Fareed Zakaria hosted an eight-minute discussion of the Golan matter at the end of his weekly (weekend) program, “Global Public Square “ (GPS) hour-long Cable News Network (CNN) broadcast. The broadcast, on both CNN and CNN International, aired on March 30, Saturday, with repeats on Sunday.

In his introductory comments in the Golan segment, Zakaria claimed that there is a question “about the legality of that gift [President Trump’s proclamation recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israeli territory].” However, he failed to elaborate on what he meant by the “legality” question. Presumably he hoped that either of his quests would pick up on it but that didn’t happen.

Zakaria discussed the matter with Peter Beinart, author and commentator, and Einat Wilf, author and former Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset (parliament) and had previously served as an Israeli military intelligence officer.

Beinart, persistent critic of the Jewish state, has routinely authored error-laden commentaries disparaging Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

The segment featured an interchange of views in which Beinart criticized the recognition of Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan, saying that “[While] nobody thinks that Israel is going to give back the Golan Heights to Syria during a civil war… there are two dangerous precedents. The first is the notion that if you take territory by force, you can keep it, which the Russians are already saying is a precedent for what they’ve done in Crimea. The second is the precedent that Israel might apply this to the West Bank to annex parts of the West Bank, settlements in the West Bank.”

Wilf disagreed, saying, “The only precedent that was set was that Syria and other Arab actors were allowed to operate for decades with zero consequences for aggression. Syria could invade Israel, refuse to recognize Israel, refuse to set an international border, use the plateau of the Golan Heights in order to shell down on Israeli civilians, host terrorist organizations that were responsible for some of the worst attacks on Israeli civilians.”

Beinart expressed disagreement with Wilf’s assessment on precedents and noted that the proclamation “was a blatant American interference in the Israeli election … if we want people to stay out of our elections, we should stay out of their elections.” Beinart here had the last word.

This seems like generally good advice although overstated (at the least) or misplaced in this instance. This advice seems applicable to the 2015 Israeli election. The interference, at that time intended to hurt the chances of the prime minister, has been documented by, among others, the Washington Post. Unsurprisingly, there’s no indication that Beinart has ever complained about U.S. interference in that Israeli election.

The inadequacy of the discussion

Wilf was not able to provide adequate balance mainly since Beinart was allowed to dominate, including having the last word. Viewers could have been informed of the historical/biblical aspect of the Golan. The ancestors of today’s Jewish Israelis resided in the Golan long before any Arabs or any Muslims arrived in the area. Evidence of this is found in the Bible; references to the Golan are contained in Deuteronomy 4:43, Joshua 20:8, Joshua 21:27 and 1 Chronicles 6:56. The region known today as the “Golan Heights” was a part of the area of Bashan in the territory assigned to the Israeli tribe of Manasseh thousands of years ago. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that these ancestors ever willingly relinquished their rights to the land.

Zakaria’s legality point

Zakaria might be referring to the claims that Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights violates international laws and resolutions condemning the acquisition of territory by war. But these condemnations apply only to offensive wars. Israel had seized the Golan in the defensive Six-Day War of 1967. The Syrian military had repeatedly used it to shell the Galilee area of Israel from the Golan high point putting Israeli population centers in jeopardy. Currently, if Israel were to lose control of the Golan, the Galilee would be undefended against the predations of Iran which is intent on destroying the Jewish nation-state.

As legal scholar Alan Dershowitz observed recently, “No country in history has ever given back to a sworn enemy, militarily essential territory that has been captured in a defensive war” (Alan M. Dershowitz, “Trump Is Right about the Golan Heights,” Gatestone Institute, March 30, 2019).

CNN and Zakaria are problematic

Fareed Zakaria is not the best person, given his problems regarding Israel, to host such a discussion although he was relatively muted here. Zakaria has demonstrated a compulsion to view Israel darkly, regardless of facts. In 2015 he implicitly equated the Irgun group to ISIS, the Islamist terrorist organization. Irgun was a Jewish underground military organization in 1945-1948 that fought to establish a Jewish state while usually managing to avoid non-combatant casualties. Previously he had cast the Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah, as a model of religious tolerance. Additionally, in 2014 his journalism ethics were called into question when he was caught plagiarizing.

