U.S. response to Palestinian terror attack is disappointing

U.S. response to Jerusalem synagogue attack disappoints

By Stephen M. Flatow/JNS.org

The scenario has been repeated more times than I can remember: Palestinian terrorists murder Israelis. The Obama administration condemns the attack. And that’s it. No change in U.S. policy, no penalties or consequences for those who encourage and praise the killers. The Palestinians are, quite literally, getting away with murder.

Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the Nov. 18 slaughter of four Jews in a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood. He even acknowledged that it was “a pure result of incitement, of calls for days of rage” by the Palestinian leadership. Indeed it was. It’s too bad it took a massacre to get Secretary Kerry to admit that. If only he had spoken out against Palestinian incitement weeks or months ago.

But “speaking out” is not enough. Bland verbal condemnations of incitement don’t make any difference. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and has colleagues don’t take America’s words seriously. There have to be actions. The Palestinian leaders need to see that there will be real consequences for their incitement.

Secretary Kerry said that Palestinian leaders “must begin to take serious steps to restrain any kind of incitement that comes from their language, from other people’s language, and exhibit the kind of leadership that is necessary to put this region on a different path.”

But what if they don’t?  What’s he going to do about it?

Back in 1998, President Bill Clinton’s administration established a Trilateral Committee on Incitement. (That’s what Israel received in exchange for agreeing to the Wye River Memorandum.) But the committee turned out to be a farce. The Israeli members of the committee would complain about Palestinian leaders making inciting statements, and the Palestinians would respond by pointing to some individual Israeli newspaper columnist who said something strongly critical of the Palestinians, and they would say that, too, was incitement.

The problem was that the Clinton administration refused to define “incitement.” It refused to acknowledge the difference between what a Palestinian official said and what an individual Israeli pundit said. The U.S. preferred to play the “both sides are guilty” game. It was like putting Holocaust survivors and Holocaust deniers in a room together and declaring that each side has its own equally valid perspective.

President Obama’s response to the Har Nof massacre took the same “both sides” approach. He declared, “At this sensitive moment in Jerusalem, it is all the more important for Israeli and Palestinian leaders and ordinary citizens to work cooperatively together to lower tensions, reject violence, and seek a path forward towards peace.”

Calling on “Israeli and Palestinian leaders” to “lower tensions and reject violence” is saying that they are both currently not doing enough to lower tensions or reject violence. Both sides are to blame. Both sides need to act. This kind of moral equivalency is false and outrageous. Israel has done everything possible to lower tensions. Israel is the victim. The Palestinians are the aggressors. But President Obama refuses to acknowledge that simple truth.

If the Obama administration is really interested in lowering tensions and getting the Palestinians to reject violence, there is plenty it can do. Here are a few first steps:

—Revive the Trilateral Commission on Incitement, but start by defining incitement, and then impose real penalties on the inciters.

—The PA has a policy of paying salaries to Palestinian terrorists who are imprisoned by Israel. Whatever they pay the prisoners should be deducted from America’s $500-million annual aid to the PA. The PA also pays the families of terrorists who are killed in action--meaning that the families of the Jamal cousins, who carried out the Har Nof massacre, are about to receive large checks from the PA. Deduct that from the U.S. aid package, too.

—The Har Nof attack was perpetrated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It’s the second-largest faction in the PLO, of which Abbas is chairman. The U.S. should demand that Abbas expel the PFLP from the PLO. If he refuses, declare him to be partially responsible for the Har Nof attack, and put him on the “U.S. Watch List,” which prohibits terrorists from entering the U.S.

—There is a park in Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas’s capital, that is named after Dalal Mughrabi, leader of the Palestinian terror squad that murdered 38 Israelis in a 1978 attack, including the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff. Every Palestinian child who walks those streets gets the message—he sees who is regarded as a hero, who he is supposed to emulate. The U.S. should demand that Mughrabi’s name be removed. And if Abbas refuses, there need to be consequences.

I am flying to Israel this week with a heavy heart. I am filled with grief for the families of the latest terror victims. I am worried about my children who live there and have to go to work every morning, not knowing if they will return home that night. And I am anguished by the thought that my own government could do so much to combat Palestinian terrorism—and yet chooses to do next to nothing.

Stephen M. Flatow is a New Jersey attorney whose daughter Alisa was murdered in a 1995 bus bombing by the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad.

