Accessories to evil

Jerusalem tonight is very tense, with the planned Jewish celebrations of Jerusalem Day on Monday provoking fears of a further escalation of the recent violence that has been erupting in the city and which has rippled into attacks against southern Israel.

In the last few days, there have been violent Arab riots around Temple Mount, the Jerusalem religious site sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims; on Saturday night, a rocket was fired into southern Israel from Gaza, and two more were launched from there on Sunday; and incendiary balloons are once again also being fired from Gaza to attack Israeli civilians, their property and farmland, causing on Sunday some 39 fires, mainly in open areas. 

On Friday, around 200 Arabs and 17 Israeli police officers were wounded when hundreds of Arabs rioted on Temple Mount. There were reports that, once again, the Al Aqsa mosque on the site was being used to store ammunition to use against Israelis…

In Britain and America, this is being mostly reported as Palestinian “resistance” to Israeli attempts to evict some 70 Palestinians Arabs from the contentious east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah — protests that have been met by what is being presented as brutal and heavy-handed reaction by Israeli security forces. Some seven Palestinians were injured in clashes there late on Sunday.

This media narrative is wickedly selective, twisted and misleading. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is currently in progress, is always a time of heightened tension. This has been deliberately stoked up this year through Palestinian incitement to violence, a situation exacerbated in turn by militant Jewish nationalists — and with the fuel to this murderous Arab fire supplied by none other than the White House. 

The disorder started at the beginning of Ramadan with unprovoked Arab attacks on random Jews in Jerusalem’s streets and on its light rail — images disseminated on social media to incite further such attacks — and with Arab demonstrations against Israeli restrictions on attendance at Temple Mount. In response, hundreds of Jewish extremists marched through central Jerusalem chanting “Death to Arabs.”