OP-ED: Palestinians lay blame for Paris on Israel
By BENYAMIN KORN
The fact that the official Palestinian Authority newspaper has published an article accusing Israel of carrying out the Paris terror attacks is not just some curiosity. It speaks volumes about the mindset of the people whom some call Israel’s ‘partner for peace.’
The article, published in the PA newspaper Al Hayat Al-Jadida, declared that “it is not a coincidence that human blood was exploded in Paris at the same time that certain European sanctions are beginning to be implemented against settlement products…The wise and correct thing is to look for who benefits. In short: They need to search the last place reached by the octopus arms of the Mossad… It is clear that its ‘Mossad’ will burn Beirut and Paris in order to achieve [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s goals. He, who challenged the master of the White House, hides in his soul enough evil to burn the world.” (Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch)
Two cartoons on the official website of Fatah, the PLO faction headed by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas presented the same theme. One showed Prime Minister Netanyahu helping an ISIS terrorist aim his gun at the Eiffel Tower. The other portrayed a stereotypical bearded Jew, with a Star of David, as the head of a match, next to a match with ISIS as its head, in a matchbox labeled “Terrorism.”
Those who follow Palestinian affairs will recall the poll, earlier this year, which found the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs believe that Israel carried out the massacres of eleven people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices, and four more at the kosher grocery store, in Paris on January 7-8.
The poll, conducted by the Palestinian news agency Ma’an and published in Al-Hayat al-Jadida, found 84% of Palestinians believe the Paris attacks were “suspicious, and that Israel may be behind it.” Just 9% of Palestinians acknowledge that the Paris massacres were the work of Islamist terrorists.
PA officials, including PA chairman Abbas, regularly spout all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories, most recently the allegation that Israel is plotting to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount. Those lies have helped incite the current wave of stabbings and car-rammings of Israeli Jews.
In recent years, senior PA officials have publicly claimed that Israel distributes chocolates laced with mad cow disease in Palestinian areas (the PA’s director of Consumer Protection made that accusation); that Israel infects Palestinian children with AIDS (according to the PA’s representative to the UN in Geneva); that Israel carried out the 9/11 attacks (PA Radio); that Israel murders Palestinian children in order to harvest their organs (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida); or that Israel uses naked women to lure “intifada youth” into police ambushes (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida again). Abbas himself wrote a Ph.D. dissertation and a book claiming that only one million Jews died in the Holocaust, and it was all part of a conspiracy between Zionist leaders and the Nazis.
Why are these attitudes significant? Because they speak volumes about what a Palestinian state would look like. “Palestine” would not be run by reasonable, rational, people. Palestinian tanks and planes–just a few miles from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem–would be in the hands of people who–by an overwhelming majority–sincerely believe crazy things, whether about 9/11 or the Holocaust or a dozen other issues.
You won’t read about Palestinian conspiracy theories in the pages of the New York Times or the J Street Newsletter. Professional “peace processors” like Martin Indyk won’t talk about Palestinian conspiracies–because that would interfere with their agenda of creating a Palestinian state. And who, after all, who would support giving them a state if it’s clear that they’re crazy?
(Mr. Korn, chairman of the Philadelphia Religious Zionists, is former executive editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent and the Miami Jewish Tribune.)
