Jerusalem – PM Netanyahu: Israel Condemns Terror, Palestinian Authority Praises It

Jerusalem – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the opening of Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting to again condemn acts of Jewish terrorism, but stressed that just as the scope of Jewish terrorism can in no way be compared to the much greater Palestinian terrorism, so too the reaction of Israeli society is completely different than that of the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu noted that in Israel there was widespread condemnation of the phenomenon of jewish terror by the government, various institutions and leaders. “Here we condemn it, there they [the PA] praise it [terror],”| he said.

“In the PA they name squares and streets after them [the terrorists], and pay them salaries,” he said. “There is a huge difference between the healthy approach of Israeli society and Israeli democracy that rejects terrorism, condemns it and acts against it, and the PA that unfortunately encourages it and incites towards it.”

Netanyahu said that he brought the video of Jewish extremists dancing at a recent wedding in Jerusalem with guns and knives, while glorifying the murder of the Dawabshe family, to a recent cabinet meeting to make clear that the group in the video was both extreme and on the fringes.

Those in the video, he said, “certainly do not represent religious Zionism.” Attempts to identify religions Zionism with that phenomenon, he added, “does a real injustice to a large public that is faithful to the state, contributes to the state, to the IDF and the most elite units in the IDF.”

Netanyahu once again also praised the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which has come under criticism from the right for its methods of interrogation against Jewish terror suspects. He said the Shin Bet is acting under the rule of law, under judicial supervision, and in complete concert with the government’s policy “to fight terror wherever it is.”

“We are not willing to accept terror or murder from any side,” he said.