Palestinian Patterns

by Lee DeCovnick

Patterns derive from repetition and periodicity. Pattern matching finds the constituents of a pattern, whereas pattern recognition searches for underlying patterns that are similar but not an exact match. Let's take two recent news stories and see if we can identify the patterns involved.

First from Ynetnews, December 7, 2010 we read the following headline, "Palestinian protest disrupts fencing event in Spain."

The Junior Fencing World Cup in Burgos, Spain turned into a political arena this past weekend when 12 pro-Palestinian protestors stormed the bleachers during a match between Israel and Spain, shouting anti-Israeli slogans and wielding anti-Israel signs.

"It was very scary," said Israeli coach Yaakov Brusovnick, whose trainee Irina Levin was competing when the protest broke out. "They tried to destroy the competition and started to descend towards the area of the match.... I have been coaching in Israel for two years, and it's the first time that this has happened. The judge immediately stopped the match, and different coaches from different countries began to confront the protestors in an attempt to remove them from the hall."

Two days later, 17-year-old Levin still sounded distraught while trying to recap the event in a phone interview. "I was in the middle of the match in the first level when I heard someone shouting 'Israel, Israel,'" she told Ynet. "I asked myself, who came to cheer for me? Suddenly I turn my head and see a giant Palestinian flag, and people waving signs."

Levin added that the team has undergone safety training and was told to keep their distance, and yet the incident was unexpected. "There was a Star of David on my suit, and everything was directed at me and at Israel," she continued. "I immediately stopped the fight and the judge didn't know how to react. The Spanish rival's coach went up and tore their sign, and ran away because they wanted to attack him. I was shaking during the entire competition and everyone tried to calm me down."

Levin said that police officers secured the hall for the duration of the competition following the incident, but even with their presence she was still afraid. "I was looking around me all the time, I was very scared," she said. "You don't know if they will come back, or if they will come to my hotel. It really scared me. They had fire in their eyes."

We don't learn if the protesters are actually Palestinians, but Occam's razor will suffice in this instance.

The second story, also from Ynetnews (we all understand why our castrated MSM would never publish these items), November 14, 2010, we have the headline, "Israeli student attacked by Palestinians in Italy."

An Israeli student at the University of Genoa in Italy was harassed and threatened by Palestinian students last Tuesday, only to be ignored by the police.

Assaf, a 26-year-old Israeli architecture student, was eating at the cafeteria when Ibrahim Haji, a student from Gaza, came and began taunting him."He came towards me, punched me and said 'why are you looking at me?' I told him I wasn't looking at him, and asked him to let me eat in peace," Assaf said. "A minute later he was back, swinging a fork, and called me in front of everyone to come outside while cursing Israel and declaring his intention to kill.

I understood that I have to avoid this dangerous situation. I told my Italian friends, who were eating with me, that I'm going back to my room so as not to respond to this provocation. On my way out I turned to the cashier and told her, 'Call the police. You heard the man threatening to kill,' and she responded, 'It's not my job to separate Jews and Arabs.'"

Assaf's attempt to distance himself from the fight failed. Ibrahim waited for him outside and went for the attack. As Assaf tried to defend himself, Italian passersby stepped in to intervene and held him back. Ibrahim took the opportunity to draw a large kitchen knife. The Italian students tried to stop him.

"I saw death in front of my eyes. I broke free and ran into the storage in the kitchen and locked myself in. After a few minutes more Muslim students arrived and began shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is great) and 'Itbach el Yahud' (slaughter the Jews). Later I understood that there are over 40 angry students there. The Italians disappeared; they were scared to deal with them. I managed to get myself into the trash facility. I climbed a three-meter wall and jumped. I told myself it's better to break a leg than to get killed."

Assaf said that he went to the police but was ignored, until he turned to the community rabbi and additional Jewish families for assistance. "We filed an official complaint with the police, and they even informed the local investigation agency," said Chaim Amar, a 28-year-old medical student who serves as a security officer at the local synagogue. "Unfortunately, nothing came of it so far."

According to Amar, the police are familiar with Haji from previous violent incidents. It wasn't his first time threatening the life of an Israeli student, and he reportedly harasses female Israeli students regularly. "It's a matter of time before his next violent outburst," Amar said.

We can see numerous defined constituencies, as these stories are pattern matched. Unexpected and violent Palestinian aggression against weaker and unprepared Jewish targets seems to be the key match here. Teenagers and an architecture student seem to confirm that Palestinians deliberately choose not to confront even a single Israeli that could possibly fight back. Both incidents happened outside Israel and both times local citizens tried to give assistance and then were quickly driven from the scene, once the Palestinians threatened escalading violence. Another match demonstrates that Palestinians show a contemptuous disregard of all local laws, local customs and general civility while living in a foreign country. Local law enforcement seems to be either late or nonexistent in each case. Finally, we have a matching pattern of a raw, primitive Palestinian anger in each stor

Pattern recognition looks at the underlying themes we can observe and infer from the pattern matches. Two major themes emerge from this informational set.

This is a global war against Jews, by Palestinians. No one should doubt this sort of behavior would become an oft-repeated phenomenon in America, as American Jews are unfamiliar and unskilled in dealing with virulent "Old World" anti-Semitism.

Palestinian's have concluded that uncivil behavior in foreign counties will not only be tolerated, but expect no legal repercussions by local law enforcement. In America's coastal, liberal "blue states" this will especially hold true, in spite of the presence of large Jewish populations. Equally disturbing, the current Administration's strong pro-Palestinian political bias incompetently ignores the Palestinian's interrelated deep religious animosities against Jews and Israel.

So how does a civil society confine the virulent religious and political hatred of 2.2% of the population by an even smaller resident alien population? Currently, those institutions best able to deal with this issue have been co-opted by multiculturalism, political correctness and an astonishingly impotent national leadership. American may once again need to relearn the hard lessons of appeasement; that feigned indifference to hatred and violence always leads to an ever-increasing epidemic.

Lee DeCovnick

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.