Know Comment: Killing us with lies

What do you do when the whole world is swallowing the grossest Palestinian untruths? Hang tough!

By DAVID M. WEINBERG
A Border Police officer overlooks Temple Mount and the Western Wall (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
A Border Police officer overlooks Temple Mount and the Western Wall
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
What do you do when the Big Lie is evident everywhere, and no one seems to care about the truth? What do you do when Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas repugnantly engages in gross inversion of reality and says that Israel is “paving way for bitter religious conflict that he doesn’t want” – when, in fact, he is driving the conflict, not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Israel? You keep the faith. You do not despair, and you cut Abbas no slack. You don’t whitewash Abbas’s responsibility for the escalating international diplomatic assault on Israel out of the hollow hope of maintaining the fiction of a “peace partner.”
What do you do when so-called moderate Abbas mendaciously threatens that Israel’s “daily killings and incitement will lead to a big explosion” – when it is his vulgar incitement that continues to stoke terrorism and his “martyrs” who are doing the killing? You suppress your spleen, and get defiant.
And you don’t start talking again about precipitous Israeli withdrawals in order to mollify the fury of Arab masses.
What do you do when Abbas outrageously accuses Israel of committing “violations” against Islamic and Christian holy sites, including al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount – when it is his Wakf that has turned al-Aksa into an armed fortress and turned every Jewish visit to Judaism’s holiest site into a skirmish, and his people who have destroyed Joseph’s Tomb, sought to destroy Rachel’s Tomb, and run Christians out of Bethlehem? You change the way our diplomats present Israel’s case by talking about Israel’s legal, historic and religious rights in this land – not just our security needs.
You don’t forfeit to the Palestinians the international discourse regarding human, national and civil rights.
What do you do when Abbas has the chutzpah to call for “international protection for the Palestinians against assaults by the occupation army” and accuses Israel of “executing” teenage Palestinian terrorists – when it is Israelis who have to be afraid of Palestinian stonings, stabbings and shootings in every corner of this country and who are (uncomfortably and heroically) restraining themselves from unleashing the full force of Israel’s army – and when those supposedly executed teenage terrorists are being treated in the best Israeli hospitals? You demonstrate resilience. You make pilgrimages to Jerusalem and encourage class visits to Jerusalem. You hug every tourist, and don’t hide away fearfully in your home.
What do you do when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sits beside Abbas in Ramallah like a moron, swallowing every bit of Abbas’s bile, and then immorally denounces “hateful discourse on both sides” and contemptibly says that Israel’s response to the recent terrorist attacks has “added to the already difficult challenges of restoring clam” – when there is no factual or moral equivalence between Israeli and Palestinian actions in this situation? You guffaw at the ridiculous UN leader, and remind yourself that the debauched UN once declared Zionism is racism and the Earth flat. You don’t go running scared and parrot the fallacious line that “the status quo is unsustainable.”
What do you do when the secretary of state of your main ally, John Kerry of the United States, intimates that he doubts Israel’s sincerity in maintaining calm on the Temple Mount and casts aspersions on the defensive measures taken by the Israel Police and IDF in response to Palestinian terrorism – when in fact Israel has super-studiously (and I think too diligently) maintained the status quo on the Mount, and its security forces have acted with ultra-restraint in response to Palestinian barbarism? You double-down on your control of the Temple Mount. You make it clear that policemen, soldiers and citizens should continue to shoot-to-kill attackers without compunction. You don’t offer to curb Jewish access to the Temple Mount in order to appease Palestinian or global opinion.
What do you do when Kerry disgracefully and falsely asserts that nonexistent “surges” in fictional “massive settlement construction” are a key cause for the current wave of violence – when (alas) annual construction in the settlements has substantially decreased over the past 15 years and especially during the last two Netanyahu terms? You realize that Israel gets no credit for its settlement restraint, and start building again – at the very least in the consensus settlement blocks and in Jerusalem. You don’t brag how little you have built lately (as, unfortunately, Netanyahu did in his WZO speech this week).
What do you do when the French government falls right into line with the Palestinian attempt to internationalize the conflict and snootily proposes placement of international forces instead of Israeli police to secure the Temple Mount – when the regional record demonstrates definitively that global “peacekeepers” provide no security whatsoever and work against Israel’s interests? You sniff at the French, and slap back hard. You point to the total failures of UNIFIL in Lebanon and so much more.
You don’t pull your diplomatic punches.
What do you do when UNESCO condemns Israel “aggression and “continuous Israeli targeting of civilians including religious figures, sheikhs and priests” on the Temple Mount, and comes close to preposterously reclassifying the Western Wall as a Muslim holy site – when every part of this resolution wickedly turns reality on its head? Your spit on the street in disgust, hold your head high, davka go to visit and pray at the Western Wall, and pour more troops into Jerusalem to re-stake our claim and secure every holy and historical site.
You don’t forget that terrorism feeds off weakness and retreat.
So what do you do when the Big Lie is metastasizing? You hang tough, keep calm, stick to your principles, give no ground, defy all dishonesty, maneuver carefully, take Zionist initiatives, and pray for the repentance of your critics. And know that Israel will win out.
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