On July 14th, Palestinian terrorists smuggled guns into their own holy site, then used those guns to murder two Israeli Druze police officers guarding one of the entrances to the al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet, it's the installation of metal detectors and cameras - nothing more nothing less, not the heinous use of a holy site as a launch pad for murder and terrorism that has the Palestinians enraged. 

To an objective observer, the crisis that erupted in the aftermath of a bloody terror attack makes no sense. Israel’s placing security devices at the entrance to all al-Aqsa entrances was a preventive security matter plain and simple and designed to detect metal objects being carried onto the Temple Mount to prevent a recurrence of the crime and to protect worshipers coming to pray.

Sadly, mere rumors by Palestinians regarding al-Aqsa are enough to ignite a conflagration. In effect, by pretending that the al-Aqsa mosque is under Israeli attack, Palestinian political and religious leaders have deliberately drummed up senseless violence. Nor is this sham new. Palestinian leaders have been making false claims of Jewish threats to the al-Aqsa mosque since 1929.As a result, the predictable response from Palestinians was general outrage and mass riots if the security devices were not removed. So the question arises, how could the installation of metal detectors and high-tech cameras to protect a holy site be considered a cause of war or worse - a new holy war? 

Even the King of Saudi Arabia said he saw no problem with the installation of electronic means of inspection, which are the same ones used at Islam's holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina. In Mecca, for example, there are 5,000 closed-circuit television cameras (overseen by a British company, G4S) and, as a security measure, an electronic bracelet is attached to each of the millions of pilgrims throughout their entire stay in the kingdom, allowing the authorities to monitor them. That hasn’t stopped the pilgrimage. 

Moreover, metal detectors are now a fact of life in the West, found at sports events, shopping malls, bus stations, the Vatican, the Western Wall itself, and major religious sites around the world. Many mosques in Muslim-majority countries also use the same security technology to protect worshipers, tourists and police.

Truth is, this so-called “offense to our honor” motif has reappeared time and again, and riots throughout Jerusalem are rampant and justified by the Arab population on the basis that Jews are “trying to control Al-Aqsa”. 

As Jonathan Tobin noted recently ….. “It was the supposedly moderate Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), whose inflammatory statements helped incite the so-called “stabbing intifada” in recent years by also claiming Jews were going to harm the mosques. It was Abbas, not just his Hamas rivals or other violent Islamists, who called on Palestinians to resist the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. It was Abbas who said “stinking Jewish feet” should not profane the holy places.” In short, this outrage is part of a religious war that mandates Arab opposition to the Jewish presence anywhere in modern-day Israel.

The Real Story

Truth is, none of this has anything to do with metal detectors or high-tech security devices designed to protect those who seek to enter the Temple Mount. 

It’s about something much bigger. It relates to a culture of hatred in Palestinian society that refuses to grant Jews in Jerusalem (specifically) and in Israel (in general) with any status other than d’himmis (second class citizens) in an Islamic-controlled Palestine that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – a belief reflected on each and every map produced by the Palestinian Authority - as noted by www.memri.org.

Unfortunately, this is an intrinsic part of Palestinian culture and the Temple Mount issue is part and parcel of their intent to demoralize, threaten and murder Jews who stand in the way of restoring Islamic rule in Israel.

The mother of Amer Abu Aysha, one of the kidnappers/murderers of three Israeli teens several years ago, told Israel's Channel 10 news: "If he did the kidnapping, I'll be proud of him until my final day. I raised my children on the knees of the [Islamic] religion. They are religious guys, honest and clean-handed, and their goal is to bring the victory of Islam.”

In Palestinian Arab society, attitudes such as this are commonplace. For 20 years, Abbas and his colleagues in the PA have encouraged a toxic Palestinian culture that glorifies terror and terrorists, indoctrinates the Palestinian Arabs through a culture of hatred and violence against Israel and Jews, describes them as human scum, and seeks their annihilation. The Hamas Charter also makes it clear that the murder of Jews is not only defensible but necessary.

In a particularly striking case, the Fatah Facebook page posted an image of Dalal Mughrabi, a female terrorist who participated in the deadliest attack in Israel's history -- the killing of 37 civilians in the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre.
This message is communicated through nursery schools, universities, books, magazines, in their mosques, in summer camps, on television, radio and the Internet. Palestinian Arabs of all ages are taught that Jews have no right to live. In fact, they are encouraged to murder them and to view contributing to their death as their highest goal in life. Millions of U.S. and European foreign aid dollars sent to improve the quality of life in Palestinian society are spent by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to fund the families of these “martyrs” …… and the more innocent Israelis killed, the higher the monthly salary to their families.

