A new report published by the US State Department criticizing Israel and largely ignoring the Palestinian Authority’s financial support for terrorists sparked a bitter backlash, with some characterizing the document as “anti-Semitic”.
The State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism for 2016, published last Wednesday, laid the blame for violence against Israelis at the feet of the Jewish state, while praising the Palestinian Authority for rarely making “explicit calls for violence against Israelis”.
In the report, the department claimed that terrorism against Israel was fueled not by anti-Semitic incitement in the Arab sector, but Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria and “a lack of hope” among Palestinian Authority residents.
Incitement in the Palestinian Authority was only indirectly alluded to, with a passing reference to what the report calls “the perception” that Israel is seeking to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount.
“Continued drivers of violence included a lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood, Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the perception that the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount, and IDF tactics that the Palestinians considered overly aggressive,” the report claims. READ MORE
