Reports in the Palestinian media about Israel’s scheming and plotting in Jerusalem give the idea that every Israeli, young and old, settler and leftist, is busy conspiring to blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque and wipe out all the Arabs in the city. On the other side, the Israeli media sends the message that every Palestinian driver is a potential vehicular terrorist until proven otherwise. Rumors become headlines and unconfirmed suspicions are translated into “facts.” All is fair in the propaganda war, the race for victimization and the incitement contest.

The Palestinian media coverage of the Nov. 18 terrorist attack at the synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood has provided more fuel for the fire that threatens to burn every corner of Jerusalem and spread throughout the region.

In his Nov. 18 piece for Al-Monitor, Ahmad Melhem relied on a report published in Quds News, according to which "an act was carried out in one of the synagogues in western Jerusalem, which caused the killing of four settlers and the deaths of two Palestinian martyrs. This, after settlers killed a Palestinian man they kidnapped in East Jerusalem on the previous day. This was retribution which all the Palestinian factions blessed and described as a natural reaction to the Israeli provocations against the holy places and against the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem.” The terminology is worth noting: “An act was carried out” and not “a terror attack,” “killing” and not “murder,” as though the events in question were a traffic accident. The residents of a western Jerusalem neighborhood are termed “settlers.”

There you have it, the settlers would say to the Israeli leftists: In the eyes of your partners, you, too, denizens of West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, are settlers. The cat is out of the bag, we are all interlopers in their view. Jews are not part and parcel of this land.