RUTHFULLY YOURS

Metal detectors and are commonplace at most prominent mosques in the Middle East, and more than 5,000 surveillance cameras (and 100,000 security guards) monitor pilgrims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia during the annual Hajj.

While the Palestinian terrorist was being treated for his wounds in an Israeli hospital, the Palestinian Authority celebrated his actions and set in motion the mechanism according to which he will receive a salary of more than $3,000 per month for his attempt to become a “martyr” through murdering Jews.

It is time for the international community to stop enabling radicals to use the Palestinian people as pawns in their greater agenda, transparent to everyone, including all Muslims: to obliterate Israel through delegitimization.

After massive pressure from the Muslim world and international community, Israel removed all metal detectors and surveillance-camera infrastructure from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the location of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Possibly to obfuscate the reason that the metal detectors were installed in the first place — a terrorist attack on July 14, in which three Israeli Arab citizens killed two Israeli Druze police officers with weapons they had hidden inside the mosque — the Palestinian Authority (PA) called on Muslims to boycott the site and launch “days of rage” against the Jewish state.

Palestinians, claiming that the metal detectors were a “desecration” of the mosque — which is actually located on the holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest in Islam – entered into violent clashes with Israeli security forces. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced Israel and called on Muslims to “protect” Jerusalem.

Palestinians near Jerusalem’s Old City protest Israel’s installation of metal detectors at entrances to the Temple Mount, although the metal detectors had already been removed days before, on July 28, 2017. (Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images)

A Palestinian teenager posted on Facebook his intention to become a “martyr,” before entering the home of a Jewish family in the West Bank and slaughtering three of its members. While this terrorist was being treated for his wounds in an Israeli hospital, the Palestinian Authority celebrated his actions and set in motion the mechanism according to which he will receive a salary of more than $3,000 per month for his attempt to become a “martyr” through murdering Jews.

Last Friday night, an Israeli soldier on leave for the weekend acted coolly and courageously, ‎rushing to the rescue of neighbors he heard screaming. “Sgt. O.,” whose full name cannot be ‎disclosed due to the sensitive nature of the elite IDF special forces unit in which he serves, ran to ‎the home of the nearby Salomon family to investigate. When he saw through their window that ‎they were being butchered, he promptly grabbed his rifle and shot the perpetrator.‎

By the time the scene was over, Yosef Salomon, 70, his daughter Chaya Salomon, 46, and son ‎Elad Salomon, 36, were lying in pools of blood on the kitchen floor. Tova Salomon, 68, would ‎only learn of the death of her husband and two of her children upon awakening from the surgery ‎she underwent to repair the multiple injuries she sustained in the knife attack.‎

The terrorist who maimed and murdered the Salomons was evacuated to an Israeli hospital, ‎where he was treated for the bullet wound from Sgt. O.’s weapon.‎

The Salomons had been celebrating the birth of a grandson when 19-year-old Omar al-Abed from ‎a neighboring Palestinian village entered their home through the front door, which was left open ‎for the guests arriving for dinner. As soon as al-Abed began his stabbing spree, Elad Salomon’s ‎wife (now widow) ushered all the children who were present into a bedroom, then locked the ‎door and called police.‎

Sgt. O.’s swift action prevented a far more extensive blood-bath. While al-Abed, who had ‎written a Facebook post about his plan to kill Israelis, is being hailed in the Palestinian Authority ‎as a “heroic martyr” — and will receive a salary of more than $3,000 per month for his actions — ‎Sgt. O.’s commanders are recommending that he receive an official citation for bravery from ‎the IDF chief of staff. ‎

Such an honor would be more than well-deserved, as this is the second time that Sgt. O. ‎risked his life to save a family in his community. Three years ago, he physically restrained a ‎terrorist who had infiltrated another home in Halamish, holding him until the arrival of security ‎forces.‎

Sgt. O. is an Israeli hero whose identity cannot be published, but whose life is intact. A ‎different Israeli hero — one who has been a household name in the country for his decades of ‎musical prowess and gay-rights activism — was not so fortunate last weekend.

Amir Fryszer Guttman, 41, died on Saturday of organ failure, after rescuing his 9-year-old ‎niece from drowning off the coast of Atlit. Fryszer Guttman held the flailing child, his brother’s ‎daughter, above the surface of the waves, forcing himself to stay conscious while bobbing up and ‎down in the water until help arrived. It was not until he was told that the little girl was safe that ‎he passed out for good. He was rushed to the hospital in a coma, and died the following day.

