By Barry Shaw
(MARCH 6, 2023 / ARUTZ SHEVA) Some facts you need to know about the murder of Israeli Jews, Palestinian Arab terrorism and Huwara, because they seem to have escaped the attention of your Western media and the Biden administration who just met their Palestinian Arab counterparts in Aqaba, Jordan, and arranged to give them more guns while they castigate Israel for responding to increasingly deadly Palestinian Arab violence morally supported by the current Democrat administration.
- Palestinian Arab terrorists in the northern Samaria terror hub of Huwara murdered two brothers, Hillel and Yagel Yaniv. The Yaniv brothers were executed in a rain of bullets after the terrorists had rammed their vehicle into them before gunning them down as they sat trapped in their car.
- The attack was predictable. In the month leading up to their murder, Palestinian Arabs carried out an average of two-three rock and Molotov cocktail attacks a day against Israeli cars in Huwara and on the Gilad route leading through the village.
- Following the murder of the Jewish brothers, Huwara residents celebrated by handing out sweets. They also held an official firework celebration.
- Among the main celebrants was the owner of a car and spare parts lot named Ayed Maharab. Maharab is a paroled terrorist who spent five years in Israeli prison. His Facebook page is filled with celebrations of terrorist attacks and of himself holding an AK-47. Maharab published a post following the Yaniv brothers’ murders celebrating the attack.
- Following the murder of their friends and neighbors, and after seeing the Arab celebration of their murder, a number of young Israelis from surrounding villages entered Huwara and committed acts of vigilante violence. Among other things, they burned Maharab’s car lot. The scenes you saw of burning vehicles was Maharab’s spare parts lot. No building and no individual Arab was attacked or hurt by the aggrieved and angry friends of Hillel and Yagel.
- Days following the killing of the two Jewish boys and the arson protest of their close friends, Hadi Amr, the U.S. Ambassador to the Palestinian Authority, visited Huwara.
He didn’t visit the site of the terror attack against the Yaniv brothers.
He didn’t pay his respects to the Yaniv family.
He didn’t even condemn their murder.
Instead, the U.S. Embassy’s Palestinian Affairs Department’s Twitter page reported that Amr “visited with the [Palestinian] victims of Sunday’s Huwara attack. He expressed his deepest condolences and condemned the unacceptable widescale, indiscriminate violence by setters.”
Amr had his picture taken at Maharab’s burned-down car lot.
Bias? You’d better believe it! The Biden Administration and its State Department have turned against Israel and show public sympathy with the terror-inciting and rewarding Palestinian Authority.
Those are the facts not explained to you by the Western media.
Barry Shawis Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy, at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
This op-ed was originally published in Arutz Sheva and can be viewed here.