On CNN, given its dismal record regarding coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict, as well as the predilections of Zakaria and Beinart, the Jewish state could have come off worse here. But the broadcast still managed to mislead viewers.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israel-based non-governmental organization, analyzes and presents in English to the world the ongoing inflammatory indoctrination of Palestinians in Arabic particularly via Palestinian Authority (PA) television (West Bank). PMW is a unique resource in this regard; even the New York Times has occasionally used it as a source for some statistic.

But the Times and its media colleagues fail to recognize the significance of this usually Islamist-related indoctrination that sharply contrasts with the benign portrayal presented in English to the world by the Palestinians, their supporters and often the mainstream media. Clearly, the indoctrination (including that via mosque messages) motivates Palestinians to commit extreme violence against Jews.

An indication of the honored position of Islamist terrorists in Palestinian society is the fact that the PA has announced that it will cut all PA public employees’ salaries but not “pension stipends and the allowances of the families of the Martyrs, the wounded, and the prisoners [of Israel], which will be paid in full.” PA television said, “Our Martyrs and prisoners are the source of our glory and pride. They are more honorable than all of us.”

A recent indoctrinating message (Feb. 9, 2019) shows Palestinians joyfully singing on TV about the brutal murder of an Israeli by a Palestinian. As Israel grieves a brutal murder, PA TV sings:

From the music video:
“We are not afraid of the enemy –
a bone in the throat of the Zionists…
Victory is certain, it’s inevitable…
We have given them a taste of grief.”

The singer points to a young child he is holding as if to say, ‘this child is the future terrorist’

PMW’s Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik wrote about the music video: “Two days after the brutal murder [by a Palestinian] of the 19-year-old Israeli woman Ori Ansbacher, official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast a song celebrating that Palestinians cause Israelis grief… While singing the words promising more prisoners, the singer points to a young child he is holding as if to say: This child is the future terrorist; this child is the future prisoner. The song’s message is that today’s children are the future terrorists and prisoners …” This is not the first time PA TV broadcast this particular song.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the Palestinian man now in Israeli custody for murdering Ori Ansbacher, Arafat Irfaiya, informed interrogators that he wishes to become a martyr. This indicates that he’s an Islamist.

PMW study of PA inculcation

The findings of Kill A Jew–Go To Heaven, an extensive study containing more than 100 examples are:

PA teaches an ideology of virulent hatred of Jews and Israel that mandates the killing of Jews solely because they are Jews. The murder of Jews is presented not only as beneficial to Muslims and Arabs, but as necessary for all humankind. These findings are based on a thorough study and analysis of eight years of official PA television and PA controlled daily newspapers. This report documents how this hate ideology has been taught for years, well before the war started in September 2000, and continues even after the death of Yasser Arafat.

The roots of the hatred

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has shown that the hatred is related to Islamism. As is noted in a Wall Street Journal report on Oct. 18, 2015, Abbas is shown on PA television saying,

We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every Martyr will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah. The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is ours, and they [the Jews] have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem.

How do the media justify ignoring the pervasive Islamist-related hate as a crucial factor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

A Feb. 18, 2018 Boston Globe Op-Ed, “Nations built on lies,” by Stephen Kinzer, senior fellow at Brown University, lists Austria, China, France, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States.

He writes, “Wallowing in past sins is as unhealthy for nations as it is for people. Denying those sins, however, is at least as pernicious. Historical facts are stubborn. They can be interpreted in endlessly various ways, but cannot be altered. Governments do no service to their people by protecting them from the reality of their past.”

About the attitude in the United States, he hyperbolizes, “It is illegal to say that our country was built on the bones of slaughtered Indians and enslaved Africans.”

About the attitude in Austria, he writes, “It is illegal to say that Hitler was born here, that most Austrians were thrilled when he absorbed Austria into the Third Reich, and that he was welcomed with delirious enthusiasm when he visited in 1938.”

About the attitude in China he writes, “It is illegal to say that our army conquered Tibet in the 1950s and forcibly annexed it.”

And so on.

About the attitude in Israel, he creates an entirely false picture, “It is illegal to say that our country sits on land that once belonged to Arabs, or that we chased them away in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in order to make room for victims of a crime that Arabs did not commit.”

