Hundreds of unprovoked terrorist attacks have been carried out this week by Palestinian Muslims against Israeli Jews. Their assaults show no signs of slowing down.
On Tuesday morning alone, one individual was killed and sixteen wounded when two terrorists got on a Jerusalem bus and proceeded to go on a stabbing spree. At around the same time, in the same city, a Muslim terrorist killed one person and injured several others when he rammed his car into a group of Jews. After crashing his vehicle, he proceeded to chase down other Jews with his knife and went on to stab them until the terrorist was finally subdued. Fifty miles away, in Ra’anana, two separate stabbing attacks occurred simultaneously with the Jerusalem jihadi mayhem.
The aforementioned attacks occurred on just one morning, of one day, in the past two weeks of countless acts of Palestinian terrorism.
The “third intifada,” as some are calling this new wave of unprovoked Palestinian terrorism, all started when a Hamas-sponsored terrorist slaughtered a Jewish couple as they were driving around in the West Bank.
But if you were to read the State Department’s statements on the matter–just two thus far–you would be lead to believe that both sides are to blame for the “escalating tensions.”
State Department spokesman John Kirby released a statement after the terror attacks Tuesday morning, stating: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms today’s terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, which resulted in the murder of three Israelis and left numerous others wounded. We mourn any loss of innocent life, Israeli or Palestinian. We continue to stress the importance of condemning violence and combating incitement.”
“We are in regular contact with the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. We remain deeply concerned about escalating tensions and urge all sides to take affirmative steps to restore calm and prevent actions that would further escalate tensions,” Kirby added.
Secretary of State John Kerry made similar remarks in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on October 2nd, the day after an innocent Israeli Jewish couple was butchered in a Hamas-backed operation. Kerry expressed his “condemnation for this violence,” but refused, again, to place blame on any person or entity. “I think there are ways to cooperate to take constructive steps that can address this over the long term, which is something we have worked on together and that we need to work on,” Kerry added.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Palestinian people, Mahmoud Abbas, continues to pay the families of suicide terrorists and incite his people to “protect Al-Aqsa mosque,” claiming, falsely, that Israel is “desecrating” the Islamic holy site.
In wildly incendiary language in the days up to the Palestinian terror campaign Abbas said, “each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every martyr will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded by Allah’s will.”
Palestinian leaders have, time and again, explicitly called for the killing of Jews. These leaders including Imams, clerics and officials in the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
But no such Israeli leader has called for the killing or harming of Palestinians.
Throughout this most recent “cycle of violence,” as the Obama administration calls it, the State Department has not condemned Abbas’s incendiary actions, nor those of Hamas and the other terrorist groups that have strong support in the Palestinian populace. Abbas and the rest get a free pass while the State Department condemns “the violence.”
Over the past two weeks, the vast majority of the attacks have been conducted by a Palestinian perpetrator, and the acts of jihad have resulted in Jewish victims. Yet, the State Department has refused to place blame on any actors, denouncing the violence itself, and not the people who are responsible for it, resulting in a useless, morally equivalent statement that gives a free pass to the Palestinian terrorist butchers.