Mike Fegelman: How Hamas and the PA started the 'TikTok intifada'
By: Mike Fegelman, of Honest Reporting Canada
BUZZ NOTE: Although this is an opinion piece, it is a counteraction against the media war being carried out against Israel, and in MY opinion, it sets the record straight as to who did what and who caused what.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Mike Fegelman: How Hamas and the PA started the 'TikTok intifada'
Sensing an opportunity and seizing on it, both the PA and Hamas positioned a court decision as an assault on Muslims worldwide and encouraged their followers on social media to violently riot.
An Israeli policeman scuffles with a Palestinian in front of the Dome of the Rock, in Jerusalem's Old City, on May 7. PHOTO BY AMMAR AWAD/REUTERS
After two weeks of hostilities between Israel and Hamas terrorists, the rockets finally stopped and a fragile ceasefire has taken hold. In its wake: death, destruction and trauma.
Despite the suffering endured by innocent civilians on both sides, nothing fundamentally has changed. Both peoples — Israelis and Palestinians—– are here to stay, and if any positive developments are going to take place, it will arguably not be as a result of armed conflict. What then, needs to change?
The answer to this question bookends both the beginning and the end of this recent round of violence. Before Hamas began indiscriminately firing 4,000-plus rockets at Israeli civilians — while hiding behind Palestinian civilians — tensions increased as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was winding down.
In an effort to prevent violence, Israel installed temporary security gates in Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas responded with state-sponsored incitement, encouraging young people to violently riot against minimal security measures implemented to reduce friction and prevent conflict.
Contemporaneously, a group of Arab families in the eastern Jerusalem neighbourhood of Shimon HaTzaddik, known in Arabic as Sheikh Jarrah, had been fighting eviction in a longstanding property dispute that was about to be ruled on by Israel’s Supreme Court.
Sensing an opportunity and seizing on it, both the PA and Hamas positioned the court decision as an assault on Muslims worldwide and, once again, encouraged their followers on social media to violently riot. Hence Israel’s claim that a real estate dispute was used to foment discord and incite violence.
And thus, the “TikTok intifada” was born with videos encouraging Palestinians to attack Israelis. And these messages were exported worldwide. Jews were attacked in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Montreal and elsewhere. Bloodthirsty lynch mobs roamed the streets trying spark a pogrom of the likes we haven’t seen since Kristallnacht. Unbridled anti-Semitism was on full display.
Before long, young Palestinian men began stockpiling enormous rocks inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, an odious desecration of Islam’s third-holiest site, in preparation for violence. And when the police rightfully attempted to confiscate those weapons, the rioters began attacking police and Jewish civilians alike.
Both the temporary security measures taken by Israel in Jerusalem, and the court decision regarding the tenants in Sheikh Jarrah, are microcosms of the crux of the conflict: misinformation peddled by the PA and Hamas, abetted by the mainstream and social media, portrayed Israel as a nefarious land thief and its police and soldiers as bellicose.
Except nothing could be further from the truth. Israel is a country that respects the rule of law, has an independent judiciary and arguably the most moral army in the world — one that aborts attacks when civilians are in the area, all while its adversaries target innocents.
But in the heat of conflict, the truth is always the first casualty. Facts like how Israel claims it killed over 200 terrorists were ceremoniously ignored in the media’s casualty counts. Once the rocks and rockets began hurtling through the air, sharing the truth with ordinary Palestinians would simply not be enough to diffuse the situation.
It’s far easier to portray Israel as a criminal land thief than it is to acknowledge that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex and rife with disinformation, with one side preaching peaceful coexistence and another wanting the land of Israel to be Judenrein.
This ceasefire is not a peace agreement, nor is it an acknowledgement of error by Hamas. In fact, quite the opposite. Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader, crowed that the violence achieved one key goal: preventing peace with the Jewish state. “We have destroyed the project of coexistence with Israel, of normalization with Israel,” Haniyeh said after the ceasefire took effect.
Haniyeh makes no secret of regularly reiterating Hamas’ ultimate goal, the destruction of Israel, and in the interim, the continued refusal to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist. Sending rockets at Israel and killing civilians in their homes was just a short-term means to that end.
The longer-term goal is to create a moral equivalence between Israel and the Islamist terrorist groups who seek its destruction, ensuring that Israel’s hands are tied in any future conflict, thus preventing it from meaningfully degrading Hamas’ ability to murder Israeli civilians.
This most recent bout of violence, and all the violence preceding it, is driven exclusively by the refusal of Hamas and the PA to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Yet it does not have to be this way.
