Writing for The Times of Israel, senior staff writer Avi Issacharoff criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for scapegoating Abbas as the cause for the recent disturbances in Israel and for failing to point the finger at the real culprits, Hamas. He posits that Netanyahu, in a quest to avoid negotiations with Israel’s “peace partners,” has painted Abbas as a purveyor of violence and thus, an obstacle to peace. He also notes that as a result of the disturbances, “an entire country is in a panic.”
I submit however, that the only people who are “in a panic” are Issacharoff and leftists of like-mind who detest Netanyahu, seek his demise and will stop at nothing to disparage him. Israel has in the past witnessed and endured far worse violence and each time weathered the storm calmly and resolutely. The people of Israel in the instant mini-crisis are neither panic-stricken nor hysterical though many on the left would like to have us think that. What better way to produce an “intifada” than by talking about it incessantly in the hope of producing a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Issacharoff’s analysis is fundamentally flawed on a number of levels. First, it is Abbas and his Palestinian Authority who are primarily responsible for the uptick in violence. No doubt that Hamas shares some responsibility but it is the PA’s continued campaign of incitement, where Jews are compared to the descendants of apes and pigs and Palestinians are continuously urged in TV broadcasts to confront the “barbaric monkeys” and “wretched pigs” aka Jews, that has led to the current state of affairs.
Abbas’s inflammatory rhetoric adds fuel to the fire. Responsible leaders don’t incite their populace to attack the citizens of another state, and that is precisely what Abbas has done, over and over again. Responsible leaders don’t pay condolence calls to the families of assassins and refer to them as martyrs who will ascend to heaven, and that is precisely what Abbas has done. Responsible leaders don’t name squares and streets after people, who in normal societies, would be locked up in institutions for the criminally insane, but Abbas’s Palestinian Authority has done so repeatedly.