Disinformation: How Palestinians Became the 'Victims' - Chris Mitchell, CBN News Jerusalem

Disinformation: How Palestinians Became the 'Victims'

By Chris Mitchell

CBN News Middle East Bureau Chief

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

JERUSALEM, Israel -- The Security Cabinet met in an emergency session Tuesday evening to decide on additional counterterrorism measures in the wake of Palestinian violence.


Terrorists killed three Israelis and wounded 20 during their "Day of Rage," but Palestinian social media is making it look like Israelis are the aggressors.


In one attack caught by a surveillance camera, a Palestinian rammed his car into a bus stop, then got out and hacked 60-year-old Rabbi Isaiah Krishevsky to death with a meat cleaver before attacking 78-year-old Haviv Hamim. Finally, a nearby security guard stopped him.


Despite clear evidence and security camera footage of many of these attacks, Palestinian social media is accusing Israeli police of executing the attackers.


Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat is even calling on the International Criminal Court at The Hague to investigate Israel.


A case in point: Israeli police confronted a Palestinian woman brandishing a knife. When she refused to drop the knife, they shot her in the legs. Yet the picture implies police shot her for no reason.


This depiction and others like it fail to show the attacks themselves, just the aftermath.


Michael Widlanski, author of Battle for our Minds, says disinformation is an old trick.


"Mahmoud Abbas studied disinformation techniques when he was a student in the Soviet Union at the Patrice Lamumba University with the KGB. He studied this and it is always to invent an atrocity story," Widlanksi told CBN News.


"You send out somebody to kill a Jew. He kills a Jew or three Jews or five Jews and then he gets killed, and then you claim he was murdered by the Israeli police," he said. "It's a bunch of baloney."


Palestinians say what's driving many of them to kill is the need to protect the al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount.


"One thing you should know about the Palestinian Arab leadership. They use the formula every time. When they get into trouble, they say the Jews are coming to attack. They're coming to attack the Temple Mount," he continued.


"That's what they did in 1921, 1922 [and] 1929. [It's] what Arafat did in 2000. Mahmoud Abbas did the same thing this year. They even use the same Arabic term, which means 'they're attacking al-Aksa,'" Widlanski explained.


In order to protect the al-Aksa, one imam in Gaza called on West Bank Palestinians to impose what he called "a curfew of stabbing" to keep Israelis terrorized so they'll stay inside.




Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat says this kind of incitement kills.

"Those incitements are sending people to kill innocent people," Barkat said at the scene of Tuesday's bus attack. "We've just seen in the past few days children, high school children, that are incited, that go and try and terrorize and kill policemen. They don't return home. They themselves get killed. Incitement kills on both sides."

Watch the report here: CBN News report