An image from the PA's Facebook page shows a bloodsoaked knife marked with the Palestinian national flag. Image: Wiesenthal Center Digital Terrorism and Hate Project

Jewish advocacy organizations and the Israeli government have charged that Palestinian Authority incitement led directly to today’s frenzied stabbing attack upon a bus in Tel Aviv in which twelve people were injured, four of them seriously.

Both the Fatah movement of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and the PA itself “encourage the use of violence against Israelis,” said monitoring organization Palestinian Media Watch, which noted that it had “documented that this violence promotion in recent months has mentioned ‘stabbings’ and the use of ‘knives and cleavers’ specifically.”

Researchers at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Digital Terrorism and Hate Project highlighted four images posted to the PA’s Facebook page shortly after today’s attack in Tel Aviv, all of them displaying knives drenched in blood.

“The  genocidal subculture these images represent is truly frightening,” said Wiesenthal Center associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper. “There won’t be any million man march against such hatred, but unless and until Palestinians themselves decry and put an end to such hate there will be no peace and they will have no state.”

Separately, the Israeli government pointed to four photographs recently uploaded to the Facebook page of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Abu Mazen’s Fatah movement.

“The page serves as a regular platform for the glorification of those who have perpetrated large-scale terrorist attacks against Israel as part of the PA’s systematic campaign of incitement, by various means and through various bodies, against Israel,” said an accompanying note from the media adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.

One of the photographs pays tribute to Fatah terrorist Ra’ed Carmi. The photo “takes pride in the fact that he was directly responsible for deaths of 165 Israelis and the wounding of over 1,800 others,” the note said.