Hamas, the media, and many nations are blaming President Trump decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem for inflaming Middle East passions and Israel for the scores of deaths along its border with Gaza this week, but a terrorism expert who grew up in the region says the embassy is just an excuse, radical groups are looking for any reason to paint Israel as the villain, and the media are perfectly willing to oblige.

For days, mainstream media outlets have shown side-by-side images of the ceremony opening the American embassy in Jerusalem and the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.  While critics of Trump and Israel suggest this loss of life was inevitable if the embassy was moved, Act for America President Brigitte Gabriel says there’s no real connection.

“Palestinians use any excuse to riot against Israel.  As a matter of fact, these riots have been building up for weeks to culminate today – in what is celebrated across the Islamic world as the ‘Day of Catastrophe,'” said Gabriel.

“So what is the catastrophe that they are celebrating, that they dedicate a day to remember every single year?  The establishment of the state of Israel.  This Palestinian rioting is about hatred.  It’s not about us moving our embassy or the occupied territories,” she added.

Gabriel, who is also the author of “They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It,” also pushed back on the widespread reporting that the Palestinian demonstrators were peaceful or “mostly peaceful.”

“It is not peaceful at all.  I have seen background footage of Hamas rallying up their people to come to the border.  They are showing up at the border with Molotov cocktails, even launching kites to help them set fire to the Israeli farms,” said Gabriel.

Among the dozens of Palestinians killed in the fighting was an eight-month-old baby, whose lifeless images have been broadcast around the world as evidence of Israeli repression.  Gabriel says there’s much more to the story.

“Why would a mother bring an eight-month-old child where Molotov cocktails are being launched?  Why are they doing that?  They’re doing it because Hamas is willing to sacrifice the lives of its own children in order to get worldwide publicity against Israel,” she said.

That sort of thing is rarely, if ever, reported in the mainstream media.  But why not?  Gabriel says it’s a combination of Arabs and Palestinians rewriting history and feeding the misinformation to reporters and scholars who are largely alumni of institutions with a strong bias against Israel.

“Our universities have been influencing young minds because of all the money from the Middle East pouring into Middle East study departments and political science departments and appointing Arab professors who are anti-Israel and anti-America to basically brainwash the students,” said Gabriel.

Gabriel also asserts that giving up land does not lead to peace for Israel.  Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israel from Gaza in 2005.  Subsequent elections places Hamas in charge.  Gabriel says the Palestinian people live in squalor while Hamas officials live in sprawling mansions on the Mediterranean coast and hire their family members to high-ranking positions at very generous salaries.  Much of the rest goes to purchasing weapons and training fighters.

In addition, Hamas destroyed the very lucrative flower and greenery industry deliberately left behind by Israel to provide an economic boost inside Gaza.

“They gave all that to the Palestinians.  A businessman in New York gave $14 million so the Palestinians could start immediately in Gaza with an industry.  Within 24 hours, Hamas in Gaza destroyed the greenhouses to the point they broke down the copper pipes and took them home.  This is self-destruction,” said Gabriel.

And she says as long as the hatred for Israel rages, there will be no change in the region.

“The Arabs and the Palestinians cannot tolerate Israel in the Middle East and that’s what’s driving the hatred.

“Until the Palestinians learn to love their children more than they hate the Jews, that’s when we’ll have peace in the Middle East,” said Gabriel.

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