Thursday, November 24, 2016

Blaming Palestinians for fires and natural disasters

From Eyal: "During the Black Plague in the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were sometimes scapegoated, with accusations of having poisoned the wells to infect crowded cities (see )

Now, for the past several days Palestine/Israel has experienced a wave of fires [1].  due to the unusually dry and windy weather. Israeli police has already rushed to claim that this is the result of arson. And who, do you think, might be the suspects? Palestinians, of course. "The Shin-Bet is
investigating: Arson Terrorism!" says the YNet headline.  Police chief Ronni Al-Sheikh (he's not a Sheikh, that's just his family name), who is a former top Shin-Bet official, announced [2] that "it is reasonable to assume that the arson had nationalist motives and arrests have already been made".  Ron Ben-Yishai, a security pundit, writes "Even a person wh's not an expert understands that most fires are the result of arson whose perpatrators know how to locate the places in which maximum effect would be achieved." [3]  MK Aiman Odeh, was interviewed by YNet and asked questions such as: "Do you know for a fact that these are not cases of arson?" and after saying does not know it for a fact and that if some person is responsible, than he is a wretched person, be he Jew or Arab, the next question was "So why do you object to the use of the term 'an Intifadah of Arson'?" [2]

Gotta love the Israeli media. It's like they haven't learned anything from last big forest fire in Haifa, 6 years ago, where arson was also suspected, someone was arrested, but of course nothing came of it.