On Sunday, Ari Fuld, a forty-five-year-old dual Israeli-American citizen, was stabbed to death by a Palestinian. Bassam Tawil argues that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, provoked the attack with his most recent speech accusing Jews of trying to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque:

In a speech before the PLO executive committee in Ramallah on September 15, Abbas repeated the old libel that Israel is planning to establish special Jewish prayer zones inside the al-Aqsa mosque. . . . Abbas’s allegation was quickly picked up by several media outlets in the Arab world, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The headlines that appeared on websites affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad . . . claimed that Israel was planning to permit Jews to pray inside the al-Aqsa mosque.

Needless to say, there is no Israeli plan to allow Jews to pray inside the mosque. However, in the past few years, Jews, like all other non-Muslims, have been allowed to resume their perfectly legal visits to the Temple Mount. Thousands of Jews have toured the holy site under police protection, despite provocations and violent attacks by Muslims. It is worth noting that any kind of prayer or “religious displays” by Jews or Christians anywhere on the Temple Mount are completely forbidden by the Israeli police.

Why is Abbas’s false accusation significant and dangerous? Hours after reports were published of Abbas’s allegation, a seventeen-year-old Palestinian from the town of Yatta in the southern West Bank fatally stabbed Ari Fuld. . . . According to Palestinian terrorist groups, the terrorist, Khalil Jabarin, decided to murder a Jew in response to Israeli “crimes” against the al-Aqsa mosque in particular and Islamic holy sites in general.

In other words, the terrorist was influenced by Abbas’s incitement, and this is why he decided to set out on his deadly mission. There is no doubt that the terrorist saw the reports quoting Abbas’s claim that Israel was planning to allow Jews to pray inside the al-Aqsa mosque. . . .

Abbas’s false claim was not the first libel of its kind. . . . It was Abbas who sparked the 2015 “knife intifada” with his accusation that Jews “with their filthy feet were defiling the al-Aqsa mosque.”

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.