[American Thinker] Judging by the standard used by the authors of State Department's reporting on Israel in the newly released Country Reports on Terrorism for 2016, the Palestinian terrorist who violently stabbed to death three Israelis and seriously wounded another as they celebrated the Shabbat and the birth of a new grandson should not be held responsible.
Why? Because as the State Department puts it, it is the "frustration" with and "perception" of Israel's policies that drives Palestinian terrorists to murder Israelis.
The State Department's report claims that the "[c]ontinued drivers of [Palestinian] violence" are Israel's policies. Accordingly, Palestinian terrorists like this one commit violence not because schools, television, newspapers, mosques, and social media are constantly inciting to violence against Israel and its Jewish citizens. Moreover, the report praises Mahmoud Abbas's "commitment to fight terrorism" and call for "culture of peace and tolerance and the renunciation of violence and extremism." It also notes that the "PA's Palestinian Broadcasting Company's code of conduct does not allow programming that encourages 'violence against any person or institution on the basis of race, religion, political beliefs, or sex.'" Apparently, in a thin effort to disguise State's siding with the Palestinians, the report admits that "[i]n practice, however, some instances of incitement took place via official media. There were also some instances of inflammatory rhetoric and the posting of political cartoons glorifying violence on official Fatah Facebook pages." "[S]ome instances"? Try every day, everywhere, all the time.
The Palestinian terrorists, according to the State Department, are driven to such extreme violence because of "lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood, Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank ... [and] the perception that the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount." Moreover, the report also blames the IDF for its effort to curb such violence "with tactics that the Palestinians considered overly aggressive." 
|
