Sparks were flying on the U.S. radio airwaves Sunday night.
What began as a routine interview quickly devolved into a heated exchange when a Palestinian Fatah official accused American talk-show host Aaron Klein of “incitement.”
Klein fired back that such an allegation was “interesting” coming from a Fatah official, since members of the Palestinian Fatah party routinely incite violence against Israel.
Dmitri Diliani, a spokesman for Fatah in Jerusalem and a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, reacted when Klein said recent violence in Jerusalem was instigated by the Palestinians.
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“Your show is an inciting one,” Diliani exclaimed. “Your focus on one side that is related to the settler ideology is inciting.”
The Fatah official blamed the Jerusalem violence on a “trigger happy, bloodthirsty government” led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Diliani described the recent spate of Palestinian attacks in Jerusalem as an “outbreak that comes out of personal pressure and due to a lot of pressures that Jerusalemites have as a result of the occupation and its policies that deprives them of their national rights and rights related to their everyday life.”
Fatah is the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The exchange took place on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s AM 970 The Answer. Klein is based in Tel Aviv.
Klein read to Diliani recent comments made by Fatah officials that seem to support violent attacks against Israelis.
In one example, Klein said Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein used his Facebook page to encourage Jerusalem violence by praising the terrorist murderers who carried out recent deadly attacks against Jews as “heroic martyrs.”
Einein also mentioned by name the terrorist who attempted to murder Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick earlier this month, as documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
Diliani countered: “If you consider people expressing their anger over the injustice they live under the foreign rule of Israel in occupied east Jerusalem, if you want to call that incitement you can call it incitement.”
Klein went on to ask Diliani to explain why Abbas said Jews cannot live in a future Palestinian state.
The radio host asked the Fatah official to name one Arab country in the world where citizens have more democratic rights than Israeli Arabs living in Israel.
Listen to the heated interview here:
Arabs have been engaged in violent riots for weeks in East Jerusalem, routinely lobbing stones and Molotov cocktails at Jewish civilians and Israeli security forces.
Numerous terrorist attacks have targeted Jews in Jerusalem and beyond, including stabbings and a terrorist who used a vehicle to plow through a crowd of Israelis at an East Jerusalem light rail station, killing a 3-month-old baby, an adult tourist and injuring seven other people.
Over the past few weeks, Arabs have engaged in a systemic campaign of rock-throwing at Jerusalem’s light-rail system, attacking train cars as they pass through East Jerusalem neighborhoods.
The attacks are so frequent that Jerusalem officials announced last month nearly half the cars used in the Jerusalem light-rail system are out of service and in need of repair.