A general view picture shows part of Givat Hamatos, an area near eastern Jerusalem, November 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun.

While Israeli Arabs have complained that the Israeli government is not doing enough to solve the upsurge in crime in Israeli Arab society (whose perpetrators they have identified as “criminal organizations” and “powerful Arab gangs”), the Palestinian Authority (PA) is libeling Israel as being behind the violence and killings, in order to destroy Israeli Arab society.

Official Palestinian TV broadcast an interview with a so-called “Israeli affairs expert,” who claimed that the murders in Israeli Arab society are part of an Israeli “organized” plan of “Judaization”:

“Israeli affairs expert” Tawfiq Abu Shomar: “The spreading of poison among our brothers who are standing firm on their land since 1948, through the crimes of murder — currently the number [of Israeli Arabs] killed this year is 130 to 135. All of this is part of the organized, deliberate, and preplanned strategy of Judaization.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, Talk of the Hour, July 27, 2023]

Intensifying the baseless accusation, a regular columnist of the PA daily went as far as accusing Israeli security forces and their “tools” of committing the murders. He also claimed that Israel’s goal is to “expel the Palestinian civilians from their cities and villages”:

It is urgent now to write about the state of social dread and panic that has spread throughout the Palestinian public following the culture of cowardly murder cases committed by the gangs of [Israeli] undercover forces, mafias, hashish and drug dealers, and collaborators — the tools of the Israeli security forces.

The Palestinian civilian [i.e., Israeli Arab] … no longer feels security for himself …  due to the increase in the barbaric murder cases, which the Israeli ethnic cleansing state stands behind in a crazy manner, to the point that the number of victims has reached more than 130 since the start of the year.

The cases of death and organized crime committed by the Israeli security forces among the Arab Palestinians has doubled in a clear and obvious decision by the successive Israeli governments, and foremost among them the [current] fascist triumvirate government that has given a free hand to all its tools to commit cheap and cowardly acts of murder in order to achieve the goal of willingly expelling the Palestinian civilians from their cities and villages.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 5, 2023]

Palestinian Media Watch has exposed that the PA by default blames Israel for any and all problems — even natural disasters — so it is not surprising that the wave of crime among Israeli Arabs who they identify as “Palestinians” would also be Israel’s fault.

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.