UPDATE: The very day after writing this, my husband comes home mid-morning to tell me that as he was passing the Beitar Junction, the car he was in was pelted with rocks and Molotov cocktails. Happily, no one was injured.
h/t to Acher E BenAbuya, who tipped me to this story.
Syllabification: prop·a·gan·da
Pronunciation: /?präp???and? /
Definition of propaganda in English:
NOUN
1 chiefly derogatory Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view:
he was charged with distributing enemy propaganda’
Every day, Arabs throw rocks at moving vehicles—trains, cars, and buses—in Israel. These incidents, with rare exceptions, are not reported by the mainstream media. Even when deaths occur as a result of a stoning, as happened with Asher and Yonatan Palmer, there are attempts to cover up the cause of death.
Some of the onus lies with Israel’s security establishment. In the case of the double tragedy of the Palmer murders (a young father and his infant son), the initial findings of the police ruled the deaths accidental. The family of the murder victims was distraught, since this left the impression that Asher Palmer, as a negligent driver, was responsible for his own death and that of his son, while allowing the perpetrators to escape justice.
Only one week later did the police admit the deaths were due to stoning. The police had no choice but to confess the truth. A hole was found in Palmer’s front windshield, along with a massive boulder stained with human blood on the (damaged) front seat. A CT of Palmer’s face showed facial fractures consistent with blows from rocks.
There are a number of reasons why the police would attempt to cover up acts of terror against Israeli citizens. The establishment would like to keep the volume low on public discussion of terror attacks to prevent outrage, moral panic, vigilantism, and a sense that the police, the IDF, and the Israeli government are not doing enough to protect the public. Israeli media outlets associated with the left, for instance, HaAretz, are happy to go along with this tack, largely leaving stoning attacks to go unreported. It’s also not improbable that patrons of the Jewish State, for instance, the United States, would prefer these attacks not be publicized, since this does not serve their official narrative regarding the negotiations.
The official narrative of the U.S. is that the Palestinian Authority has repudiated violence against Israel since the Oslo Accords and that it is Israel that is intransigent in preventing a lasting settlement of the Arab war against the Jews. The official narrative of the U.S. is that Israel is not ready to make difficult sacrifices for the sake of peace, for instance, freezing settlement construction and offering the Arabs the territory that comprises Judea and Samaria. The stonings, on the other hand, prove that the PA has not repudiated violence against Israel. The stonings prove that giving the Arabs Judea and Samaria would serve to give terrorists a better vantage point from which to attack Jerusalem and other parts of Israel, following in the footsteps of giving them Gaza.
Shhhhhhh. Don’t Say A Word.
The stonings, therefore, are something the U.S. would like Israel to keep under wraps.
The same is true of the recent incident in which an Arab drove his commercial vehicle over three Jews standing on a road in Gush Etzion. The driver turned himself in and “confessed” he’d lost control of the vehicle.
The police and the media were only too happy to accept this account of events.
Only later did it come out that the confession was bogus and had been made to enable the perpetrator to escape justice. Less clear is what pressures allowed the police to finally air the truth about this incident and the Palmer incident, for instance. Public pressure? Incontrovertible evidence that might be introduced at trial and lead to grave embarrassment for security forces?
Who Knows?
Or perhaps a combination of both. It’s impossible to say. It appears that things happen away from the public eye, things we will never hear about.
Israel National News and the Jewish Press often report stoning incidents that the mainstream media ignore. The Muqata, 0404, Rotter, and The Israel Link, also report such incidents and share photos of the damage with their viewers. But these outlets are smaller, less professional, and known to have a right-wing bias. Reports are, in some cases, riddled with grammar and spelling errors which lend an air of unprofessionalism.
As a resident of Gush Etzion for over a quarter of a century, I hear of stonings daily. I know of babies and pregnant women injured by these attacks. I’ve seen the dings and smashed windshields. 
Stoning attacks can kill and they are scary. As a religious person, I say the Traveler’s Prayer each time we set out on our main road on the short drive to Jerusalem. It has ever been thus, since I’ve lived here. In all these years, we, the residents of Gush Etzion, have set out with fear in our hearts.
We don’t like to say it out loud, because an admission of fear grants our enemy a victory. But it’s true.
One day, my daughter, who also lives in Gush Etzion, was driving her car with her small children in tow. Arabs spilled oil on the road and her car went into a skid. By a miracle, my daughter managed not to crash and neither she nor her children, my grandchildren, were injured. But she has been afraid to drive ever since.
It’s been months.
Closures And Curfews
The stoning attacks, pouring oil on the road, splashing acid into faces, these are not legitimate weapons against an oppressor, as the mainstream media would like us to believe. These are acts of terror. Terror results in the need for checkpoints that cause delays and discomfort for Israelis and Arabs alike. Terror results in the necessity to stop ambulances to check for bombs under Arabs en route to hospitals for emergency treatment. Terror results in the need to do searches of pregnant Arab women. Terror results in closures and curfews.
Terror results in death, anguish, injury, and post traumatic stress disorder. Terror results in widows and orphans. Terror results in the loss of livelihood, loss of speech, the loss of a meaningful life going forward.
But the New York Times would like you to think that Arabs have no other means of redressing their situation other than through acts of terror. In fact, they would like you to believe that stoning attacks are really innocent acts of protest, rather than malicious assaults on civilians with deadly weapons and intent to kill.
That is why they used as their Saturday front page photo this image of Arab women getting ready to stone Israeli soldiers, even though there was not a single article in the newspaper to lend context to the photo or its propagandistic message.
The photo stands alone. The photo is meant as an indictment of the Jews for daring to build homes in their homeland, to live in their homeland. The photo is meant to absolve the Arabs of any responsibility for the terror they wield against the Jews on a daily basis, by portraying these same Arabs as helpless victims against a nonexistent Israeli war machine.
It’s a lie. The photo is a lie, its message having no basis in reality.
Here is the truth:
Rocks kill. The women in the photo are terrorists. Unless some photographer directed them to pose for a planned propaganda photo, in which case, these wannabe rock-throwing “models” are as guilty of incitement to terror as if they shot and published the photo themselves.
The New York Times, by disseminating propaganda, colludes and is complicit in the killing and injury of Jews even as it aids in the oppression of the Arabs. The New York Times, by portraying the hurling of stones as a meager response to a powerful Israeli military, attempts to lend an air of innocence to malicious acts of terror against innocent civilians. The New York Times expects its audience to see the Arabs as David, the IDF as Goliath.
The New York Times forgets that Israel is in a continuing defensive war; that it is not an Arab Israeli conflict, but an Arab war against the Jews. The New York Times forgets that “IDF” stands for “Israel Defense Forces” and that the Arabs who heave boulders at Jewish vehicles are grave offenders, terrorists who violate the peace and wellbeing of civilians.
Most of all, the New York Times has forgotten that David’s stone killed.
David had blood on his hands and as such, did not merit the building of the Temple. It was his son Solomon who was instead designated this holy task.
Because shedding the blood of men is not a noble act.
It’s murder.
Even when those men are Jews.
