by: Shaya Lerner
July 11, 2016
Graffiti recently on view in East Jerusalem, including on Salah El-Din street (the area’s main business district), highlights the incitement to violence seeping into the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in that area. It serves as a reminder of the fragility of the relative calm Jerusalem has enjoyed in recent weeks, having previously been a focal point in the wave of Palestinian terror which began in September of 2015, often referred to as the “Knives Intifada” because of the frequent stabbing attacks. Examples of this hateful graffiti include an image of a hand holding a knife with the Arabic captions “stab” and “The Jerusalem Intifada,” and an icon of a Palestinian hurling a Molotov cocktail with the caption “resist.”
Other examples include a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza with the caption “From the river to the sea”, suggesting that the Palestinian state should stretch from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, thereby eliminating the State of Israel. Also spray painted are slogans calling for additional acts of Palestinian terror, with graffiti reading “The armed struggle till the liberation/long live the Intifada” and “The Intifada continues till the liberation of the land and the people.”
