31-Mar-11: Uncovering a southern Lebanese empire of destruction and death

Yesterday, the Washington Post published a report, including detailed maps (original online here), of what Israeli intelligence officials describe as "roughly 1,000 underground bunkers and hidden weapons storage facilities and monitoring sites built by Hezbollah in south Lebanon". The Post's article refers to Hezbollah having set up some 550 bunkers, 300 monitoring sites and 100 weapons storage facilities.  The terrorists managed to fire off some 4,000 rockets into northern Israel during the most recent war launched by them in 2006. The concern here in Israel is that Hezbollah has a far larger stockpile today and that it is even more firmly embedded in the villages of South Lebanon.

27-Mar-11: The more things change...

The French have a saying that the more things seem to have changed, the more they actually remain the same. We have a sense that this is the case in and around Gaza where the Hamas terrorist regime raised the stakes higher and higher by firing missiles into Israel and then complained about Israel hitting back. When it happened in 2009, the Qatar-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera interviewed an Arabic-speaking IDF serviceman from the Spokesperson's Bureau who, in our view, spoke plainly and effectively, saying things that we wish were better understood by the other side. We have just watched it again, this time with English sub-titles, and it seems to be painfully relevant to the situation unfolding in the south of Israel today. See if you agree.

26-Mar-11: Missiles from Gaza keep reminding us that this is war

Three more Qassam rockets were fired into Israel from the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip today, the Jewish Sabbath.

Two exploded in the Eshkol region overnight (the night between Friday night and Saturday morning), causing severe damage to one civilian residence and moderate damage to another. JPost says that in the badly damaged home, none of the family members sleeping inside was harmed. The attack came as their eldest son and his partner came to visit for a family celebration.

There are no reports of injuries to people, but this of course was not the desire or intention of the Palestinian Arab terrorists of Gaza. Their aim is broad-ranging and definite: any Jew, any Jewish property.

On Saturday, a third Qassam landed in an open area in the same Eshkol region, again with no injuries and this time with no property damage.

25-Mar-11: The carnival moves on, the victims remain

We know from personal experience how shattering is the experience of having terrorism rip into your life. The attention of outsiders - the media, perhaps; friends and neighbours; government officials and public figures - is there and then gone, sometimes in a flash. It's the nature of our fast-moving societies.

Wednesday's bus stop bombing is over. The photographers, the wreath layers, the visiting politicians - they have moved on. The summing up has been summed: one dead, thirty-something injured in an explosion for which no one has taken credit though many have praised ("In Gaza, Islamic Jihad’s military wing said it welcomed the bombing"). The politicians have "condemned in the strongest terms" and the next item on their agenda instantly moved up the list.

Thanks to the writer Naomi Ragen, we also have a list (which we have edited down).It's a list of the names of the victims who have not yet moved on and it's below.

The laconic term 'injured' does not begin to convey what has been done to them and the circle of concerned and loving friends and family around them. As a word, victim does little to explain to news consumers far away how the rippling wave of shock, fear, pain, impacts on lives far more numerous than those of the names we list. This, precisely, is what terrorists - wherever they operate - want to achieve. They have no strategic goal beyond terror. There are no innocent victims or victims caught in the crossfire or in the wrong place at the wrong time. The victims are always the target. The target is always innocent people. This is why terrorism must be stopped by every possible means. Everything is at stake for all of us. Not recognizing this is exactly why we (not just Jerusalemites or Israelis) all pay an ever growing price for terror's continued impact.

Wednesday's Jerusalem victims who are still in hospital (their Hebrew names are at this helpful location if you care to include them in your prayers):

