The Car Intifada

Today, I share an essay with you. It’s called, “The Car Intifada”, by Joseph Klein. It comes from the website, Frontpage Mag. It’s dated November 12, 2014. It gives a clear summary of recent terror attacks in Israel. It gives a clearer view of what has driven these attacks.

Here’s the essay. I have edited it:

Hamas leaders have been urging their followers to use cars and knives to spill as much Jewish blood as possible.  Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has called on Palestinians to stop Jews from visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism, by using “all means” necessary.

These calls for violence by top Palestinian authorities have been enthusiastically answered by thugs in the street.  Six Israelis have been killed in terror attacks in the last three weeks – not by rockets, but by cars and knives wielded as murder weapons against Israelis, including women and children.

On October 22nd, a member of Hamas rammed his car into pedestrians in Jerusalem, killing a three-month-old girl.

Last week, a Palestinian Jerusalem resident also turned his vehicle into a killing machine. He killed an Israeli and wounded 13 others when he drove into a group of people waiting at a light rail station. On the same day, yet another Palestinian ran into and wounded three Israeli soldiers near Jerusalem.

Leaders of both Abbas’s party, Fatah, and Hamas, shrugged and said the attacks were perfectly “natural” or “normal” responses to Israeli policies.  They call the killers national heroes.

Palestinians have flocked to social media to celebrate what they’re calling the “Car Intifada.” A video of a new song with that catchy title appears on the MoslimMan.Rok Facebook page. It’s become a hit that has Palestinians happily singing along to lyrics such as “Run over the two-month-old baby – that is how we get them.”

Palestinian Media Watch reports on a cartoon appearing on one of Fatah’s official Facebook pages (“Fatah-The Main Page”), which carried the label “the run over organization”. It urges people to “Hit the gas at 199 [km/h] for Al-Aqsa.”

On another Facebook page, “The National Liberation Movement – Fatah,” a cartoon appears showing a car going after three fleeing stereotyped Jews wearing hats with the Star of David.

The car may be the Palestinians’ murder weapon of choice these days, but anything they can use to kill Jews will suffice. After all, they are just following the directions of their leaders. One of Hamas’s leaders said just last week, during a television interview, that even a Palestinian “who owns nothing but his faith has a kitchen in his house in which he has a knife.” It is his duty to “grab his knife and confront the Zionist enemy.”

Is it any surprise that in separate knifing incidents on November 10th, an Israeli soldier and a woman were stabbed to death by Palestinians practicing their “faith”? The soldier was killed in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian. The woman was killed at a traffic circle in the West Bank; a Palestinian driver had tried and failed to run over people waiting at a bus station; he got out of his car and stabbed the woman to death.

The Obama administration and European Union issued the most tepid of condemnations of the killings. “It is absolutely critical that the parties take every possible measure to protect civilians and de-escalate tensions,” said US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement on November 11th saying he was “deeply concerned about the upsurge in violence and killings”.

As usual, the UN at its highest levels refused to lay the blame for the latest spate of violence where it belongs: on the Palestinians and their leadership. The spokesperson’s office for the Secretary General, despite several requests for comment, has refused to condemn the incendiary remarks of Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders.  There has also been no UN condemnation of the Palestinians’ demand, which they have backed up with violence, that Jews and other non-Muslims be barred from worshipping anywhere on the Temple Mount. Instead, the UN, as well as the Obama administration, appear to support this demand (in order to reduce tensions,  they say) even though the forcible exclusion of Jews and other non-Muslims from worship at a site sacred to them is contrary to the basic human right of free exercise of religion.

Symbolic of the UN’s unconditional support for the Palestinians, no matter how badly they act, the United Nations hosted a fashion show to recognize the UN’s international year of solidarity with the Palestinian people. The event was held on November 10th, the same day of two murders of Israelis committed by Palestinians who had been incited to their acts of violence by their leaders. As Israeli UN Ambassador Prosor asked rhetorically, “Solidarity with incitement? Solidarity with terror and extremism?” Apparently so.

Remember the name, The Car Intifada. It’s how Arabs express their Jew-hate.