RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Run [them] over, destroy,
annihilate, blow them up;‎

Don’t let the Zionist live long

O Al-Aqsa, we’re your defenders
O son of Jerusalem, cry ‘Allah is great!’”

‎“Wait for them at the intersection
Let the settler drown in red blood
Terrorize them”‎

Those quotes are from Palestinian Media Watch’s translation ^[1] of a song that is now a big hit among Palestinians. PMW notes that:

One video version of the song “Run over [the settler]!” ‎by singers Muhammad Abu Al-Kayed and Anas Jaradat has more than ‎‎385,000 viewings on the “Quds News Network” Facebook page. On one of the singers’ ‎YouTube channel the song has more than 71,000 viewings.‎

What has evoked this enthusiasm is a spate of murderous Palestinian attacks on Israelis over the past few weeks. The fatalities have been a three-month-old Israeli girl ^[2] and a 22-year-old Ecuadorian woman ^[3], both killed in a car-ramming attack in Jerusalem; a 38-year-old Israeli Druze border patrol captain ^[4] killed in another car-ramming attack in Jerusalem; a 20-year-old off-duty Israeli soldier ^[5] stabbed to death in Tel Aviv on Monday; and a 26-year-old Israeli woman ^[6] stabbed to death beside a Judea community that same day.

^{[7] [8]}

Clearly, the Palestinians celebrating these attacks are not concerned about age or gender, security-force vs. civilian status, location (“East Jerusalem,” the “West Bank,” and Tel Aviv are all fine), or even whether the victims are Jewish or Israeli. They also are not devotees of a “two-state solution” with “two states living side by side in peace and security.”

Palestinian-affairs analyst Khaled Abu Toameh notes ^[9] that:

The most popular [current Palestinian social-media] campaign is entitled Daes, which translates into “run over” in Arabic. Daes is also a reference to Daesh, the Arabic acronym for ISIS. The online campaigns feature cartoons that encourage Palestinians ^[10] to use their vehicles to kill Israelis.

All sources agree that this wave of violence, which also includes rioting in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and in Israeli Arab towns within Israel proper, is being incited by the Palestinian terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Some sources also say external terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood—and ISIS—have had a hand in organizing or inciting the violence.

A major role is also being played, however, by Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s alleged peace partner, and his Fatah movement.

With Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem serving as a flashpoint of the incitement, as Palestinians are whipped up by the entirely libelous claim that Israel is planning to destroy it, on October 18 Abbas declared ^[11] that Israelis “must be barred from entering the [mosque] compound by any means. This is our Aqsa…and they have no right to enter it and desecrate it.”

^[12]On October 29 in Jerusalem a Palestinian named Mutaz Hijazi, who may well have internalized the message of “by any means,” attempted to assassinate ^[13] Yehuda Glick, an advocate of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount—where Al-Aqsa is located, and which is also the site of the ancient Jewish First Temple and Second Temple. The Mount is the most sacred place on earth for Jews, and has a lower degree of sacrality for Muslims.

Hijazi was quickly found and killed by Israeli security forces. Abbas responded by promptly writing to his widow ^[14]:

With anger, we have received the news of the vicious assassination crime committed by the terrorists of the Israeli occupation army against [your] son Mu’taz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi, who will go to heaven as a martyr defending the rights of our people and its holy places.

Hijazi, it should be stressed, shot Glick, a civilian, at pointblank range. Fortunately Glick now appears to be recovering ^[15] in hospital.

The assassin’s admirer, Mahmoud Abbas, is the same Mahmoud Abbas about whom President Barack Obama said last March ^[16]:

I think nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has been committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue.

That was in an interview where Obama, of course, portrayed Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu as the recalcitrant party who needs to “seize the moment” and make peace.

^[17]Palestinian anti-Jewish terror has been rising and falling in waves over the course of a century. After years of relative quiet, this latest wave is clearly propelled by the current regional atmosphere of extreme Islamist brutality.

With Muslim Arabs of different sects committing atrocities against each other, and savagely attacking non-Muslim or non-Arab Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and others, it should come as no surprise that the Jews of Israel are also under attack.

Israel will deal with the problem and eventually quell the violence as it has before. Israel, though, is the only target of the Middle Eastern aggression that is dogmatically demanded to “make peace” with a community that views it as having no right to live.

A more rational approach would acknowledge Israel’s identity as an island of light in the region and stop equating it with the side that goes on producing car-rammers, shooters, and stabbers despite all efforts.

*****