• Adi: 18 years old and about to complete high school.  She suffered light orthopedic injuries and is in good condition in hospital.
• Daniel: 13 years old withlacerations and shrapnel injuries to his lower extremities; likely to be released from the hospital before Shabbat.
• David: owner of the snack stand next to the bus stop. Israel Television replayed a chilling phone call he made to the emergency hotline of the police notifying them of a suspicious suitcase left lying on the ground next to his booth, and calling on everyone in the vicinity to run away. As we all later heard in the replay, that case exploded in the middle of his call. He suffered injuries to his legs and feet and lower body and is in moderate condition.
• Elchanan: 14 years old, with serious injuries to his feet.  One ankle and three of his toes were crushed.  He has had one operation and will require more surgery; likely be in the hospital at least 2-3 weeks.
• Leah Bracha, a 19-year-old seminary student, suffered burns to her legs and arms as well as serious shock.
• Natan Daniel, a 17-year-old student in serious condition, suffered massive internal injuries and has had a number of internal organs removed.
• Netanel: 18 years old, a security guard at the bus station, was injured in the abdomen and is now recuperating in hospital after surgery.
• Odelia: suffered serious head injuries and is in intensive care.  Her life is still in danger.
• Sasson - the second time he has been injured in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem.  He suffered lower body injuries and serious post-traumatic symptoms.  His wife Nechama is pregnant with their fifth child and suffering from panic and fear. 
• Shilo: 15 years old, suffered burns and fractures to his legs and lower abdomen.  He is sedated in intensive care.
• Shaindel: A seminary (post high school) girl learning in Israel for the year was operated on last night. 

None of these people has been named or described in the mainstream media as far as we know. It's generally that way after terror attacks. The published statistics (one dead, X injured) don't begin to give a sense of what has happened to their lives, and the attention has already gone to somewhere else.

But unless we grasp the devastation that the terrorists set out to sow, we are going to be asking ourselves for a long time to come "How did we ever allow this to keep happening?"

24-Mar-11: Sderot again under rocket fire

The heroic rocket men of Gaza are having a busy day. In the past few minutes, it's reported by Ynet that one of their civilian-seeking Qassams exploded in Sderot. Fortunately, there are no reports of damage or casualties which must be a blow to the thuggish jihadists. We have a feeling they will keep trying.

24-Mar-11: Those Gazan rockets are reaching deeper and deeper into the heartland

The terrorists in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip dispatched two more long-range Grad rockets into this afternoon (Thursday). Haaretz says one landed south of the coastal city of Ashdod, and the other just north it. JPost says the second one landed a little south of Rishon Leziyon, a Tel Aviv suburb, and from personal contacts living in the area we have heard that it crashed into the sand dunes on the Bat Yam beach. Eight jihadist rockets have been fired into Israel so far today.

24-Mar-11: And still more rockets fired into Israel

Ynet says yet another Qassam rocket was fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip around noon today, half an hour ago. It exploded without causing harm in an open area in the Shaar HaNegev region - the third such Qassam rocket firing into Israel from Gaza since last night.

24-Mar-11: British parliamentarian, speaking plainly, hits nail squarely on BBC's head

An item in the Honest Reporting website praises British MP Louise Bagshawe "for taking the BBC to task for its coverage or rather, lack of coverage of the brutal murders of the Fogel family in Itamar."

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she describes finding out about the attack via Twitter:

Horrified, I went to the BBC website to find out more. There I discovered only two stories: one a cursory description of the incident in Itamar, a West Bank settlement, and another focusing on Israel’s decision to build more settlements, which mentioned the killings in passing. As the mother of three children, one the same age as little Elad, who had lain bleeding to death, I was stunned at the BBC’s seeming lack of care. All the most heart-wrenching details were omitted. The second story, suggesting that the construction announcement was an act of antagonism following the massacre, also omitted key facts and failed to mention the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the statement by a Hamas spokesman that “five dead Israelis is not enough to punish anybody”. There were more details elsewhere on the net: the pain and hurt, for example, of the British Jewish community at the BBC’s apparent indifference to the fate of the Fogels. The more I read, the more the BBC’s broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby’s head? Might we have heard about it then? ... I considered filing a complaint.

The full (short) piece is here. And the incisive and plain-spoken MP's website is here.

Clearly you don't need to be a parliamentarian or British or even a mother of young children to recognize when a global, fabulously well-endowed media colossus (the BBC had an annual operating expenditure of £4.26 billion in 2009/10 according to the BBC's Annual Report and Accounts 2009/20010), along with its editors, reporters, headline writers and managers, has lost its moral compass.

24-Mar-11: Rockets fired into Israel yet again

Ynet is reporting this morning (9:00am Israel time) that a Qassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in an open area south of Ashkelon. There are no reports of injury or damage, but this outcome is not what the terrorists want. Today's Qassam comes after five mortar shells (possibly more) were fired into southern Israel yesterday from the northern Gaza Strip. Ynet says army sappers who examined the shells said some of them contained phosphorus, prohibited under the Geneva Convention for use as a weapon. Haaretz says yesterday's barrage included a Qassam. Fortunately again, no injuries or damages were reported in Wednesday's attacks - a tactical failure for the hatred-driven jihadists who are entirely focused on civilian targets.

