Envoy briefs on terror crisis
“HOW can you prevent someone who’s waking up in the morning, not part of an organisation or group, and deciding he’s taking a knife and is going to do whatever it was he was incited to do?” asked Anat Sultan-Dadon at a Zionism Victoria briefing on the terror crisis in Israel.
“HOW can you prevent someone who’s waking up in the morning, not part of an organisation or group, and deciding he’s taking a knife and is going to do whatever it was he was incited to do?” asked Anat Sultan-Dadon at a Zionism Victoria briefing on the terror crisis in Israel.
In her first public address to the community, the recently appointed deputy chief of mission at Israel’s Canberra embassy was responding to a question about the outbreak of violence from Palestinian youth after false reports from Fatah that Israel was changing the status of the Muslim precinct at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Sultan-Dadon told a capacity audience at the Beth Weizmann Community Centre that “a very heavy Israeli security presence” has foiled some of the apparently spontaneous attacks, but added, “This is not something that can be prevented 100 per cent.”
Jerusalemites have been given flyers with graphic advice on how to treat wounded civilians in the event of a knife attack, she said, while Fatah flyers have been urging Palestinians to murder Jews.
With Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently inciting Palestinians to violence against Jews, she accused Fatah of “a double crime” – against Israeli victims and against young Palestinians, who are incited.
Sultan-Dadon said despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirming the status quo for the Temple Mount and offering to meet with Abbas anywhere, anytime for peace talks, the Palestinian leader was “trying consistently to pursue a certain path unilaterally in different international forums, thinking that if he goes to enough international organisations and has Palestine declared as a state … that that will somehow bring him closer to his goal, with the international community often supporting him.
“But this will not make for a state,” she said, as borders, the status of Jerusalem and refugee issues have to be negotiated before there is a Palestinian state.
Asked why Israel’s narrative often seems to be lost in a welter of sympathy for Palestinians by the international media, Sultan-Dadon said Israel had the burden of releasing accurate information, whereas the falsehoods spread by Palestinians and their supporters were easy to disseminate.
She said Palestinian schools, some with United Nations funding, teach children to chant “Palestine, from the water to the water”, raising their expectation that Israel must be annihilated.
Phillip Chester, immediate past president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, speaking in the absence of president Danny Lamm, contrasted media attacks on Israeli security forces bringing down Palestinian attackers with the lack of commentary on police killing Farhad Jabar, the Muslim youth who murdered NSW Police employee Curtis Cheng. “The average Australian would say … the [Australian] police did exactly the right thing. In Israel, it’s a different story.”
He urged Jewish Australians to communicate these inconsistencies to their fellow Australians, rather than “just going home and banging on the walls” in frustration.
PETER KOHN
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