Fryszer Guttman’s story gripped the nation more profoundly than the international crisis ‎surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The ongoing chaos, sparked by an Arab terrorist ‎attack on July 14 — in which two Druze Israeli Border Police officers were killed outside Al-‎Aqsa mosque — feels like yet another chapter in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By now, the ‎matter-of-fact heroism displayed by people like Sgt. O. is something that the public has ‎come to take for granted.‎

But Fryszer Guttman’s death caused everyone — even the most secular of his peers in the ‎entertainment industry and LGBT community — to gasp at its eerily divine significance. This is ‎because he lost his life on the very day that he and his friends and family were celebrating the ‎anniversary of the beginning of his new life.‎

A year ago last July, Fryszer Guttman, a married father of a young son, received the news that he ‎had been misdiagnosed three months earlier with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After undergoing ‎heavy doses of chemotherapy for cancer he did not have, Fryszer Guttman — whose career ‎suffered along with his health — was told that a mistake had been made. His joy was mitigated ‎only by the fact that the treatment had managed to wreak havoc on his body. A couple of weeks ‎ahead of the beach party he held in honor of his “first birthday” with a clean bill of health, ‎Fryszer Guttman filed a NIS 5 million ($1.4 million) malpractice suit against Tel Aviv ‎Sourasky Medical Center for the travesty. ‎

At his funeral on Tuesday, his brother, Eyal Perry — whose daughter’s life was saved by Fryszer ‎Guttman — said, “You ascended in a storm to the heavens, as only you know how. We thank you ‎for every moment you were with us.” ‎

In her heartfelt eulogy, actress Gila Almagor, who had performed Fryszer Guttman’s wedding ‎ceremony to his husband, Yanai, also spoke in religious terms. “The ways of God are beyond my ‎comprehension,” she said, expressing the sentiment of a nation shaken by the sense that the ‎timing and method of our death is predetermined. The only control we may have — as the tales of ‎Sgt. O. and Fryszer Guttman illustrate — is over how we choose to live. On that score, Israel ‎is doing pretty well.‎

Even if a serious discussion about Israel’s relations with the increasingly ‘Palestinized’ Jordan could take place without causing a major international crisis, Israel might conclude that it shouldn’t lean too heavily on the shaky Hashemite kingdom.

For 24 hours earlier this week, Jordan was holding the Israeli Embassy and its staff hostage. There is no other way of describing the situation. All the thanks and smiles can’t hide the reality. The message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conversation with respected Ambassador to Jordan Einat Schlein and the security guard who shot two Jordanians after he was attacked, known in the Israeli press only by his first name, Ziv, when they returned to Israel via the Allenby Crossing was clear: We can breathe easy.

It’s lucky that during the fog of tensions that knocked many people off kilter, Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah were allies. Jared Kushner, son-in-law and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, led them though a diplomatic minefield.

Abdullah made a mistake at the beginning. When there was still a media blackout in Israel about the embassy shooting, the king should have allowed Israel to extract the guard from Jordanian territory and bring him home. Once again, it was clear that any conflict with a Muslim official comes close to blowing up. The Muslims don’t like to see Jews using force and killing those who attack them. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Sheikh Raed Salah of the outlaw Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Jordanians don’t like to witness scenarios like that — a Jew defending himself though force. But Abdullah’s mistake stemmed from the fact that he first had to pacify his own intelligence and security services, so that his guard dogs wouldn’t turn on him “in error.” And there are also the Bedouin tribes of Jordan, who pose a much greater danger to the Hashemite kingdom than the Palestinians who make up the vast majority of its population.

Only a few weeks ago, a Jordanian army officer was sentenced to death for murdering three members of the U.S. “special forces” (the CIA, apparently). The incident took place in November 2016 on a U.S. air force base in Jordan and apparently provided the background for this week’s incident involving the embassy guard shooting the furniture delivery guy.

Some of the Bedouin tribes have been in a state of semi-rebellion against King Abdullah for quite a while. The man who murdered the three Americans belonged to one of them. They demanded his release. The Islamic State brainwashing is taking root over there, as it has among certain sectors of the Israeli Arab public. Kushner and Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt were doubtlessly well-briefed by the CIA on the affair before they helped Netanyahu and Abdullah out of the minefield that stretched between Amman and the Temple Mount. The incident needed to come to a quick end before it snowballed into a Benghazi-like mess.

King Abdullah has been “Abbas-ized.” He spends a lot of time outside his kingdom. He no longer has any strong men in the Jordanian government though whom he can govern. His government is becoming more and more western and Palestinian, made up of individuals who know how to curry favor with Washington and Brussels, but not the Bedouin at home.