23-Mar-11: We know these horrors only too well

Jerusalem's central bus station (in the background) this afternoon 

An Egged bus of the number 74 line exploded at about 3 this afternoon near the Jerusalem's central bus station and just outside the Jerusalem Conference Center (Binyanei Ha'uma) at the entrance to the city.

The New York Times report helpfully attributes the carnage to "what Israeli officials called a terrorist attack". Thank heavens we have the world's most authoritative newspaper to point out to us how easily people can get mixed up about things like this; the explosion was terror according to "Israeli officials", but less excitable observers might say it could just as easily have been some Thai worker chasing an unpaid debt.

JPost says one woman, aged 59, died and 39 people were injured. Of these, three were injured seriously by the force of the explosion itself; four are moderately hurt from the effects of shrapnel sadistically packed into the explosive device by the heroes who planted  it; and the remainder are in moderate to light condition. Witnesses are said to be able to identify the man who left the bomb-filled bag next to the bus stop and police are searching for him. (There was a similar bombing in Jerusalem's southern neighbourhood of Gilo two weeks ago that ripped the hand off a municipal worker, and now there is a suspicion that the bombings share a common perpetrator.) May they find him quickly.

Thursday UPDATE: It appears the murdered woman was a British national. No names released yet. AFP says a British tourist.

Friday UPDATE: This British source says the woman killed in the Binyanei Hauma bus stop bomb blast on Wednesday was a British Bible translator, Mary Jean Gardner, 59, from Orkney in Scotland, who was studying at the Hebrew University. This Scottish newspaper says she was "employed by the Wycliffe Society, which works to provide translations of the Bible to the estimated 340 million people who can’t read it in their own language".

28-Mar-11 UPDATE: The article above is now translated into the French language and appears on the website of Le Mouvement pour la Paix et Contre le Terrorisme.

23-Mar-11: Heating up

Things are unfortunately warming up once more in this ongoing war.

Yesterday (Tuesday) two rockets fired from Gaza crashed to earth a little south of Ashdod, Israel's fifth-largest city and main port. The IDF spokesperson's office says Ashdod has been free of Gazan rockets attacks since the end of Operation Cast Lead more than two years ago. As far as has been reported till now, no injuries, no serious damage, just miracles. The IDF reports that during last night, Israeli Air Force aircraft targeted and killed a terrorist in the act of firing a Grad rocket from the northern Gaza Strip toward Ashdod.

Then around dawn this morning (Wednesday), a full-scale Grad rocket fired by the terrorists of the Gaza Strip exploded in a Beersheba residential neighbourhood. Ynet says several people are injured, and there is property damage. Credit, in the grotesque sense that terrorists use that word, was claimed by Islamic Jihad whose statement described the attack on sleeping Israelis as "an initial reaction to the Zionist crimes against our people in Gaza."

About four hours later, a second Grad rocket crashed into open space near the southern city (population: about 200,000). In addition, several mortar shells exploded in the Eshkol region this morning, contributing to the growing sense among Israelis that, once again, the terrorists want to raise the stakes. And once again, as with terrorism everywhere, the innocent on both sides of the barrier are the prime victims.

22-Mar-11: What is it about Venezuela?

When the UN sat, on November 27, 1947, to consider its views about the creation of a Jewish and an Arab state to take the place of the expiring British mandate in Palestine, Venezuela voted in favor of the creation of Israel. It soon established diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. And when General Assembly Resolution 3379 was passed at the UN on November 10, 1975 determining Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination, Venezuela abstained.

Then Hugo Chávez became president, and a torrent of slurs and accusations against Israel ensued. It continues till today. This began with the Venezuelan leader calling Israel a Nazi state "only worse" and declaring Israel guilty of "Adolf Hitler-style, unjustified aggression" for striking back at Hezbollah forces in Lebanon who were shelling northern Israel.

An op ed by Roger Noriega ("Is there a Chavez terror network on America’s doorstep?") in Sunday's Washington Post reveals how Venezuela, deeply engaged in a strategic alliance with the Ayatollahs of Iran, has moved way beyond mere insulting language.

