Left: The Christmas tree in Manger Square, outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, December 2015

In his “Christmas Message”,  like Arafat before him, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas portrayed Palestinian terrorists as victims of Israeli oppression and urged, “international intervention is “desperately needed to protect the Palestinians.”

How do you square this with the daily growing number of Palestinians attacking Israelis by stabbing, car ramming shooting and stoning?

David Bukay, professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Haifa, explains what’s behind Abbas’ deception: “The Muslim leadership and the useful idiots portray Muslims as peaceful, tolerant human beings, and non-Muslims as aggressors, imperialist-colonialist occupiers. Thus, all Muslims, even those who are potential victims must fight to defend themselves and retaliate against the Kuffar (non-believer), who always instigates war.

“These clearly contradictory characteristics of Arab-Islamic political culture mean that Muslims can viciously attack at every possible opportunity while at the very same time crying out they are victims of oppression and aggression. They can perpetuate obscene inhuman acts of violence, terrorize and intimidate while  accusing the infidels of colonialism, apartheid, racism, and Islamophobia.”

The signal to the current wave of Palestinian terrorist  attacks against Israelis was given by Abbas on September 30, 2015. Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly, Abbas dismissed the possibility of a peace agreement with Israel because “the Palestinian Authority was no longer bound by the Oslo Peace Accords“.

He went on to accuse Israel of inflaming “the feelings of the Palestinians and the Muslims everywhere” and causing the transformation of “the conflict from a political conflict to a religious one.”  He then promised that the Palestinians will carry on their armed struggle against Israel, in “the traditions of our national struggle established by the Palestinian [Fatah] fedayeen” in 1965,” as part of their plan to unilaterally wangle Palestinian sovereignty in the territories and east Jerusalem.”  In celebration of Abbas’ inflammatory announcement the Palestinian flag was raised for the first time outside the U.N. headquarters and “Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the occasion a “day of pride for the Palestinian people around the world” and a “day of hope.”

Since Abbas spoke at the U.N. there were 150 Palestinian stabbing, stoning, car ramming or shooting Israelis, killing 24 and wounding scores of others. The number of attacks is on the rise as is the Palestinian leadership’s incitement to jihad to liberate al-Aqsa.

A quarterly public opinion poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research on December 14, 2015, shows the  results of decades of Palestinian indoctrination and incitement to kill Israelis.

The center interviewed a sample of 1,270 adults from Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, between December 10 and 12, 2015 and found that

• 46% regard armed activities as the most effective way to achieve an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel; Only 26% are of the opinion that negotiations are the best way.
• 66% support stabbing attacks against Israelis
• The most susceptible group to Abbas’s incitement against Israel are youth between the ages of 18 and 22. Most disapproved of the two-state solution and favored an armed intifada and stabbings attacks.

Pictures of Palestinians ramming cars at and stabbing pedestrians discouraged tourists and Christian faithful from around the world from attending Christmas Eve celebrations at Jesus birthplace in Bethlehem. Local hotels occupancy rate was 50% down of what it was last year, restaurants closed and local vendors complained bitterly.

Faced with restrictions imposed by the PA to tone down Christmas celebrations, Palestinians Christians opted to celebrate elsewhere enjoying the Israeli easing of travel restrictions in honor of the holiday.

Merry Christmas!