Tel-Chai Nation

Melanie Phillips explains how the USA and UK governments are making the situation worse for Israel:

A repeated tactic by Palestinian Arabs and other Islamists is to accuse their victims of behaviour of which the victims are wholly innocent but of which the Palestinian Arabs and Islamists are guilty. Thus the Israelis, the victims of Palestinian genocidal terrorism, are accused of genocide for seeking to defend themselves. There are many other examples in similar vein.

This type of projection is rooted in the belief that, since Islam is perfection and the non-Islamic world is the province of the devil, Muslims can do no wrong against non-Muslims — who are then accused of committing the crimes perpetrated against them by Muslims. It is an inversion of reality that closely mirrors the way in which the former Soviet Union fried the brain in order to render its internal enemies helpless to resist its terror.

It is a strategy of war, used by Islamists in the psychological warfare they deploy against their victims. And now it is being used by the Biden administration and the British government against Israel.

This week, the British government imposed financial and travel restrictions against four Israeli residents of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, claimed that they were “extremist settlers” who were involved in “some of the most egregious abuses of human rights,” having carried out violent attacks on Palestinians in the “West Bank” by threatening them “often at gunpoint” and “forcing them off land that is rightfully theirs”.

The Foreign Office said that Israel’s “failure to act” had led to “an environment of near total impunity for settler extremists”, with violence in the West Bank reaching record levels in 2023.

The British are marching in lockstep with the Biden administration, which earlier this month also sanctioned four Israeli residents of these territories — one of whom is on the UK’s list — claiming that “extremist settler violence” had reached “intolerable levels”.

This is all an extraordinary and malign distortion and loss of proportion. As I wrote here, there is indeed a problem with violent Israeli “hilltop youth,” mainly aged between 14 and 19, but who are estimated to number only a few hundred among more than half a million Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria.

All such attacks are wrong and the Israelis should deal with these “hilltop youth” firmly — which they do, when they are indeed guilty of aggressive acts. But what Cameron and the Biden administration conspicuously fail to acknowledge is that in many of these violent encounters, the Israelis are responding to violence against them by the Palestinian Arabs.

Indeed, it is utterly astonishing that Cameron and the Americans defame the Israeli residents of the territories — the vast majority of whom live entirely peaceful and law-abiding lives — while making no mention whatsoever of the multiple attacks perpetrated by the Palestinian Arabs against these Israelis every day, vastly out-numbering attacks by the Israelis.

Cameron and the Americans say “settler” attacks last year reached record numbers. But there have been around 300 terrorist attacks against Israelis since October 7 alone.

Cameron and the Americans make no mention of the Arab attacks on Israeli “settlers,” involving shootings, rock-throwing and car ramming, which go on every day. They make no mention of the “settlers” Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, who were murdered last April by Palestinian terrorists who shot them in their car at point-blank range. They make no mention of the “settlers” Hallel Yaniv, 21, and his brother Yagel, 19, who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists a year ago when they were stuck in a traffic jam. They make no mention of the “settlers” Asher Menachem Paley, 8, and Yaakov Israel Paley, 6, who were standing at a bus stop with their father when a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into them, killing them along with 20-year-old rabbinical student Alter Shlomo Lederman who had been married for two months.

One can only wonder if they'll also declare sanctions against victims of jihadism and rape itself. And maybe even victims of September 11, 2001 will also wind up victims of similar tactics. This is offensive, and just another example of contempt for the actual victims of terrorism.

Labels: anti-semitism, dhimmitude, islam, Israel, jihad, Knesset, military, misogyny, Moonbattery, msm foulness, political corruption, racism, sexual violence, terrorism, war on terror