On Aug. 22, 2010, at Iran’s suggestion, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hosted senior leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in a secret summit at military intelligence headquarters at the Fuerte Tiuna compound in southern Caracas. Among those present were Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary General Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, who is on the FBI’s list of most-wanted terrorists; Hamas’s “supreme leader,” Khaled Meshal; and Hezbollah’s “chief of operations,” whose identity is a closely guarded secret. The idea for this summit sprang from a meeting between Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Ahmad Mousavi, and his Venezuelan counterpart, Imad Saab Saab, at the Venezuelan embassy in Damascus on May 10, 2010. According to the report received by Venezuela’s foreign minister, the two envoys were discussing a meeting between their presidents and Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, when the Iranian suggested that the three meet Chavez in Caracas. That these infamous criminals left their traditional havens demonstrates their confidence in Chavez and their determination to cultivate a terror network on America’s doorstep. 

Chávez is closely aligned as well with Libya's beleaguered Colonel Qaddafi. The two have visited each other several times and bestowed national honors upon one another. The Venezuelan presented a replica of independence hero Simon Bolivar’s sword to Qaddafi during a 2009 visit to Caracas.

If only the problems with Venezuela's terrorist leanings were about sword replicas.

21-Mar-11: Why Palestinian Arab condemnations of babies being murdered in their beds are a fraud

Since experiencing the loss by murder of our fifteen year old daughter, we have come to understand that, for many people, terrorism remains truly incomprehensible. People often speak of looking for root causes, but it’s clear that few will trouble themselves to examine the context in which such acts happen.

This has consequences for how we fight the terrorists. We have a very strong sense that unless society at large faces up to this issue of context, ineffective decisions will continue to be taken. And the terrorists are going to keep winning.

When five members of a Jewish family living in the small community of Itamar were stabbed to death in their beds last Sabbath, the condemnations from officials in the local Palestinian Arab government bodies were predictably formulaic. They said they condemned the brutal murders. 

Did they mean it? We can know by looking at what those officials said and say when they speak to their own citizens.

One day before the massacre in Itamar ten days ago, Palestinian Authority television which is the mouthpiece of the Mahmoud Abbas regime broadcast a program in honour of one of its former employees. As Palestinian Media Watch documents, a PA TV film crew is shown interviewing the relatives of a woman called Ahlam Tamimi. She lives in an Israeli prison serving multiple life sentences for one of the most heinous crimes known in these troubled parts. 

The program praises her, praises the actions that put her in prison, and unequivocally identifies with the longing of Tamimi’s family members for her and for her release. The camera focuses on a certificate awarded by Fatah, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, calling Tamimi "the heroic prisoner."

Watching this, which countless Palestinian Arab families did, no one would be left in doubt as to what official Palestinian Arab society thinks of Tamimi and of the chain of events that brought this evidently heroic figure to an Israeli cell.

This Tamimi is the murderer of our daughter and of fourteen (more correctly fifteen as you can see here) innocent Israelis. She is articulate, capable and very proud of what she did, and everyone watching the program is encouraged to share that pride. The head of the Palestinian Arab political pyramid, Abbas, is closely identified with that pride. Killing Israeli children is something to be proud of, the program teaches and Abbas confirms. Palestinian Arab society holds this Tamimi up as an example to be emulated.

This is a constant theme in Palestinian Arab society. For years, Palestinian Media Watch has documented the ongoing Palestinian Authority policy of glorifying terrorists as role models.

Why? Because – as PMW points out, this is one of the most effective means of promoting terror and ensuring it goes on. 

“In honoring the worst killers, the PA is simultaneously giving approval to murder and enticing future terrorists with assurances of glory and honor if they succeed in killing. Terror and murder become the Palestinian’s ticket to fame, honor and glory.”

Keep these thoughts in mind when the crocodile tears of the politicians behind the murders next make an appearance on your television screen or news page.

20-Mar-11: And now come the heavy Gazan rockets fired into Israel

Ashkelon from the air

Today may be Purim, an otherwise happy festival day. But we happen to be in the midst of a steady escalation of violence and aggression from the Hamastan terrorists of the Gaza Strip. This evening (Sunday) after several days of intense mortar fire, a Grad-class rocket fired from Gaza exploded in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. Several Israelis suffered shock. Ynet says an elderly woman was injured while attempting to take cover. No damage was reported. There's little doubt this is not the end of the matter.

