Let Him Who Is Sinless Throw The First Stone
Writing in Haaretz (“Netanyahu Fights Fire With Ire“, 28.11), Odeh Bisharat warns readers that “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” The Op-Ed is a warning to Israelis not to hurl premature accusations against Palestinians and Arab-Israelis. Fair enough. However, Bisharat then employs some reductio ad absurdum to psychoanalyze the Israeli public:
“After all, if you don’t steal your neighbor’s land and don’t embitter his life, you have no reason to suspect that he will “rise up against us and annihilate us” – as the extremists here like to repeat day and night.
But if you feel deep down that, despite assuming the identity of the victim, you are harming your neighbor, then even if there’s an earthquake you’ll blame him for deliberately playing with some underground button. And if there’s a deluge from the heavens that will close the country’s highways, you will say he deliberately left the tap in the skies open. Truly, “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.”
Would Israelis really blame Palestinians for an earthquake or a flood? Doubtful. However, what isn’t in doubt is that the reverse has certainly happened.
A conspiracy theory that Israel might generate an artificial earthquake to harm the Al-Aqsa mosque has been making the rounds for years. For example in 2011:
And again in 2012 by the President of the Supreme Islamic Court and Chairman of the Supreme Council for of Islamic Laws:
There are many more examples on Google.
Earthquakes aside, what about floods? Did the Palestinians ever claim Israel left “the tap in the skies open”? In 2015 AFP and Al-Jazeera ran a story claiming Israel had opened dams in Southern Israel, thereby flooding Gaza. Only after CAMERA pointed out that aside from the Palestinian popular imagination, there were no dams in the area did AFP and Al-Jazeera retract their stories.
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