Was the Killing of Qusai Jamal Ma’atan a ‘Terror Attack’?

The Biden administration on Monday [August 21] equated Palestinian terrorist attacks to “settler violence” in a month when four Israelis have been gunned down in such attacks, three of them this week.

More on this wrongheaded equivalence can be found here: “US equates Palestinian and settler terror as four Israelis gunned down,” by Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post, August 21, 2023:

“The US remains deeply concerned by violence in the West Bank and Israel, and we express our condolences to those killed,” US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas– Greenfield told the United Nations Security Council at its monthly meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

She spoke on a day when two Palestinian terrorists sprayed an Israeli civilian vehicle with more than 20 bullets, killing a preschool teacher in front of her daughter and seriously wounding the driver.

Two days earlier, a Palestinian terrorist fatally shot two Israelis at close range as they waited for their car to be washed in the Palestinian town of Huwara. On August 5, a Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli police officer.

“We [the US] strongly condemn Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis, including this morning’s shooting attack near Hebron,” Thomas-Greenfield said as she recounted the incidents.

Thomas-Greenfield cited an incident outside the village of Burka that led to the shooting death on August 4 of one of its residents, Qusai Jamal Ma’atan, 19, by a settler whose skull was fractured when he was hit in the head with a rock.

The details of the incident, however, unlike other examples of settler violence, remain murky. The Israelis involved in the incident said a [Jewish] shepherd who was attacked while herding his sheep called on his friends for help, and that the shooting was in self-defense. Palestinians said they were defending their village from a violent infiltration by settlers.

Surely it is quite enough that the Israeli accused of killing Qusai Jamal Ma’atan, just seconds before, had his skull fractured, when Ma’atan hurled a large rock at his head. Of course, the Israeli fired in self-defense, afraid that another such rock thrown by the Palestinian might finish him off. His fractured skull is not a detail, but the central part of the story.

The US immediately called the incident [the killing of Ma’atan, not the nearly fatal rock-throwing] a terrorist attack, and Thomas-Greenfield repeated that claim on Monday.

“We strongly condemn the terror attacks by settlers in Burka on August 4 that killed a 19-year-old Palestinian,” she said.

Given the unclear circumstances, it is intolerable that the Bidenites “immediately” called the killing of Ma’atan “a terrorist attack.” They did not wait to hear the Israeli version of events — did not wait, that is, to find out about the rock Ma’atan hurled at the Israeli, fracturing his skull. And then, even after the Israelis provided those exculpatory details, instead of prudently withholding comment, Linda Thomas-Greenfield repeated at the U.N. on August 21 on Monday the claim that what happened in Burka was a “terrorist attack.” And so it was, but not in the way she or the other Americans have claimed. The only terrorism was the near-fatal attack on the Israeli civilian; his shooting of the rock-hurler was a justified act of self-defense.

Why was the Biden administration in such haste — a “rush to judgment” — to label the shooting of Ma’atan a “terror attack”? No doubt because it wanted to show an “equal measure” (a favorite phrase of the Bidenites, who keep repeating that the Israelis and Palestinians “deserve an equal measure of security and prosperity”) of fault on both sides. So the Palestinians have murdered four Israelis within two weeks: a mother in a car, shot in front of her six-year-old daughter, a father and son who had gone, too trustingly, to buy some goods in the Arab town of Humara, and were murdered at a car wash; and the only non-civilian target, an Israeli police official. Those are on the Israeli side of the ledger. On the Palestinian side, exactly one person was shot, clearly not an innocent but someone who had just tried to murder an Israeli and was on the verge of trying again. Yet the Bidenites consider Israel and the Palestinians to be equally guilty of “terrorist attacks.”

Both Israelis and Palestinians must take “immediate steps to de-escalate and restore calm,” Thomas-Greenfield said, adding that Israeli and Palestinian security forces should increase their cooperation.

How exactly should the Israelis “de-escalate”? The next time a Palestinian tries to break the skull of an Israeli, and does indeed fracture it, should the Israeli victim not respond, not try to prevent a second murderous attempt? Would that “de-escalate” the situation? Should Israelis no longer drive between homes, workplaces, and schools, on any road, where Palestinians might conceivably ambush them, and fire dozens of rounds into their cars? Are they “escalating” tensions by being such inviting targets? Should the Israelis “de-escalate” matters by allowing Palestinians to attack their shepherds without fighting back? What exactly could or should Israelis do to “calm” the situation?

Here’s what might restore calm: the P.A. should honor its commitment under the 1995 Oslo II Accords, and both enhance its security ties with the Israelis and, as well, have its security services apprehend those Palestinians in the West Bank deemed most likely to be involved in terrorist attacks on Israelis. Some will slip through the net, some will not be taken alive, but others will be caught.and the PA can find reasons to keep them locked up, especially if they are members of PA’s enemies in Hamas or PIJ, such as “threatening the security of the state.”

Of course, nothing would “de-escalate” the situation better than the P.A. calling a halt to its “Pay-For-Slay” program that rewards past, and incentivizes future, acts of terrorism. Isn’t it time for the Bidenites to stop violating the Taylor Force Act, and instead to halt all aid to the P.A. until that malignant and murderous program is shut down? What possible justification is there for the Bidenites to so blatantly ignore the Taylor Force Act by handing the Palestinians close to a billion dollars in aid since January 2021?