20-Mar-11: Incoming mortars again

Following yesterday's barrage of some fifty mortars, followed by last night's Qassam, two additional mortar shells were fired into Israel in the past hour (it's now 3 on Sunday afternoon) by the terrorists of the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip. Ynet says they came from the north end of the Strip and, as happened yesterday, one of the shells landed inside Hamas-controlled territory, while the other exploded next to a kibbutz in Israel's Sha'ar Henegev region. At this point, there are no reports of persons injured or property damaged, but this is not, and was not, the intention of the terrorists who always seek to cause damage, injury and fear.

20-Mar-11: And now (yet again) the Qassams

A little after midnight tonight (the night between Saturday and Sunday), there is a report of a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza into Israel. At this stage, there is no report of damage or injury. This Israeli site says the missile crashed into the Sadot Negev region. It makes no difference to the terrorists - anywhere is acceptable, the key thing being the act of flinging a deadly weapon in Israel's general direction. As terrorists everywhere know, the act of violence is its own reward. Ynet, quoting Israel's security services, says 215 mortars were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip during 2010 (and more than 100 have been fired since the first of this year), plus some 150 Qassam rockets.

Earlier this evening, two terrorists were seen approaching the security barrier near one of the kibbutzim in the area. Soldiers from the IDF's armored corps opened fire and permanently eliminated the two men. As usual, an IDF investigation into the circumstances of the shooting began immediately afterwards with  initial estimates being that the two were in the process of planting an explosive device near the fence, as so many jihadists before them have done.

19-Mar-11: Hamas needs today's attacks on Israel - here's why

Independent Palestinian Arab commentator Khaled Abu Toameh says Hamas needs to carry out attacks on Israel like today's. Writing this evening under the headline "Hamas seeking to divert attention from challenges", Abu Toameh says:

"The mortar attacks on Israel over the weekend are designed to divert attention from Hamas’s growing problems inside the Gaza Strip. The Hamas leadership has been under heavy pressure as a result of mass demonstrations in the Gaza Strip demanding an end to the Hamas-Fatah dispute. After failing to prevent the demonstrations, Hamas authorities began cracking down on the organizers, political foes and journalists. Hamas believes that the demonstrations are being organized by Fatah as part of an attempt to undermine the Islamist movement... The first sign of Hamas’s increased nervousness was evident last week when dozens of the movement’s undercover police officers attacked thousands of demonstrators who were participating in a Facebook-initiated rally to demand Palestinian unity. At least 50 demonstrators were injured, including eight local journalists who complained that they had been severely beaten while doing their job. On Saturday [today], Hamas again targeted local journalists, raiding several press offices and confiscating cameras, laptops and other equipment [see above right and below, two-day old AP snapshots of uniformed Hamas street-gang thugs attacking a pro democracy rally on Gaza's streets.] Sources in Gaza City said that the Hamas policemen stormed the offices of CNN, Reuters and a Japanese TV station. Three Palestinian journalists were beaten with clubs, the sources said... The Hamas crackdown on journalists is seen as an attempt to prevent further coverage of daily protests throughout the Gaza Strip. Hamas’s actions indicate that the movement, which has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007, is afraid that the current wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world would hit the Strip."

Read the whole analysis here.

The international news agencies are belatedly reporting tonight on those Hamas attacks on journalists. For instance "In Gaza, Hamas forces rough up protesters, reporters" from CNN, and echoed by UPI. Reuters has reported in the past hour that "armed men" entered their Gaza offices today (Saturday), threatened employees with their guns and

"took away a video camera, apparently after they spotted a reporter filming a demonstration from the building. The men struck one Reuters journalist on the arm with a metal bar and threatened to throw another out of the window of the high-rise block. The group, which numbered about 10 men, smashed a television set and other equipment before leaving... The men told Reuters journalists that they came from the internal security services of Hamas, the Islamist group which governs the Palestinian enclave, but they showed no documents. A senior official of Hamas condemned the violence and [of course] denied that the group was involved in the attack."

Hamas fears a threatened visit to Gaza by Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority will bring thousands of Palestinians to the streets demanding an end to the Hamas-Fatah power struggle, according to Abu Toameh. An IDF operation in the Gaza Strip, which is what today's mortar attacks are calculated to bring on, would ease the pressure on Hamas, allowing its leadership to divert unwanted public attention and rally the Gazan public behind it.

Sounds like a good enough reason to be firing rockets into Israel, no?

