By J.J. Goldberg in The Jewish Daily Forward
The director of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service, speaking in the wake of today’s massacre in a Jerusalem synagogue, told a Knesset committee that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas “is not interested in terrorism and is not leading [his people] to terrorism. Not even under the table.”
His remarks directly contradicted a string of statements (English) by Israeli leaders, from Prime Minister Netanyahu on down, accusing Abbas of “inciting” the attack by his calls to “defend Al-Aqsa.” Netanyahu called (Hebrew) the synagogue slaughter “the direct result of incitement led by Hamas and Abu Mazen, incitement that the international community is irresponsibly ignoring.”
The security chief, Yoram Cohen, was addressing a closed meeting of the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee. His remarks were described to reporters afterward by participants.
Cohen acknowledged that there were “factors within the Palestinian Authority” who interpret Abbas’s criticisms of Israel as “giving legitimization to terror.”
However, in describing the sequence of events that led to this morning’s bloodbath, he said the confrontations began after the July 2 murder of Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu-Khdeir. He said the tensions were exacerbated by Knesset discussions of a bill to permit Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, submitted last spring by Likud lawmaker Miri Regev, and by high-profile visits of politicians to the Temple Mount that are seen as supporting the legislation.
Under an agreement between Israel and Jordan, dating back to Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in 1967, Jewish prayer is prohibited on the site in deference to Muslim religious sensibilities. Efforts to rescind the agreement and permit Jewish prayer began some years ago on the fringe of the religious-nationalist right, originally as a stage in the long-term goal of building the Third Temple. In recent months the prayer campaign has gained traction on the mainstream right.
Read more at The Jewish Daily Forward
Categories: History, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Top stories, World history, World news
World News Forum 
Israel’s political right wing has done as much as any Palestinians to incite violence and bloodshed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetoric has been consistently incendiary, as have been the actions of his government on issue of particular sensitivity to Palestinians, such as restricting their access to the Al-Aqsa mosque.
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Personally, I think the US should stop their supply of weapons and money.
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