Israel has, time and time again, made painful concessions for peace and offered generous peace proposals to the Palestinians, who only reciprocated with rejectionism and terrorism. Israel has always extended its hand for peace with the Arab world, which is exemplified by the recently forged peace agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
The only thing accomplished by acting as if there’s a moral equivalence between Israel and those who seek to destroy it, is to create a feel-good performative exercise that only perpetuates the violent stalemate between Israel and Hamas. This benefits nobody, least of all the Palestinians, whose bloodthirsty and intransigent leadership remains the biggest obstacle to peace.
National Post
Mike Fegelman is the executive director of HonestReporting Canada , a non-profit organization ensuring fair and accurate Canadian media coverage of Israel.
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Reading the truth these days is like inhaling a breath of fresh air.
Unfortunately that all too true...
But why do you think that's true?
You're the one who said it was "all too true" in a comment directed to yourself, so please answer the question you asked yourself in a comment directed to yourself.
Due to the fact that the media war on Israel has been successful, nobody is interested in knowing the truth. Hamas, a declared terrorist organization, can celebrate having won the war of headlines, and the bleeding hearts are going to rebuild their enclave for them.
Which is probably all that counts, as every few years they will start another war attempting to annihilate the Jewish presence in the area.
After a while both sides will agree to a cease fire and there's quiet for a while-- then its "Rinse and Repeat".
Nothing is ever settled of course, but Hamas always cleverly manages to get many more of its people dead-- so they gain a lot of sympathy and are the ultimate winners of these wars...
Although the article was posted on National Post as an "opinion piece" it relates facts that are true, rather than the anti-Israel biased reporting of the mainstream media's "news" articles.
Although the article was posted on National Post as an "opinion piece" it relates facts that are true,
But what about the Republican's "Alternative Facts"?
Surely there must be room for them, eh?
(Anyone remember this?):
Kellyanne Conway: Press Secretary Sean Spicer Gave 'Alternative Facts'
1,593,158 views • Jan 22, 2017
???
Hamas marks ‘victory’ with parade
Several hundred masked Hamas fighters paraded through Gaza City on Saturday to honour their dead and to celebrate their “victory” in the 11-day battle with Israel
Several hundred masked Hamas fighters paraded through Gaza City on Saturday to honour their dead and to celebrate their “victory” in the 11-day battle with Israel, which ended after a ceasefire on Friday. The group’s top leader made a rare public appearance. FRANCE 24 reports.
In a rare show of force, Hamas fighters marched through the devastated city with their arms held high to celebrate their claimed victory in the most recent conflict with Israel. Stunned after 11 days of Israeli air strikes, the residents looked on in silence.
“The Israeli enemy understands no other language than force. After that, then he will know what to expect when he strikes the resistance,” a relative to a high Hamas commander killed in the fighting told FRANCE 24.
At the end of the parade, top Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar emerged to make his first public appearance since the start of the offensive. He made no statements or speeches but put himself on display by greeting the families of fighters who had been killed in battle. His lieutenants proudly repeated the cry of victory.
Click on the video player to watch the full report.
In a rare show of force, Hamas fighters marched through the devastated city with their arms held high to celebrate their claimed victory in the most recent conflict with Israel. Stunned after 11 days of Israeli air strikes, the residents looked on in silence.
Why the silence-- weren't aren't they ecstatic at their great victory over Israel?
Many of the citizens of "Hamastan" (the independent Palestinian Theocracy ruled by the terrorist group Hamas) support their rulers.
But many don't-- but they are too afraid too speak out and expose Hamas' lies-- as they would be killed if they did (after being subject to long periods of Hamas' especially sadistic tortures).
Amazing - Orwell's "doublespeak" reincarnated. Black is white, hard is soft, and a Hamas lie is truth. What is noted is that the public watching the parade were silent, no cheers for those who were the actual cause of the destruction.
Few Americans knew the real cause of the ongoing violence.
Here's is but one of many videos showing the type of propaganda the "Palestinians" are subjected to on an ongoing basis (this one re: their extensive use of human shields):
Hamas - Human Shield Confession
Hamas MP Fathi Hammad: We Used Women and Children as Human Shields.
Fathi Hammad: [The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land.
The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children.
This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: "We desire death like you desire life."
They have said that is their secret weapon against the Jews, who cherish life.
Man, they are pretty goddamn delusional. Apparently their standard of victory is "the US made Israel stop beating the shit out of us, big win!"
When you are getting your ass kicked and someone pulls the other guy off you, you didn't "win".
Hamas fires its rockets from civilian areas:
Hamas uses women and children as human sh ields.
Israel warns the civilians to vacate where they are going to bomb to take out Hamas military installations, as proven when they warned the AP bureau through the building's management.
But who gets blamed for war crimes?
So now the bleeding hearts will provide Hamas with concrete meant to reconstruct their buildings that they will use instead to reconstruct their tunnels to be used for storing new missiles and weapons from Iran and hide in and bypass the borders with Israel and Egypt, and pipes required to rebuild the infrastucture that they can fashion into new missiles to fire at Israel.