First, it is certainly not illegal in Israel, a Westernized democracy, to engage in such fringe polemics. Second, Jewish presence in the Holy Land predates Arab presence by thousands of years. And as explained in a CAMERA report,

Israel’s rights of nationhood under international law [arise] out of the same post-World War I League of Nations actions that are the legal basis for Arab claims to surrounding lands. The League of Nations and later the UN both affirmed the ancient and continuous presence of the Jewish people in the land of Israel and the right of the Jews to reconstitute their national home in that country. Ignoring all this, [is the] standard cant that European anti-Semitism and the Nazi Holocaust resulted in the foisting of an alien people onto indigenous Arabs… [this is] a testimony to the abandonment of objectivity and an unalloyed advocacy of Arab attitudes towards Israel and the West.

Furthermore, there is ample evidence proving that the Palestinian Arabs were not “chased away in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.” In fact, there is proof that ethnic cleansing was perpetrated by Arabs upon Jews. For example, since the mid-1800’s, Jews had constituted the largest single group of residents in the city of Jerusalem until the 1948 ethnic cleansing of all east Jerusalem Jews by Jordan when it gained control of east Jerusalem. This lasted until the 1967 war.

Another example is the 1929 torture (including sexual mutilation) and massacre of Hebron Jews by an armed Arab mob enraged by false accusations involving Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. The result was the slaughter of 67 and wounding of 60. The Jewish community in Hebron was destroyed.

Writer Stephen Kinzer is experienced in vilifying Israel. In 2008, he blamed the murder of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy by a Palestinian on the existence of Israel. In 2011, Kinzer blamed Israel for conflicts in the Middle East.

Not coincidentally, the Boston Globe’s editorials and other opinion pieces on Israel have long been mainly problematic.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently congratulated and praised President Kim Jong-Un of North Korea. The AP account of the incident, reported in only a few American Websites, was ignored by American television and print media. The Times of Israel using the AP report that referred to the Palestinian official news outlet Wafa as a source, said:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday [Aug. 15, 2017] congratulated North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un on the occasion of his country’s “Liberation day” … “The Korean people offered the most precious sacrifices for their freedom and dignity.”

[…]

Abbas expressed his appreciation for North Korea’s “firm solidarity in support of the rights [of the Palestinian] people and its just struggle to end the occupation and establish our independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The PA president also expressed wishes for Kim’s “health and happiness,” for North Korean “prosperity” and for the “historic relationship between Palestine and North Korea to further develop.”

Abbas’ message, made no mention of North Korean continuing nuclear weaponry threats against the United States and its allies.

Abbas and Jong-Un are birds of a feather — both are dictators. The North Korean dictator’s brutal perpetual regime allows no opposition, including reportedly ordering the recent assassination of the dictator’s half-brother Kim Jong Nam, and the public execution of his uncle General Jang Song-thaek in 2013 on charges of corruption. Meanwhile, in 2017, Abbas is in his twelfth year of a four-year term having called off every election for president of the PA since his original one in 2005.

The Abbas dictatorship repeatedly endorses violence against its Jewish neighbors. For example, a few years ago, Abbas set the release of murderers as a precondition for negotiations. When Israel complied, Abbas welcomed these killers home, including praising as a hero Issa Abd Rabbo who had murdered two Israeli university students who were hiking.

Palestinians are continuously incited to hatred and violence against Jews by Palestinian communications media, in mosques and schools. Sometimes it’s the Palestinian leadership very publicly doing the inciting. For example, on Sept. 16, 2015, responding to an unfounded rumor, Abbas on Palestinian Television, declared, “We won’t allow Jews with their filthy feet… to defile our Al-Aqsa mosque… we bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem…”

Previously, during the Arafat dictatorship, according to Abu Daoud, the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre which left 11 Israeli athletes murdered, Abbas provided the funding for the operation.

What to take from all this? For one thing, U.S. news outlets have generally failed to cover news exposing the true nature of West Bank Palestinian leadership.

C-SPAN’s Washington Journal daily three-hour morning call-in show uses a revolving roster of approximately 10 hosts often guilty of journalistic malpractice when Israel or Jews is mentioned. Host Paul Orgel is a prime example.

