One of the common narratives about the root cause of terror attacks targeting Israelis promoted by Guardian journalists is that such violence is the result of Palestinian frustrations over a lack of progress on achieving a two-state solution.
In addition to the fact that such an explanation represents a larger pattern within the outlet of denying Palestinians agency, it’s also completely ahistorical. The four plus years of savage Palestinian violence targeting Israeli civilians known as the 2nd Intifada began, crucially, after Israeli prime minister Ehud Bark offered Palestinians a sovereign state in almost all of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and with east Jerusalem as their capital – an offer rejected by Yasser Arafat.
So, the mass murder spree began – or, to be more precise, was initiated by Palestinian leaders – at the precise time when Palestinian statehood was the closest to being achieved.
So, a recent Guardian article on efforts by New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, to ban the “globalise the intifada” chant following the jihadist antisemitic terror attack on Bondi Beach which killed 15, naturally re-wrote the history of the actual intifadas in order to erase the connection between such chants at anti-Israel marches and deadly attacks on Jews around the world.
The piece (“What does ‘globalise the intifada’ mean, and why does NSW want to ban the chant?”, Dec. 23), by Sarah Basford Canales, included this “explainer” on “What is an intifada?”.
Intifada is an Arabic word that translates to uprising or “shaking off”. Two uprisings against Israel in the past four decades are known as the first and second intifadas.
The first Palestinian intifada occurred between 1987 and 1993. It began in December 1987 after an Israeli truck [accidentally] struck two vehicles in Gaza, killing four Palestinians. The event sparked unrest and brutal reprisals from Israeli forces.
The “event” didn’t spark “unrest”. It sparked brutal Palestinian violence against Jews, and included more than 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 assaults with guns or explosives – killing at least 179 Israelis.
Further, Jews were not the only victims of the violence. In fact, as the intifada waned in 1991, the number of Palestinians killed for political and other reasons by Palestinian death squads (known as the “intrafada”) was nearly equal to the number killed in clashes with IDF troops.
The Guardian then introduces the 2nd Intifada:
A second, more violent, intifada began in 2000 and continued until 2005.
The former Guardian correspondent Ewen MacAskill wrote that while the “enduring image of the first [intifada] is of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers”, the second intifada was “a full-scale confrontation, with Israel attacking Palestinian cities and towns with artillery, tanks, helicopters and jets while Palestinians fought back with rifles and explosives.
Even by Guardian standards, this is an egregious and malicious lie.
Though the article eventually noted that Palestinians “terrorised Israel by sending suicide bombers across its border to attack bus stops, cafes, [and] hotels”, Guardian readers would come away believing that the 2nd Intifada began with Israeli attacks on Palestinians, who retaliated with rifles, explosives and suicide bombings.
Moreover, it’s hard to overstate the trauma to Israelis of the 2nd Intifada, when Jewish civilians were hunted, targeted, and killed on buses, in restaurants, and at dance clubs – a campaign of violence that included over 130 suicide bombing attacks.
Indeed, Until the Oct. 7th massacre, the barbarism of the 2nd Intifada was the period that most scarred Israelis.
As our colleague Gilead Ini reminded us in 2020 (the 20th anniversary of the intifada) when Israelis think of that terror wave, they remember the Park Hotel in Netanya, where in 2002 a Palestinian entered a dining hall packed with Jews celebrating Passover and murdered 30 civilians, most of them elderly; the massacre of 21 people, a majority of them teenage girls, waiting to enter a Tel Aviv dance club; and the ruins of the Sbarro pizzeria, an attack which killed 15 and was selected as the target of a suicide bomber because it was packed with Jewish families.
Here’s a clip from an interview with Ahlam Tamimi, who planned the massacre, shortly after her release in 2011:
Calls to “globalise the intifada” can not be divorced from images such as that: the monstrous expression of delight on a Palestinian woman’s face upon learning that the attack she orchestrated resulted in the murder of five more children than she previously thought. Nor can that chant, when venomously used by anti-Israel protesters in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, be separated from the mass killing, rape, torture and mutilation of innocent men, women and children in southern Israel – an intifada perpetrated by Hamas pogromists in an effort to murder as many Jews as possible.
Central London, Oct. 28, 2023:
If the word “intifada” technically means “shaking off” in Arabic, in the minds of those who targeted Jewish communities in places like Re’im, Sderot, Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz ,Washington, DC, Boulder, Manchester and Bondi Beach, as well as other jihadists and would-be pogromists, it means only one thing: killing Jews.
The Guardian’s effort to whitewash such murderous antisemitic rage is as shameful as it is predcitable.
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