“We urge all parties to take proactive measures to counter all forms of violence and incitement to violence and refrain from actions that inflame tensions, including settlement activity, evictions [of Palestinians], and the demolition of Palestinian homes,” she said.

There is no “incitement” on the Israeli side. No Israeli schoolbooks are full of anti-Palestinian messaging. No Israeli children’s television programs feature tiny tots lisping their desire to stab Palestinians. No Israelis are rewarded by the state for murdering Palestinian civilians. The incitement to violence is all on the Palestinian side, and Thomas-Greenfield must know that.

Furthermore, Israel has every right to continue with its settlement activity. Thomas-Greenfield should refresh her memory, assuming she once had known, of what is stated in the Mandate for Palestine, Article 6, which calls for “close settlement by Jews on the land.” What land? All the land that the League of Nations had intended to be included in the territory assigned to the Palestine Mandate that would then, over time, ripen into the Jewish state. All the land, that is, “from the river to the sea.” Article 6 specifically identifies “state and waste lands” as suitable for settlement; since then Israel has also established settlements on lands abandoned by, or bought from, Arab owners

Does Thomas-Greenfield think the Mandate for Palestine is no longer relevant because the League of Nations ceased to be? If so, she needs to consult Article 80 of the UN Charter (known as the “Jewish people’s article”), that commits the UN to assume the commitments left incomplete when the League of Nations folded. And for good measure, she should study UN Security Council Resolution 242, as glossed by its main author, Lord Caradon, which made clear that Israel could retain any territory it won in the Six-Day War if it was needed to ensure that the Jewish state would have “secure [i.e. defensible] and recognized boundaries.” Here is what Lord Caradon said about UNSC Resolution 242:

I defend the resolution as it stands. What it states, as you know, is first the general principle of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. That means that you can’t justify holding onto territory merely because you conquered it. We could have said: well, you go back to the 1967 line. But I know the 1967 line, and it’s a rotten line. You couldn’t have a worse line for a permanent international boundary. It’s where the troops happened to be on a certain night in 1948. It’s got no relation to the needs of the situation.

Had we said that you must go back to the 1967 line, which would have resulted if we had specified a retreat from all the occupied territories, we would have been wrong.

Note how Lord Caradon says that “you can’t justify holding onto territory merely because you conquered it,” with that “merely” applying to Jordan, but not to Israel, because of the Mandate’s explicit provisions allocating the territory known now as the “West Bank” to the future Jewish state. Note, too, the firmness of his dismissal of the 1967 lines as nothing more than “where the troops happened to be on a certain night in 1948,” that is, they were nothing more than temporary armistice lines and not internationally recognized borders.

Thomas-Greenfield and the other Bidenites ignore all this: they have gotten it into their heads the dreamy belief that Israel has no legitimate claim to the West Bank, which if true would mean it has no claim, either, to build settlements in the area. But Israel’s claim is superior to that of all others, based as it is both on 3500 years of Jewish history in the land, including an uninterrupted presence, and on the express provisions of the Mandate for Palestine.

Thomas-Greenfield also denounced “evictions” of Palestinians by Israelis, failing to realize that those evictions are not political provocations, but simple matters of property law: Arabs who have failed for many years to pay the rent owed to Jewish owners, mainly in east Jerusalem, and who have continued to refuse to pay the sums owed — even when they have been made generous offers for reduced rent — are finally, after lengthy judicial processes, being evicted. And they are evicted for the same reason as the 2.7 million Americans who each year are evicted for non-payment of rent.

She also denounced “house demolitions,” failing to recognize that the houses demolished by the IDF belong to terrorists and their families, and that the IDF and the Shin Bet are convinced that this practice has proved to be an effective method of discouraging other would-be terrorists, as academic studies have confirmed. Following such demolitions, there is a noticeable drop in terrorist attacks; the effect, of course, eventually wears off. Some of the Palestinians who have been prepared to die in committing a terror attack bethought themselves, and changed their minds because they did not want to leave their families homeless.

The British envoy to the UN, James Kariuki, has bemoaned “settler violence,” failing to acknowledge that settlers have only been responding to Palestinian violence, including the murders of Israeli civilians, by vandalizing cars and houses. There is no comparison, of course, between property damage inflicted by the settlers and murders committed by the Palestinians. Kariuki called the shooting of Ma’atan a “murder,” but like Thomas-Greenfield, said nothing about Ma’atan’s attempt to murder the Israeli who then shot him.

There is a lesson here for the Bidenites: wait. Wait to find out the whole story of what provoked Israeli violence before you rush to condemn Israeli acts as equivalent to those of the Palestinians. Try to comprehend that Israeli attempts at self-defense are not at all akin to Palestinian terror attacks on civilians. The ability to withhold comments until the truth comes out may prove beyond Biden’s abilities, but his handlers can surely figure out a way to keep him silent, and then, once everything has become clear, to speak for him.