The Stabbing Intifada
by Hal Lindsey
A new wave of violence is sweeping across Israel. As of this writing, at least 48 Palestinians have died, and 10 Israelis. Sadly, for much of the world, the story stops there. They conclude that because more Palestinians have died, Israel must be in the wrong. In order to defend its citizens against terror attacks, Israel is again being painted as the aggressor. But it’s not true.
Analyst Nehemia Gershuni keeps a running record of statistics on the “stabbing intifada.” The numbers change fast, but as I write this, there have been 1444 attacks by Palestinians against Jews in Israel since October 1st. There were 873 attacks against civilians, 181 against soldiers, 155 against policemen.
So, yes, 48 Palestinians have been killed, but they were killed by Israeli policemen and soldiers defending themselves or others. The death toll on both sides comes as result of those Palestinians willing to sacrifice peace and prosperity on the altar of their religion. They arm their young with knives, rocks, Molotov cocktails, and instructions to kill. On social media, Palestinian activists have posted videos and photos giving detailed instructions on “how to stab a Jew.”
When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S. State Department seems to lose its mind, regularly equating acts of self-defense with killing someone simply because he’s a Jew. Spokesman John Kirby seemed to accuse Israel of terrorism when he said, “I would say certainly individuals on both sides of this divide have proven capable of and in our view [are] guilty of acts of terror.”
Palestinian leaders tell the west they want the violence to stop, but at home they paint the hoodlums as heroes, even martyrs. In Paris, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said, “It’s extremely dangerous. We don’t want to see this continue.” But at home, Abbas went on television and spoke of “aggression by Israel and its settlers, who commit terror against our people,” and who “execute our children in cold blood, as they did to the child Ahmed Manasra and other children in Jerusalem and elsewhere.”
When he accused Israel of committing “terror against our people,” saying they “execute our children in cold blood,” he was intentionally inciting the very violence that he said in Paris he wants to stop.
The 13-year-old that Abbas accused Israel of executing, Ahmed Manasra, turns out to be alive in an Israeli hospital. But it’s fair to ask why Ahmed was harmed at all. A video shows him and his 17-year-old cousin stabbing a 13-year-old Jewish boy in the neck. The video also shows the two cousins in a knife attack on a 25-year-old. When Ahmed’s cousin ran toward police with a knife, they shot and killed him. All of that is on video. But despite the evidence, Palestinian media continue to portray these boys as “martyrs” who were “executed in cold blood.”
As he drove toward work, a young Israeli Air Force lieutenant saw a Palestinian terrorist stabbing a female IDF soldier with a screwdriver. He sprang into action, shooting and killing the terrorist. You cannot fairly equate his action in defense of a soldier being stabbed with the stabbing itself. But that’s what the present U.S. Administration does.
President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and other Administration officials have a long and remarkably consistent history of placing guilt on Israel every time the Palestinians launch a new wave of attacks. They attempt to show even-handedness by condemning both sides equally.
This is a logical fallacy, and it has a name — “false equivalence.” It happens when someone equates two things that are fundamentally different.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Kerry has chosen to feed the violence by excusing it. “There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years,” Kerry said, “and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded, “This wave of attacks is not a result of lack of political horizon and not because of a settlements wave. There is no such wave.”
The State Department tried to walk back Kerry’s statement. Spokesman Kirby said, “The secretary wasn’t saying, well now you have the settlement activity as the cause for the effect we’re seeing. Is it a source of frustration for Palestinians? You bet it is, and the secretary observed that. But this isn’t about affixing blame on either side here for the violence.”
A Palestinian terrorist stabs a young woman in the neck with a screwdriver, but America has become so morally depleted that it can no longer “affix blame” to the terrorist.
Netanyahu said, “We expect all our friends, and anyone concerned with the facts and the truth, to look at these facts to see the truth and not to draw false symmetry between Israeli citizens and those who would stab them and knife them to death.”
The world’s media blames Israel. U.S. leaders blame both sides equally. Both of those outcomes offer rich rewards for Palestinian violence, thus inciting more of it.
The plain sense Biblically is this; if you are being attacked, you have a right to defend yourself. Israel is not attacking anyone – the Palestinians are. So attack with any means possible.