Crucially, and contrary to Palestinian claims, there has been no Israeli decision to ban Muslims from entering the Temple Mount. For the first time since 1967, the Palestinians are denying Muslim worshippers free access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Palestinians and the Islamic religious authorities are protesting against security measures that are intended to save the lives of Muslim worshippers and prevent the desecration of their holy sites by terrorists and rioters. They are protesting because Israel is trying to make it hard for them to murder Jews.

To clarify what is actually going on: it is not the security measures that really anger the Palestinians; for them, this crisis is not about a metal detector or a security camera. It is not the security measures that the Palestinians want dismantled. It is Israel that they want dismantled.

The metal detectors that were supposed to prevent Muslims from smuggling weapons into the Temple Mount compound, and which were removed by the Israeli authorities this week, have a more accurate name: “lie detectors.” They have exposed Palestinian lies and the real reason behind Palestinian anger.

Israel apparently removed the metal detectors from the gates of the Temple Mount as part of a deal to end an unexpected crisis with Jordan over the killing of two Jordanian men by an Israeli embassy security officer in Amman. The security officer says he was acting in self-defense after being attacked by one of the Jordanians with a screwdriver.

The crisis erupted when the Jordanian authorities insisted on interrogating the officer — a request that was rejected by Israel because the officer enjoys diplomatic immunity. US intervention and a phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah helped end the crisis peacefully and quickly, and the officer and the rest of the Israeli embassy staff were permitted to leave Jordan and head back to Israel.

Shortly after the embassy staff returned to Israel, the Israeli authorities started removing the metal detectors that were installed at the entrances to the Temple Mount after terrorists murdered two Israeli police officers on July 14. The move sparked a wave of rumors and speculation, according to which the Jordanians allowed the embassy staff to return home in exchange for the removal of the metal detectors.

Israel and Jordan have denied any link between the shooting incident in Amman and the removal of the metal detectors.

The crisis that erupted between Israel and Jordan over the killing of the two Jordanians was solved in less than 48 hours — much to the dismay of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians were hoping to exploit the crisis to exacerbate tensions between Amman and Jerusalem. Their ultimate goal: to cause the Jordanians to scrap their peace treaty with Israel and return to the state of war with the “Zionist enemy.” The Palestinians were also hoping to exploit the crisis to incite Jordanians against Israel and the Hashemite monarchy.

Fortunately, the Jordanian authorities did not fall into the Palestinian trap. They realized that it is in their own interest to resolve the crisis swiftly and peacefully. King Abdullah was wise enough not to allow the Palestinians to drag him into a confrontation with Israel.

Since the installation of the metal detectors at the Temple Mount, the Palestinians have been waging yet another campaign of fabrications and distortions against Israel. This Palestinian blood libel claims that Israel is seeking to “change the status quo” at the Temple Mount by introducing new security measures such as metal detectors and surveillance cameras at the gates to the holy site.

The classic example of chutzpah is to kill one’s parents and then demand clemency in the court on the grounds of being an orphan.

People laugh hearing this example despite its gruesomeness, for no one in his right mind can take it seriously. Yet it is no laughing matter anymore, for recently, Palestinians utilized that very excuse in the court of public opinion.

There is a hill in Jerusalem called by Palestinians the Al-Aqsa compound, by Jews the Temple Mount. After Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War a half-century ago, Israelis and Arabs came up with a simple equilibrium that became the status quo regarding the site: all can visit, but only Muslims can pray there.

Simply put, the status quo is this: the Al-Aqsa compound is a site of Muslim prayer.

On July 14, 2017, three terrorists ran out of it, gunning down two Israeli policemen, and ran back, hoping to escape there. They were shot and killed by the police.

This means that the status quo got changed – by the Palestinians. From the place of prayer, Al-Aqsa was turned into a weapons storage facility and a launchpad for terrorist attacks.

By placing around it metal detectors and surveillance cameras – thus rendering Al-Aqsa unusable for military purposes – Israeli authorities turned the location back into a prayer site.

And yet the Palestinians are unhappy. Instead of being grateful for restoring the status quo, they are accusing Israelis of altering the very status quo they, the Palestinians, themselves murderously altered in the first place, which Israelis restored! Not willing to come back to Al-Aqsa, they cry to heaven, irate at Jewish perfidy!

I don’t think heaven hears them. They are refusing to come pray at Al-Aqsa for several days now, yet somehow the heavens are not falling down.

Perhaps even Allah does not find funny Palestinians’ bizarre claims of victimhood after committing a murder.