The recent attacks in Israel demonstrate the consequences of using lies as political instruments, inciting terrorism and generating violence. Last Friday, two sisters, Rina (15) and Maia (20), were murdered when Palestinian terrorists sprayed the family's car with bullets. That evening, a car-ramming attack at Tel Aviv's beachfront promenade killed Alessandro Parini, a 35-year-old lawyer from Rome, and injured seven pedestrians, all tourists from Italy and the United Kingdom.
Clearly, incitement by Hamas and other Palestinian sources can have consequences way beyond the tragic loss of these innocent lives. Nowhere is the phenomenon more apparent than in Jerusalem, specifically in connection to the Temple Mount, the holy site upon which the ancient Jewish Temples were located, and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque later built.
For over a century, baseless allegations about the Temple Mount have been used as a pretext to spark anti-Jewish violence. Already in the 1920s, the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini's lie that al-Aqsa Mosque was in danger ignited a series of Arab riots that led to hundreds of deaths. Ever since, Palestinian leaders and religious figures have fabricated threats to the Mosque to incite terrorism against Jews, inspire uprisings, trigger armed hostilities, and realise political goals.
This behavioural pattern has once again reared its ugly head. On April 4, the night before the start of the Jewish festival of Passover, Hamas activists and supporters barricaded themselves inside al-Aqsa Mosque. Armed with fireworks and blunt instruments such as heavy rocks, they forced the Israeli police to react in order to preempt attacks on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall below, and to allow peaceful Muslim worshippers to pray in the mosque.
Using the excuse that al-Aqsa was in danger, Hamas then expanded its offensive to additional fronts. Thirty-four rockets were launched from Lebanon at Israeli civilian communities in the Western Galilee. Then, after Israel's measured response on Hamas military facilities, rockets from Gaza were fired at Israeli civilians living near the southern border and the frequency of fatal terrorist attacks increased.
In the many rounds of violence, since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas' indiscriminate barrages of missiles and mortars hit and killed not only Israelis but also other nationals including Thai workers. The latest incident was on May 18, 2021 when two Thai workers were killed and eight others injured.
These attacks, carried out by Iranian proxy organisations, are part of the larger threat posed by Iran's extremism to the international community, and Thailand is no stranger to such attacks. In 1994, two Iranians were arrested for killing a Thai citizen in a truck-bomb attempt, close to the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok, and in 2012, five Iranians were charged for three failed bombings in the Sukhumvit area in an alleged attempt to assassinate the Israeli ambassador.
Recent years have seen another component of al-Aqsa-related incitement aimed at terminating visits by Jews to their holiest site, the Temple Mount. Jewish visitors are portrayed as "storming" and "defiling" the Mount and Palestinian youth are indoctrinated into believing it is their religious duty to defend al-Aqsa against invented Israeli aggression.
In fact, visits by Jews to the Islamic Waqf-administrated site, are conducted in a respectful manner and in line with the limitations imposed on all non-Muslims. Jewish worshippers can only visit at fixed times and they do not enter al-Aqsa Mosque. Jews are not permitted to openly pray at Judaism's most sacred site. This respect for Muslim beliefs is consistent with the Jewish state's commitment to safeguarding the sacred sites of every faith and upholding freedom to worship, a commitment enshrined in Israel's declaration of independence.
Statistics comparing the two populations are unequivocal. Last year, 1,250,000 Muslims entered the Temple Mount to worship during the month-long observance of Ramadan. In contrast, the number of Jewish visitors during the whole of 2022 was fewer than the number of Muslim worshippers during a single Ramadan Friday.
It is evident that the ongoing rioting cannot be attributed to a supposed offence to Muslim sensibilities, as Hamas and anti-Israel advocates claim. Rather, it mirrors the pattern of past incidents, with Hamas intentionally orchestrating violent provocations during Ramadan to exploit the heightened sensitivity of the situation.
Israel wants nothing more than for calm to be maintained for the benefit of all those who wish to live and pray in peace. Nevertheless, as long as Israel is unfairly condemned and terrorists rewarded, we are doomed to see the violence escalate now and recur in the future whenever it suits Hamas' evil agenda.
Orna Sagiv is the Ambassador of Israel to Thailand.