On Aug.7, 2017 at 9:34 a.m. (Eastern), Orgel, during a segment soliciting viewers’ comments on news of the day, fielded a lunatic fringe call from “Mitch from Memphis, Tennessee”:

I have a comment on your recent [previous segment] guest. Since all wars are bankers’ wars, all you have you to do is turn down the TV and watch the guy’s eyes to tell that he’s lying and he was squirming around on some of the calls. So, when ISIS – which also stands for ‘Israeli Secret Intelligence Service’ [Sic. No such entity exists] is what it really should be spelled out as – attacks Tel Aviv, the Vatican, or Washington D.C., that’s when you’ll know it’s real and not ‘green screen terrorism’ [fake terrorism]. And the only reason they are talking about North Korea is because that war never actually ended. And that is the only card they have left to play where they don’t have to go to Congress and declare war. That is why they are pumping that up. That is all I have to say.

Orgel replied, “Thanks for calling, Mitch. Sherry, calling from Florida …”

The previous segment referred to by caller “Mitch from Memphis” was “The cost of combating ISIS [Islamic State terrorist entity].” The guest (insulted by Mitch) is Charles Johnson, managing director of international affairs and trade issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Thus, Orgel, thanking the lunatic fringe caller, characteristically failed to even comment on a defamatory anti-Israel charge and an anti-Jewish canard (“all wars are bankers’ wars”).

In a previous instance of host Orgel’s frequent unprofessional performance (at least as it pertains to Israel or Jews) as Washington Journal host, he indulged a lunatic fringe caller’s identical inflammatory views defaming Israel twice only 22 hours apart in January 2010. The caller used two different names and claimed two separate (distant) locations, saying virtually the same thing each time and in the same distinctive voice. Orgel indulged “Janet from Birmingham, Alabama” on January 1, 2010 at 9:51 AM and then (the same individual again) on January 2 at 7:50 AM indulging “Carol from Scottsville, Arizona.”

Some previous Orgel examples are Dec. 26, 2016 (morning calls at 7:17, 8:54, 9:03) and Nov. 15, 2015 (calls at 7:07, 7:29, 7:40, 7:56).

Meanwhile, the news media fails to expose C-SPAN’s transgressions misleading potentially millions of viewers.

As the first season came to an end in May 2016 for ABC TV’s Quantico weekly melodrama series, it ceased to demonize Israel. Its Jewish character “Simon Asher” (played by non-Jewish actor Tate Ellington pictured above) was used by the fictional series to vilify Israel.

Asher asserted that he perpetrated certain acts as an Israeli soldier (“I was in the Israeli Defense Forces [IDF]. They sent me into Gaza. I didn’t just see things. I did things. Things that haunt me every single day of my life.”). This suggests the image of post-war Nazis excusing their crimes on the grounds they were just obeying orders. Asher claimed that “greenhouses were bombed by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip” in the 2014 conflict. In fact, in the real world, there is not a scintilla of evidence of this. There is proof, however, that Gazans themselves vandalized these greenhouses abandoned by departing Israeli farmers.

In the real world, contradicting repeated false allegations that Israel’s military has perpetrated inhumane acts against civilians, General Martin Dempsey, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that Israel had gone out of its way to avoid civilian casualties. “No army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage. The U.S. and the U.K. are careful, but not as much as Israel,” Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, testified on Sept. 4, 2014.

ABC had described the premise of the melodrama as: “A diverse group of recruits has arrived at the FBI Quantico Base for training. They are the best, the brightest and the most vetted, so it seems impossible that one of them is suspected of masterminding the biggest attack on New York City since 9/11.”

Asher had been confronted with the specter of his and Israel’s (alleged) crimes by fellow FBI recruit “Nimah Amin” (a Muslim character played by Yasmine al-Massri, a Lebanese actress of Palestinian Arab descent) who accused him of a major bombing. The melodrama showed that Asher had acquired the material for a bomb and created the plan that led to the bombing of New York’s Grand Central Station. He was abetted by another Jewish character. Oren, an Orthodox Israeli Jew, bearded and with side-curls (the facial hair of very religious Jewish men), was the bomb builder.

