by limiting access by Muslims to one of the holiest sites in Islam. While not the cause of the escalating violence, it was a trigger that motivated young Palestinians to take action.
3. It’s the occupation. Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza since the end of the 1967 War and over time has annexed portions of this territory and built Jews-only settlements throughout. Despite an array of attempts to resolve the conflict and establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the occupation remains in place. We now have a generation of young people that—having grown up knowing nothing but the occupation, having seen the optimism of the Oslo Accords fade away under the pressure of expanding settlement, having no hope for anything but a brutal military occupation—has become frustrated, angry and radicalized.
4. The 2014 Gaza War united Palestinians. As I wrote at the time, prior to this war Palestinian citizens and residents of Israel, even though they were second class citizens, tended to think of themselves as Israelis first and Palestinians second. Many knew little about conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. The death and destruction inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza during this war changed this mind set dramatically. They now relate intensely to the plight of their Palestinian brothers and sisters living under occupation. They are also more cognizant of their second class status in Israel. After the Second Intifada, Israel responded by building a wall between the West Bank and Israel. That strategy won’t work this time.
5. Fear is rampant in all segments of Israeli society. The seemingly random nature of the violence has made the entirety of Israeli society fearful. Jews fear that the Arab construction worker, waiter or student could suddenly turn on them with a knife or vehicle. With the introduction of authorization for police and military within Israel to “shoot to kill” if they “suspect” that someone is a terrorist, Arabs see every policeman as a potential killer. One young Arab woman told a story of walking in East Jerusalem with a water bottle and then throwing it away, afraid that a policeman might think it was a weapon and kill her. Mizrahi Jews, Jews of Middle Eastern origin whose looks, culture and language are Arab, are afraid that they will be attacked by other Jews. The usually vibrant Old City of Jerusalem, filled with shoppers, students and tourists, is quiet.
6. The Israeli government’s response to the violence has only made matters worse. The decision to combat the intifada by instituting even more violent and repressive measures and the inflammatory language used to justify the measures is counterproductive. The arrests and killing of Palestinian youth and children is increasing the anger and spreading the violence.
7. Israel has a problem that they have no idea how to solve. Iranian Supreme Leader Khomeini may have been prescient when he said, “The occupying regime in Jerusalem will vanish from the pages of time.”
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The arrogant Zionist psychopaths that made this mess didn’t have the human qualities necessary to evaluate the consequences of their brutal conduct on others. They didn’t realize that their miserable thug conduct would only produce a pathological thug state.
The Jew-hating garbage.The author is indignant of the Media that is less anti-semitic than himself.
1. Stating what started the cycle of violence is pointless. Because the violence and retaliations go back for as long as when Jews started moving back to their homeland some 100+ years ago. People like to pick and choose when they want to say history started based on their agenda. For example, people say the Palestinians are indigenous people to the area. Well if they’re Arab’s they came from Arabia at some point. And if you want to start history some 1500 years before that, the Jews are indigenous.
2. The latest round of violence has intensified over al-Aqsa. The Palestinians say as much. It’s true that things have gotten worse with right wing settlers. Which makes Arafat’s failures look even worse twenty years on. Had the Arabs agreed to partition in 37, 48, or Oslo, then there would be no right wing settlers. People want to complain about Israel’s right wing policies today. How foolish that the Arabs didn’t make peace when Israel was run by secular leftists. Stupid, stupid stupid.
3. The article doesn’t state who the failure of Oslo belongs to. The Palestinians have never had the power to dictate terms. They should have been begging for Oslo to work. Instead they showed their typical intransigence. They could have had at least 90% of what’s called the West Bank and no right wing settlers. 20 years later they have this, because they don’t want a state if Israel is also exist. If the Arabs are frustrated and radicalized by Israeli occupation in a state the size of New Jersey, what is frustrating and radicalizing them in the 22 other Arab Muslim states where there are no Israelis? Maybe their own cultural pathologies are partly to blame but of course to say so is racist.
4. Israeli Arab citizens understand that living as second class citizens in a paradise like Tel Aviv and Haifa are considerably preferable to living in the basket case countries where they would be the majority. They have more human rights as second class citizens in a Jewish state than they would have in Riyadh or Tehran.
5. Israelis have lived in a certain low level of fear for 70 years. At times it intensifies and then it returns to that low level. What choice do they have? They’ve tried for peace, they’ve tried for two states, and the inability to find a partner for peace has allowed the Israeli right to flourish. The longer the Palestinians have gone without compromising the less they have to show for it as Israelis grow tired of waiting for acceptance. This has not worked tactically for the Palestinians in the past so I don’t see why it will work in the present.
6. As far as I can tell Israelis are shooting people who are attacking them with knives, running them over with cars, etc. That’s a reasonable response to life threatening attacks. In America if you charge a cop or a citizen with a knife that person is justified in shooting you to death. It’s not only legally justifiable, but that justification is rooted in human nature. The right to defend oneself is the most basic of human rights. Palestinians could protest via civil disobedience. Like staging sit-ins or chaining themselves to objects. Nonviolent protest gives you the moral high ground and eventually your oppressor must capitulate. The Palestinians have never used non violent civil disobedience. They’ve always been rock throwers and bus bombers. They use and indoctrinate their own children for Christ’s sake. The tv shows and paying off of families of martyrs is understood by the west to be child abuse and symptomatic of a culture that perhaps doesn’t need to flourish. Thus, large parts of the world don’t really sympathize with their cause.
7. Jews have proven to be fairly resourceful people historically. More resourceful than most. We’ve gone from being nearly wiped out to building our own first world country with an arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons and a first rate military in the span of 70 years. We’re not going to be moved from our land by a world that is at best indifferent to our plight and at worst always seeking our annihilation. Israel is managing the situation. It can always dismantle settlements if it needs to do a deal for peace though there is no reason to believe that the Palestinian leadership will ever seek peace. They can also continue their current policy of maintaining order and improving security until the Palestinians eventually choose to leave for greener pastures as was the original intention of the Mandate for Palestine. They got Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon for their own political self determination. Let them move there and make whatever state they are capable of making.