The results are predictable. 

Over 2,000 Israelis have been murdered in Palestinian terror attacks since the PA was established. Hostage taking - a recognized war crime - is presented as one of the highest achievements in Palestinian culture. 

This is why the overwhelming majority of Palestinians applauded and celebrated the murder of the Fogel family of Itamar on March 11th, 2011. After having stabbed to death the parents, a boy of eleven, his four-year-old brother, and their three-month old sister - at the trial, the terrorists regretted not having noticed two other sleeping children in the home, or the Salomon family who were slaughtered in their home on July 25th in Halamish as they celebrated Shabbat and the birth of a new grandchild.

In a ceremony aired on Palestinian television, the host, a Fatah member, said: “Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs is a war of religion and faith,” and the Mufti of Jerusalem who spoke after him said that “the resurrection of the dead won’t arrive until you fight the Jews,” with a call to kill Jews. That was in 2012. 

There were no metal detectors then. But the chorus and the culture have not changed.

So the bigger question is this - what kind of society names kindergartens, schools, summer camps, sports tournaments and other institutions after terrorists and uses young suicide bombers as pedagogic role models? In a particularly striking case, the Fatah Facebook page posted an image of Dalal Mughrabi, a female terrorist who participated in the deadliest attack in Israel's history -- the killing of 37 civilians in the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre. The image was posted with the declaration: 'On this day in 1959 Martyr (Shahida) Dalal Mughrabi was born, hero of the 'Martyr Kamal Adwan' mission, bride of Jaffa and the gentle energizing force of Fatah.'

What kind of society encourages celebrations in its streets to mark the murder of Jews and Israelis?

What kind of society uses its summer camps to train thousands of its children how to make firebombs, use firearms, and ambush and kidnap Israelis?

What kind of society allows the portrayal of Jews as vermin and allows publication on its government’s Facebook page of a cartoon of three rats, each bearing the Star of David, dangling from a fishing rod?

What kind of society allows its official Palestinian Authority (PA) media to broadcast young Palestinian girls singing about Jews as 'the sons of apes and pigs' or a sermon by a Palestinian Imam, in the presence of the PA Minister of Religious Affairs, referring to Jews as 'apes and pigs' and repeating the hadith about Muslims killing Jews hiding behind trees and rocks, because 'Judgment Day will not come before you fight the Jews.’

What kind of society allows its own government websites (in Arabic) to continue to feature the original PLO and Fatah covenants and other founding documents, all of which explicitly rule out recognition or peace with Israel and assert a claim to all of historic Palestine.

What kind of society produces mothers who encourage their children to become suicide bombers and to slaughter their Jewish neighbors?

What kind of society encourages its soldiers to hide among civilians during battle and to use children as human shields?

What kind of society creates a cultural milieu of vengeance, violence and death and consciously and purposely sacrifices its own youth for political gain and tactical advantage through a death cult? Not since the Children's Crusade in 1212 has there been a horror such as this.

Would any Israeli mother raise her children to become kidnappers and murderers and proudly say so to journalists? Perhaps the Palestinians and their sympathizers in the Western media and the EU should recognize that a culture that openly celebrates “martyrdom” and the murder of Jews is not fit for statehood.

Brett Stephens of the Wall Street Journal wrote recently that “post-war German society went through a process of moral rehabilitation that began with recognition of what it had done.” It is highly unlikely however, that such moral rehabilitation could have taken place until the scourge of Nazism had been completely expunged from German society. 

According to the 2003 U.S. Senate Committee Hearing on Palestinian Education, between 72% and 80% of children living in the Palestinian Authority yearn to die as martyrs and studies show that little has changed since then. That is because Islam carries with it the expectation that any land once under Muslim control is an endowment that must inevitably revert to Muslim rule. 

Until this culture of death and martyrdom in the name of Islam has been expunged from Palestinian society (if that is possible), arguments that the Jews are attempting to defile the al-Aqsa Mosque (built over the site of the Holy Temple) by setting up electronic security checks for those who enter the site should be recognized as a lie being perpetrated by those who cannot accept the presence of Jews (except as dhimmis who must pay a non-Muslim jizya tax) on any part of Islamic land. 

The Palestinian leadership is abusing Islam and its holy site to incite the masses in order to promote their own agenda. The international community, including the moderate Muslim world, should support any action that safeguards freedom of religion and the worshipers' personal safety at the al-Aqsa Mosque.