Season two running from Sept. 25, 2016 to May 15, 2017 contained neither demonization of Israel nor the Asher character. In fact, viewers were surprised that Asher had been transformed from being an anti-U.S. terrorist into an American hero who sacrificed his life for his country and it was shown that “Liam” (Josh Hopkins) was actually the terrorist. It was an amazing reversal for the slickly produced series that began on Sept. 27, 2015, in which only one foreign country, Israel, was defamed.

It is noteworthy that Quantico has been written and directed by a large enough team (17 writers, 29 directors) to produce alternative episodes for any of the broadcasts.

Who or what might have influenced the reversal?

The most potent online exposures of Quantico’s anti-Israel propaganda were provided by CAMERA and Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). CAMERA’s February 2016 report “ABC TV’s Quantico Melodrama Demonizes Israel With Falsehoods” (published prior to the undemonizations) includes a 7.5 minute unique video montage of Quantico’s first season anti-Israel segments.

As CAMERA’s 2016 report points out, inevitably some viewers will grant authenticity to false assertions in a fictional drama if it is slickly produced and staged. Accordingly, what Quantico says matters and such dramas, therefore, need to be exposed.

Fox News Channel has been the only television news network covering the pending Taylor Force Act in Congress (H.R. 1164) aimed at discouraging Palestinian Authority bounty payments to terrorists’ families (Fox News, April 30, 2017).

There’s been scant coverage of the story by newspapers and magazines. The New York Times belatedly got around to covering the Congressional action and then only as a part of another story – May 3 (page A9).

Congressional Democrats seem disinclined to support the bill being pushed by Republicans.

The Sunday, April 30 Fox five-minute report aired at 12:20 p.m.

Fox Website story paralleling the broadcast:

Bill in Congress would pressure Palestinian government to cut off terror-tied payments

Eric Shawn reports: Taylor Force and terror money

Taylor Force was a West Point graduate who served in Afghanistan and Iraq… Taylor, who was 28, was walking along the Mediterranean boardwalk promenade with friends in Tel Aviv, when he was savagely knifed to death on March 8, 2016. His killer was identified as a Palestinian terrorist, 22-year-old Bashar Masalha, who authorities say went on a stabbing spree that also severely wounded ten others before he was shot dead by Israeli police.

[…]

Taylor’s parents say their grief was compounded by the fact that the family of their son’s murderer is making money off his death. The Palestinian Authority spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year paying jihadists and their survivors who were involved in acts of terrorism, and critics say some of those funds come from U.S. taxpayer money that Washington sends to the P.A. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to meet with President Trump at the White House on May 3. It is expected that Trump will raise the issue of payments during the visit.

A congressional bill named for Taylor, the Taylor Force Act, would cut off the U.S. aid unless the Palestinian Authority stops the payments.

“Can you imagine growing up in a country where your government will pay you for killing someone else through a terrorist act?” asks South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham incredulously. He is the leading sponsor of the Senate legislation. “If you die as a terrorist, as a ‘martyr,’ your family will get an annual stipend greater than the average Palestinian earns. In this case, the terrorist who killed Taylor Force…was hailed as a hero, was basically given a state funeral, and his family was given money by the state,” Graham says.

“The practice is inconsistent with American values, inconsistent with peace, and inconsistent with decency.”

The House bill is sponsored by Colorado Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn and New York Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin.

“Taylor Force is an American hero,” says Zeldin. “It’s about letting the Force family know that we stand with him and they stand with their son…the United States Congress and President Trump will do the right thing.”The U.S. government gives the Palestinian Authority more than $300 million a year. According to the P.A.’s on-line budget, it shells out that same amount to the families, or about 7 percent of its total budget.

[…]

Taylor’s parents say the payments to Masalha’s family were an additional shock after learning of their son’s fate. Force was golfing when he suddenly received the phone call that no parent ever wants.Since that harrowing moment, the Forces and Taylor’s sister, Kristen, have embarked on a deeply meaningful mission in Taylor’s memory. They are trying to ensure that the incentives to commit terrorism are removed so that there will be no more victims. An important step, they say, is for Congress to pass the Taylor Force Act.

