Lack Of Wells Won’t Stop Plucky Palestinians From Accusing Israel Of Poisoning Wells

Or the media from reporting those claims at face value.

Khan al-Amar, March 7 – The absence of underground water sources in the vicinity of this makeshift settlement has not impeded the resilient Arab residents of the area in their efforts to demonize the Jewish State for using those water sources to kill them off or make them sick. A pliant international media has then, without critical examination, relayed those charges to the world.

Resourceful Palestinians angling for more ways to cast themselves as victims of Israeli nefariousness hit upon a new variation of an old formula this week, leveling accusations that Israel has injected toxic substances into aquifers underneath Palestinian villages, in particular the villages of the Judean Desert where no such aquifers are known to exist. NGOs and media impressed by such pluck and focused on infantilizing Palestinians have in turn conveyed and amplified such accusations in Arab, European and North American outlets, without noting the geological impossibility of the contention, except to dismiss such concerns with the phrase “Israel says.”

The bold accusations echo age-old tropes from the Middle Ages in Europe, where the mysterious nature of bubonic plague sparked rumors that Jews – suffering from the plague to the same degree as the surrounding population – had poisoned the wells, rumors that on numerous occasions led to massacres of Jews. Daring Palestinians and sympathetic activists from elsewhere cannot hope to spark massacres as a direct result of such claims, but they can lay further groundwork for “contextualization” and “explanation” but not necessarily outright “justification” for when Palestinians do attack and kill Jews.

“Our children are dying from the poisoned water,” proclaimed Tashhir Aldam, gesturing toward a fenced-off area, behind which a pickax lay next to a shallow hole. “The Zionists continue to commit heinous crimes.” Mr. Aldam developed a spontaneous hearing disorder when a nearby man asked to examine the children or get a closer look at the well.

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) spokesman Philippe Pétain beseeched the international community to protect the vulnerable but courageous Palestinians. “We and our allies in the NGO community have been bringing forth these reports for decades,” he lamented, “but so far there has been no serious action. I will not indulge in unbecoming antisemitic conspiracy theories as to why that may be; suffice it to say that powerful interests in the West, especially the United States, will not let a negative word be uttered about Israel.” When a reporter noted a constant stream of opinion pieces critical of Israel in the Washington Post, New York Times, Atlantic, Jewish Daily Forward, and others, Dr. Pétain displayed the same mysterious hearing symptoms as Mr. Aldam.

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