Official Palestinian Authority (PA) publications are repeatedly blaming Israel for the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris earlier this month, Palestinian Media Watch reports Sunday.
The daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida has featured multiple attacks on Israel for the shooting rampage, which sent shockwaves through the West after Al-Qaeda terrorists Said and Cherif Kouachi shot and killed 12 members of the satirical news magazine for publishing cartoons against Muslim prophet Mohammed. Later, Islamist gunman Amedy Coulibali held French Jews hostage in the Hypercasher kosher grocery store in the capital, killing 4 people.
The following are selected excerpts of the conspiracy theories against Israel for the attacks, as translated by PMW.
Op-ed columnists at the daily, likewise, accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Mossad of planning the attacks solely to encourage French Jews to immigrate to Israel.
In similar moves, journalist Akram Atallah of the official PA television program Panorama of the Hour also accused Israel of planning terror attacks – this time, for decades:
In the past, the Israeli Mossad (i.e., the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service) carried out operations (i.e., terror attacks): It bombed synagogues in order to force the Jews to emigrate. [. . .] The operation (i.e., the terror attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo) served Israel’s demographic [interests], for the Israeli media and government bodies predicted yesterday that 10,000 French Jews would immigrate to Israel… Now, when we are talking about the immigration of 10,000 French Jews next year, while last year, [only] 3,000 French Jews immigrated to Israel, in my opinion… when the number rises to 10,000, this is a very large number and this is what Israel wants. The number is not [meant to include] French Jews only…
Palestinian Arabs overwhelmingly believe the propaganda, PMW notes, and a Ma’an poll published last week states that 84.4% of respondents believed Israel is behind the “suspicious” attacks. Just 8.7% of respondents attributed the rampages to Islamism running rampant in Europe.