“Our main mission is to spread the word about the legislation,” Force says.“The Taylor Force Act is a good thing. It is not a Democrat thing, it is not a Republican thing, it’s not Conservative or Liberal. It is to get things going in the right direction, the way they should be.

“It is so important that the Taylor Force Act passes, so that other sons and daughters, brothers and sisters aren’t lost in this way,” he says. “It’s just a senseless loss.”

This isn’t the only example of Fox News Channel alone of the television news networks doing its due diligence concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Example where Israel was blamed in circumstances involving the death of several Palestinian Arabs but it was later shown that the actual culprits were Hamas Palestinians – CAMERA report – “CNN’s Wolf Caught in Palestinian Trap.” The same report was provided by The Washington Times with the title, “A Wolf that cried ‘boy.’”

Does the media tend to limit news coverage negatively portraying the Palestinian Arabs in the conflict with the Jewish state? The evidence says yes for most media entities.

This assertion by George Mitchell (Democrat) – former U.S. diplomat (Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and Senate Majority Leader – was stated 17 minutes into an hour-long interview aired on the C-SPAN BookTV “After Words” program. It was in connection with admonishing Israel’s government to wait no longer to make a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas.

The program was recorded on Nov. 16, 2016 but not aired until Dec. 3, 2016. It was repeated on subsequent days.

Interviewer Jane Harman, former Member of Congress, now president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Center, spoke with Mitchell about his new book, “A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East.” The conversation was generally unremarkable except notably for the assertion cited here. Except for the fact that Harman here represented C-SPAN, whose record concerning Israel is generally one of journalistic malpractice, it would have been surprising that the former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee failed to challenge the highly dubious assertion.

When have the Palestinian authorities renounced violence and accepted Israel’s existence as a Jewish state? Acceptance of Israel’s existence other than as a Jewish state is a non-sequitor. Furthermore, while most of the 22 Arab Muslim countries treat non-Muslim citizens as second-class ones, Israel has never seen a contradiction between its Jewishness and the need to respect and protect non-Jewish minorities. Under Israeli law, all (including Arab minorities) are provided full civil rights. Indeed, Israel is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote in local and national elections.

Palestinian public opinion polling shows consistent large majority opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state while approving of terrorism against the Jewish state. A recent example of this is a December 2015 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR).

Recurring violence has been incited by longstanding and relentless anti-Israel and anti-Jewish invective from the Palestinian media, mosques and schools. Recent Palestinian violence – a year-long spate of stabbings, shootings and car rammings – has been fueled by daily Palestinian incitement against Jews by PA officials who honor terrorists and praise their acts of violence. The most recent wave of terror began around the time that an incendiary declaration was broadcast to Palestinians by PA controlled media.

Among the sources reporting on this matter was The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 18, 2015: “Mr. Abbas, the PA president, said the following on Palestinian television on Sept. 16: ‘We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.'”

Palestinian Authority President Abbas has insisted that the recent Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis is a natural consequence of despair but the evidence shows that Palestinian incitement plays a major part in the phenomenon.

Meanwhile Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu awaits a meaningful response regarding negotiations from the Palestinian side while his Palestinian counterpart Abbas has repeatedly and explicitly rejected the idea of two states for two peoples. Palestinian leaders rejected U.S. and Israeli offers of two-state solutions in 2000, 2001, 2008 and spurned renewed talks on such an agreement proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014.

The PA insists on various conditions unlikely to be accepted by any Israeli government before peace negotiations can take place, including: Israel must abide by Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state (evidently 22 Arab Muslim states is fine but one Jewish state is one too many) and Israel must accept a “right of return” (that does not exist in international law) for millions of Arabs (nearly all of whom have never lived in Israel) which would inevitably result in the Jewish state becoming unviable.

Questions for Mitchell, Harman and C-SPAN: What is the evidence that the PA has renounced violence against Israel? What is the evidence that the PA has accepted Israel’s existence as a Jewish state? What is the evidence that the PA has opted for peace negotiations without preconditions? There being none, Mitchell’s assertion has little or no basis in reality.