Burning Jews is not news for The New York Times and other newspapers

When burning Jews isn’t news

By Stephen M. Flatow/JNS.org

On Aug. 30, Palestinian terrorists set a Jewish man on fire in Jerusalem, and on Sept. 1, other Palestinian terrorists tried to set an entire bus full of Israeli Jews on fire.

Yet I couldn’t find any mention of these horrific attacks in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any other major American news outlet. Why is it that news about burning Jews is not considered fit to print?

The first of the firebomb attacks took place in Jerusalem’s City of David neighborhood. A Molotov cocktail—a flaming bottle of gasoline which explodes upon contact—was hurled through the window of a historic 19th-century house known as Beit Meyuhas. One of the residents, a 45-year-old man, was struck by the firebomb and set on fire. He suffered first and second-degree burns to his face and head. Second-degree burns often result in permanent scarring and require skin grafting.

Burning one Jew is not enough to satisfy the appetite of Palestinian terrorists. On Sept. 1, two firebombs were thrown at an Israeli bus traveling on Route 505, between the towns of Migdalim and Kfar Tapuach. The attackers’ goal was to set the entire bus on fire and burn all of its passengers alive. They almost succeeded. The flaming bombs exploded as they crashed through the front windshield of the bus. Flying glass slashed the driver. It was only by a miracle that he was able to stop the bus without crashing—and that the flames did not spread through the entire vehicle.

Palestinian terrorists sometimes use rocks instead of firebombs. Stoning is, after all, a time-honored method of execution in that part of the world. Recently, they certainly have been trying to do just that.

On Aug. 20, Palestinian rock-throwers attacked an Israeli automobile traveling near the Yitzhar junction. An 11-month-old baby was wounded. Medics on the scene were quoted as saying that it was a “miracle” she survived, since the rock that hit her was the size of a fist.

Three days later, Yedaya Sharchaton, his wife Hadassah, and 1-year-old daughter Nitzan were driving in the Gush Etzion region. Arab rocks smashed through the front windshield, causing Yedaya to lose control of the car. It flipped over. All three family members were injured; Yedaya suffered internal bleeding.  It turns out that my family was on the same road as the Sharchaton’s just a few days before as we headed to celebrate my granddaughter’s bat mitzvah by serving hot dogs to Israeli soldiers at a base in the Hebron hills.

On Aug. 29, a mob of Palestinians emerging from prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount threw rocks at Israeli police officers. It would be interesting to know if anything in the sermons they had just heard encouraged them to try to murder Jews. Two of the rock-throwers were arrested; they were minors. One wonders what they are learning in school about the idea of stoning Jews to death.

The next day, Palestinian rock-throwers targeted Israeli policemen in another section of Jerusalem. Three of the officers were injured. Their names were not mentioned by the Israeli media. Nor were the extent of their injuries. Did one of them lose an eye? Was one of them permanently disfigured? Three more anonymous, forgotten victims of Arab terror.

On Sept. 1, the rock-throwers chose the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev. Spotting an Israeli bus coming down Uzi Narkis Street, from Pisgat Ze’ev to the adjoining Arab neighborhood of Shuafat, the would-be killers attacked. The rocks smashed the windows, one striking and injuring a 3-year-old girl. The Magen David Adom paramedics who rushed to the scene to provide emergency treatment knew that the difference between life and death for that little girl was just bad aim.

So once again, they are burning and stoning Jews. Yet the New York Times and the others are not interested. Why? Because it doesn’t fit their preferred narrative.

Most of the editors and reporters in the mainstream media subscribe to a narrative of the Israeli-Arab conflict in which the Israelis are the aggressors, and the Palestinians are the victims. That narrative supports the political outcome that most editors and reporters personally endorse: an Israeli retreat to the 1967 lines, a division of Jerusalem, the rise of a Palestinian state.

But when you report about Palestinians burning and stoning Israelis, that changes everything. Americans—from the average person in the street to Members of Congress—regard such behavior as barbaric. They naturally conclude that giving a state to such violent extremists is crazy. Telling the truth about Palestinian behavior makes it harder to mobilize pressure on Israel to give in. That’s why in the editorial offices of the New York Times and so many other newspapers, news about burning Jews isn’t fit to print. Sadly, it’s that simple.

Mr. Flatow, a New Jersey attorney, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1995.