My friend, Jonathan Spyer, has posted a brief assessment of what’s going on over at his personal blog. Jonathan is an excellent analyst and Middle East researcher. I met him through the late, great and sadly missed Barry Rubin. Please click over to his blog, it’s well worth watching.
The Emerging Pattern
A pattern emerges, dear friends. The names of the five Palestinian Arab terrorists who have murdered or sought to murder Israelis in major incidents in the last couple of weeks are: Nur a Din Hashiya, Maher al Hashlamoun, Ibrahim al Akari, Abd al Rahman al Shaludi and Mutaz Hijazi.
It is interesting to note that all these men are not simply members of the Arab Muslim public, with no prior affiliation, who suddenly committed acts of terror (there have been a number of incidents involving such non-affiliated individuals in recent years.) Rather, all are members of Palestinian organizations. Hijazi and Hashlamoun are/were Islamic Jihad members. The others are/were Hamas members.
So it should be understood: what we are in the midst of is an orchestrated campaign, a declaration of war, if you will, whereby members of these organizations appear to have been given a general instruction to go out and kill Jews. I doubt there is anything more direct than this general instruction (except in the case of Hijazi, who tried to kill Yehuda Glick, where I suspect an organizational guiding hand may have been involved. This was the only instance involving the use of firearms and a clear target). So this is not, in my view, simply an outbreak of strange, spontaneous fury. It, and the whole hysteria around the ‘contamination’ of the Temple Mount by a Jewish presence is being whipped up, by political organizations.
I urge you to read it all.
