Neither wolves nor lone: Terrorist attacks we quickly classify as "lone wolf" incidents do not come out of a vacuum. The atmosphere that creates them – from which the shooters, stabbers, and car rammers draw inspiration for their solo actions – has for years seen expression in an ongoing festival of glorifying terrorism, jihad, and spilling the blood of Jews and Israelis. The incitement and the hatred don't belong to any one organization. They cross camps and factions. They are the common ground for nearly all the "lone wolf" attackers.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
This begs the question of whether the fact that for years, hundreds of "lone wolves" have been fed from the same organized, poisonous platform, makes them and the people who assist them a collective. Aren't they organized? And what do we do about the system of venom, poison, and hatred that is directed by the Palestinian Authority, other than talk about it?
For years, a seventh-grade PA textbook called "Our Beautiful Language" taught Palestinian children that "We will sow the land of Palestine with the skeletons and skulls [of shahids] and paint them in blood … They want to forbid me, but I say to them, shahid, shahid…." In the Palestinian media, Abd al-Baset Odeh, who murdered 31 people at the Passover eve bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya, and Dalal Mughrabi, who directed the coastal highway bus attack that killed 37, are heroes and role models. For years, PA muftis have been inventing blood libels and "crimes against Al-Aqsa and the Cave of the Patriarchs," parades of joy are held and sweets are handed out after terrorist attacks, and like in the days of Yasser Arafat, the crowds are once again roaring, "A million shahids are marching to Jerusalem."
And why isn't a newspaper, radio station, or TV station that incites treated the same as an illegal gun or ammunition clip? Are the agents of incitement not responsible for the acts of murder and the mass attacks, making it legitimate to operate against them like we operate against terrorist targets?
The Palestinian Authority has its own interests in helping us catch murderers and arrest hundreds of Hamas members, but doesn't take action to stop the cult of death and the glorification of martyrdom. It does not stop the explicit incitement to murder Jews. The PA gives money to terrorists' families and commemorates them. Psychologically, it raises terrorists from infancy, fosters them, and in certain cases helps us arrest them. This is a new version of the "revolving door" model, but instead of terrorists who go in and out of jail, this is a hothouse that raises them at a much faster pace.
The broad common denominator of the culture of bloodshed and incitement is rooted in hatred for anything Jewish and Israeli, disguised by demonizing and inciting against Israel as a Jewish state and rejecting the legitimacy of our existence here. The Palestinian Media Watch NGO has documented a play in which teens from the PA were divided into supporters of Hamas and supporters of Fatah. At a certain point, the actors threw down the flags of their rival groups, united under the PLO flag, and together shot at the "Israelis" who were facing them.
Something similar is happening now, but it's reality, not a play. Orit Perlov, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and an expert on social media and discourse in the Arab world, has identified a trend of "unifying forces and zones," both geographically (the Negev, east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and inside the Green Line) and organizationally (between the various terrorist groups), all under the direction by two branches of the same entity: Hamas abroad and Hamas in Gaza.
Hamas in Gaza, Perlov explained this week, is running two campaigns: the first, which it calls "Save the Negev," links the Negev to Jerusalem as two areas Israel wants to "Judaize." The second campaign is trying to recruit "Palestinians inside Israel" (Arab Israelis) to become shahids alongside their brothers from east Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
According to Perlov, since the start of these campaigns in January, long before the bloody week in which terrorist attacks killed 11 people, there have been 26 stabbing, shooting, and car ramming attacks. In March alone, seven of the nine terrorist attacks were carried out by Israeli citizens.
The hand that "rocks the cradle," creating the atmosphere and the "lone wolf attacks," is a coordinating committee that has been meeting in Beirut since Hamas started its campaigns. The committee is led by the head of Hamas abroad, Salah Arouri. Perlov has found that the committee meets twice a month. In March, it met three times. The host is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Participants include Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad under Ziad Nahala, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian. This is the forum that is now preparing the "popular war of resistance," which is supposed to look like what was happening here prior to Operation Guardian of the Walls, but with a few more suicide attackers.
In May 2017, Dr. Shaul Bartal found that the overwhelming majority of lone wolf attackers in the 2008-2015 terrorism wave were actually identified with Hamas, or came from families that identified with Hamas. While Hamas and the other terrorist organizations were not directly responsible for the initiative, planning, or implementation of the attacks, most of the terrorists had some links to the group. Of the 74 terrorists who carried out attacks in Jerusalem from October 2015 to May 2016 (the stabbing intifada), 61 had ties of one sort or another to Hamas.
Professor Gabi Weimann, a veteran researchers of online terrorism, said at the time that there was no such thing as a "lone wolf": "The lone terrorists are part of a virtual pack. Tracking them online indicates that they feed off similar sources."
What is happening now is not significantly different. The wolves aren't "lone," they are part of a pack – a mental pack, but a pack nevertheless. They make decisions and carry them out on their own, but all drink from the same poisoned well, which allows everything in the name of Islam and/or Palestinian nationalism: incitement, lying, libel, and murder. The Palestinian street is drunk, and not off wine – but off the wild incitement that creates terrorists. Hamas has just illustrated this in a recent media spot that featured a picture of seven switches. Each time a terrorist attack takes place, one switch is turned off. Three already have. Therefore, four have yet to take place, it would appear.
Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, as in the past, are supposed to be the glue that brings all the areas and all the organizations together. We've already been there. If we don't start exacting a heavy price from the environment that embraces and admires and encourages terrorism, if we keep talking about attacks that result from the atmosphere and don't take action against those who crate them, we'll find ourselves there again.
The latest attacks provide an opportunity to take action not only against the perpetrators, but also against those who broker the murderous ideology. They should be imprisoned, their property confiscated, and if necessary, deported, even though they operate strictly on the psychological level.
