"Deeply concerned about the civilian deaths and injuries that have occurred in the West Bank these past 48 hours, including that of minors. Praying for the families as they mourn the loss of loved ones, or tend to those injured."
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These are the words that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides chose to console the Israeli public with on Tuesday following the terror attack in the Israeli settlement of Eli, where four Israelis were killed.
But wait, who else was killed in the past 48 hours? Nides was not referring to additional Israeli victims but rather to Palestinians who, according to him, "only" threw stones at IDF forces during the clashes in Jenin the day before the attack.
This distorted perspective – comparing three Israelis whose only crime was to sit and eat hummus in Eli and another putting gas in his car, to terrorists who attempted and succeeded in harming Israeli troops – reveals the true face of the American administration and its fundamental attitude toward Israel.
The reason Jenin has lost control is the long-standing absence of an Israeli presence there. Remember the disengagement from the northern West Bank? There’s no military presence in a place where there aren’t any Israeli residents.
Those who believe that Israeli settlements are the obstacle to peace, and at the same time not only do not condemn the Palestinian takeover of Area C – which is supposed to be under Israeli control according to the Oslo Accords – but also fund them, see the world through a distorted lens.
This is the same government that claims that the U.S. is "deeply concerned" about the Israeli government's plan to promote the construction of about 4,000 new housing units in Israeli settlements.
Even the government's plan to reduce the bureaucratic hell that every Jewish construction plan beyond the Green Line undergoes was condemned by the Americans. "The United States opposes such unilateral actions,” it was stated, “that make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve and are an obstacle to peace.”
Is Palestinian takeover an obstacle to peace? Not according to the Americans. Is the hornet's nest in Jenin, created in the exact same way Hamas formed in Gaza following Israel’s disengagement, an obstacle to peace? Another no.
Only Israeli construction is an obstacle to peace. And that's the message trickling down from the U.S. administration: Plans aimed at excluding Jews aren’t racist or antisemitic. They’re the only safe path to peace.
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, between the two national movements fighting for this land, there’s one constant pattern: wherever Jews try to build a life, Arabs try to sow death.
That’s precisely why Israelis danced after the UN vote on November 29, 1947, which decided to divide Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, and the Arabs opened fire because of it.
The late Prime Minister Golda Meir defined it well: "If the Arabs put down their weapons, there will be no more war. If Israel puts down its weapons, it will cease to be."
The false presentation of equality between Palestinian casualties in the IDF’s operation in Jenin and Israeli casualties in a cruel terror attack indicates a deep lack of understanding of the conflict in Israel.
If this is the automatic response of the U.S. ambassador to Israel shortly after four Israelis were brutally murdered, it’s hard to imagine how much the U.S. government is truly immersed in the Israeli context of other, far more fate-determining issues, such as the Iranian nuclear program and the intended normalization with Saudi Arabia.