Following a period of relative calm over the last few months, eight attacks in five days last week shattered the illusion that the terror wave that began a year ago might finally be over.

Seven stabbings and a car ramming injured six Israelis in Jerusalem, Gush Etzion and Hebron, while eight terrorists, one of whom was Jordanian, were killed in the course of perpetrating attacks.

Telling a group of Palestinian students and graduates on September 18 in Venezuela that the PA does not incite violence against Israelis, PA President Mahmoud Abbas effectively acknowledged the stabbings had taken place, saying that every day there are “martyrs and youth” picking up knives to attack “on their own accord” because “they have lost hope”.

Despite this admission and the obvious facts on the ground, however, the official Palestinian Authority (PA) news agency WAFA announced on September 19 that Israel is carrying out “summary executions and daily killings of unarmed Palestinians” and claimed several had been “executed… on pretexts and empty excuses”.

PA Minister of Justice Ali Abu Diyak echoed this claim, saying “the occupation is using the excuse that they tried to stab or throw rocks at the occupation soldiers, and other baseless excuses.”

On September 16, Official PA Television News charged that the Jordanian terrorist who tried to stab policemen at the Damascus gate in the Old City of Jerusalem that day, Saeed Hail Alamro, was executed “under the pretext” of attempting to carry out a stabbing. The PA television program Good Morning Jerusalem claimed the next day that he was deliberately targeted by Israeli forces as means of deterring other Arabs from visiting and “defending” Jerusalem.

A video released by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs clearly shows Alamro lunging with a knife, while two additional knives were found in his possession after he was shot.

Perhaps WAFA, Abu Diyak and PA Television should have coordinated their versions of events with Abbas – no friend of Israel – who basically admitted that such claims are lies.

Sadly, this phenomenon of PA official sources insisting Palestinian terrorist attackers are completely innocent victims is not new either. As these previous AIJAC posts by Or Avi-Guy from December 1, 2015, November 2, 2015 and October 20, 2015 show, turning perpetrators into victims has been a common Palestinian tactic, and one with grave consequences. Often Palestinian claims are repeated without scrutiny in the international media, the result being Israel is demonised for merely trying to protect its citizens from Palestinians with stabbing weapons – even though, as AIJAC’s Tzvi Fleischer has shown: “When violent extremists carry out an attack with a stabbing weapon… intent on achieving ‘martyrdom’ in the process – police around the world have little choice but to shoot them. This is the case in Germany, in France, in the US, in Britain and Australia.”

Even more alarmingly, the all-too-real consequence of these continual mistruths is that more Palestinians, already exposed to a constant stream of antisemitic and anti-Israel incitement, will believe the lies and be motivated to perpetrate attacks themselves – hence continuing the vicious cycle.

For the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians, the lies need to stop.

Gareth Narunsky