International wire services and American news media have failed to report an incident involving the killing of several terrorists in a Palestinian camp in Jordan by Jordanian forces. Such an event almost surely would have been reported if it had involved Israeli forces in the West Bank or Israel proper. Notice the penchant for headlines like “Palestinian shot dead” referring to a Palestinian killed by Israeli authorities after murderously assaulting Jews. It suggests a double standard, by which Palestinian terrorists “victimized” by Israel make news, those killed by non-Israeli forces in similar circumstances do not.

According to a March 2 (9:08 a.m.) Al-Jazeera America news hour report, “Jordanian security forces killed seven men while targeting fighters in the city of Irbid [in Jordan]. They were hold up inside a Palestinian refugee camp in the heart of the city… These were described as outlaws by Jordanian officials indicating, because it didn’t say that they were a different nationality, that they are in fact Jordanian.” In other words, they were most likely Jordanian Palestinians since more than half of the Jordanian population are of Palestinian Arab lineage (including Jordan’s Queen Rania) and they were hiding in a Palestinian camp.

Al-Jazeera Web site reports (March 2), “Security forces kill seven men in northern city of Irbid in series of raids that also left a police officer dead.”

The Jordan Times Web site reports (March 3), “Security and civil defence apparatuses on Thursday carried out operations in Irbid to ‘cleanse’ the area in which Tuesday’s anti-terror raid took place, according to an official… Irbid governor noted that bodies of three out of the seven outlaws were identified as Jordanians, while the rest were ‘unrecognisable.’”

It’s hard to imagine the wire services and other major Western news media not at least mentioning, if not headlining, an Israeli operation targeting and killing seven Palestinian terrorists in hiding. Did an especially busy news day account for omission of the Jordanian story, or was something else at work?

The Palestinians are among the world’s largest (if not the largest) per capita recipients of international financial aid. The reason for disproportionate aid to the Palestinian Authority appears to stem from the desire of at least some donors to promote Palestinian-Israeli peace. This though the PA isn’t negotiating for peace and has rejected repeated Israeli-U.S. offers of a “two-state solution” in exchange for peaceful coexistence.

In fact, Palestinian leaders rejected a two-state solution and peace with Israel in 2000, 2001 and 2008 and the current PA leadership insists on various conditions before peace negotiations can take place, including: Israel must accede to the demands that it accept heretofore unacceptable Palestinian pre-conditions such as refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and – “right of return” of millions of Arabs (nearly all of whom have never lived in Israel) which would result in engulfing Israel with Arab Muslims, effectively destroying it as a Jewish state and Western style democracy. Some critics characterize the disproportionate aid as buying off the corrupt PA leadership or propping up the PA against the possibility of a Hamas takeover of the West Bank similar to its ouster of the PA in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely (pictured above) wrote an Op-Ed about the matter (Wall Street Journall, “Where Does All That Aid for Palestinians Go?,” Jan. 25, 2016). Among other things, she asserted that:

Large amounts of foreign aid to the Palestinians are spent to support terrorists and deepen hostility [against Jews].
For years the most senior figures in the Palestinian Authority have supported, condoned and glorified terror. “Every drop of blood that has been spilled in Jerusalem,” President Mahmoud Abbas said last September on Palestinian television, “is holy blood as long as it was for Allah.” Countless Palestinian officials and state-run television have repeatedly hailed the murder of Jews.

This support for terrorism doesn’t end with hate speech. The Palestinian regime in Ramallah pays monthly stipends of between $400 and $3,500 to terrorists and their families, the latter of which is more than five times the average monthly salary of a Palestinian worker.

According to data from its budgetary reports, compiled in June 2014 by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the PA’s annual budget for supporting Palestinian terrorists was then roughly $75 million…

Minister Hotovely source, in addition to the PA’s annual budget, is Global Humanitarian Assistance (an organization funded by the governments of Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom) particularly its Palestinian section.

Ms. Hotovely points out in her closing remarks,

Donors to the Palestinians who support peace would do well to rethink the way they extend assistance. Money should go to economic and civic empowerment, not to perpetuate a false sense of victimhood and unconditional entitlement. It should foster values of tolerance and nonviolence, not the glorification and financing of terrorism.

Note: The United States is a major donor to Palestinian agencies, including the PA.