Most Palestinians Blame Israel for Paris Attacks

A recent poll showed that a majority of Palestinians blame Israel for the recent wave of terror in Paris, including the Charlie Hebdo attack. Could Palestinian incitement be responsible for this sentiment?

Five out of six Palestinians – 84 percent – are apparently convinced that Israel aided the perpetrators of the terror attacks in Paris earlier this month.

Responding to a poll conducted by the Palestinian Maan News Agency, 84 percent of Palestinians said that the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters and the Hyper Cacher supermarket attack were “suspicious, and that Israel may be behind it.” Fewer than nine percent of respondents say Islamic terror was to blame for the attacks.

Palestinian Incitement and Propaganda

These findings may not be that surprising when the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ongoing incitement is taken into consideration.

The official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote earlier this month that Israel was behind the terror attacks in France because the Jewish state “was the only one to benefit from them.”

The newspaper alleged that the Mossad (Israeli intelligence) planned the attacks, claiming that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had wanted to encourage Jewish immigration and take “revenge on European governments… because of their… support for… an independent Palestinian state,” Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports.

One regular columnist, Muwaffaq Matar, argued that because Netanyahu “wishes to realize the myth of the ‘Jewishness of Israel'” and encourage immigration, the attacks against Jews in France and elsewhere in Europe were “no coincidence, but a carefully executed and fully controlled plan,” according to PMW.

“‘Netanyahu’s Jewish State’ was the only one to benefit” from these attacks, Matar stated.

Netanyahu “trades with the blood of the 17 victims of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and of the supermarket,” wrote another columnist, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, saying that Netanyahu wanted to “exploit the terrorism that struck some French Jews” in order to encourage them “to immigrate to Israel.” The writer claimed that “Turkish sources, including intelligence and the mayor of Ankara,” determined that the attacks were “planned by the Israeli Mossad,” PMW continues.

Similarly, journalist Akram Atallah, interviewed on official PA TV, claimed that “in the past, the Israeli Mossad carried out operations [i.e., terror attacks]: It bombed synagogues in order to force the Jews to emigrate,” and that “the operation [Charlie Hebdo] served Israel’s demographic [interests], for the Israeli media and government bodies predicted yesterday that 10,000 French Jews would immigrate to Israel.”

“The perpetrators of the two attacks in Paris and the Israeli settlement establishment” have “matching interests,” said Hafez Al-Barghouti, another columnist for the PA daily, thereby insinuating that Israel was involved in the attacks.

By World Israel News Staff
(With files from Palestinian Media Watch)