19-Mar-11: Incoming missiles everywhere - except in your newspapers

The Sabbath has just ended here in Jerusalem. The air is fresh with the smells of springtime, and the trees outside our front door are alive with the color of new blossom.

Yesterday (Friday) in southern Israel, Palestinian terrorists firing from the northern part of the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip fired 10 (that's ten) mortars into Israel. All landed in the western Negev region, far from Israeli military targets. Ynet reports that some of them landed in on the Hamas side of the fence. Poorly-informed journalists and couldn't-care-less-propagandists routinely describe Gaza as the most densely populated area on earth (it's not even close - even Tel Aviv has nearly twice the population density of Gaza, and there are many places more density populated than both). Still, you might think that missiles fired from within Gaza and landing on top of Gazan heads might cause such journalists and propagandists consternation. Inevitably these cause injuries and damage. But as we know from years of watching, those injuries and damage are never, ever reported.

Though we live in Jerusalem, out of range of today's attacks, it's infuriating to us that such massive bombardments are ignored by reporters and their editors. It's frightening that no one except those living in the area targeted by these incoming Grads, Katyushas, Qassams, missiles and mortars pays attention to them, or understands the message of hatred and indiscriminate death and injury that they intend - so long as their source is Hamas and the huddled masses under the iron-fisted rule of the jihadists.

Today, Saturday - the Jewish Sabbath - it got a lot worse. The thuggish Islamist gangs of Gaza fired what AFP called "dozens of shells" into Israel, wounding at least two people. Hamas took credit, claiming (interestingly, though not too credibly given their ability to direct these things) they had targeted the border crossing points between Israel and the Hamas-controlled territory.

The Israeli count for the day so far is 49 mortars, most of them fired within the space of an hour. The kind of thing you would expect to see at the top of the news headlines, right?

Don't hold your breath.

And when Israel decides, as it might, to keep those same crossings closed in order to prevent loss of life and damage, who is going to scream loudest, do you think, about collective punishment of the suffering people of Gaza, and violations of international humanitarian law?

Sixty incoming missiles in 24 hours. How would you react if it happened where you live?

16-Mar-11: Free the Itamar murderers in a prisoner release?

Frimet Roth's article below appears today on the Israel National News website.

Would anyone dream of releasing the Itamar murderers in a prisoner swap?

By FRIMET ROTH

At his shiva visit to the families of the victims of Friday's terror attack, Prime Minister Netanyahu told the mourners: "These terrorists are not people; they are monsters". At a press conference he referred to them as "animals".

But his words fell short of the truth. Last week's murderers are not rare or pathological.

Hundreds of Israeli children have been murdered in cold blood in the past decade by very similar people. Some of those terrorists relied on knives, some on bullets, others on bombs.

My own daughter's murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas operative, favored a suicide bomber. She walked her weapon of choice through downtown Jerusalem, found a site teaming with children and babies and pointed him at it. She then abandoned her weapon and fled to safety.

A mother, a father and three of their eight children - just as in Itamar - were among the 15 victims.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has been under intense local and foreign pressure to release Tamimi along with other mass murderers in order to win Sergeant Gilad Shalit's release from his Hamas kidnappers.

Would anyone dream of including the Itamar murderers in such a prisoner swap? Would anyone suggest reliance on their "signed declaration" that they will never again engage in terrorism? Would anyone urge commuting their consecutive life sentences to a couple of years in order to return them to the society that created them?

This is precisely what is currently being demanded of our government vis a vis other cold-blooded mass murderers. Why this double standard?

We must resist the heat-of-the-moment temptation to deem this an isolated and uniquely barbaric act as did Defense Minister Ehud Barak. In an interview on Israel's Channel 2 he said: "This murder is a terrible murder".

Is there another sort?

In a similar vein, Ynet's Chanoch Daum labeled the perpetrators "blood-thirsty psychopaths". MK Levy-Abekasis called them: "predators who.....are not worthy of a trial or of any other human process." She added that "In this case it is important for us to act according to the eye for an eye rule – a life for a life".

First, this attitude can lead to the contention that these terrorists were compelled to murder by uncontrollable impulses - i.e. the insanity defense. Second, it implies that the rest of the Palestinians, who are undoubtedly human beings, do not share these murderous inclinations or desires. 

Both presumptions are false.

The man or woman who slaughtered the Fogel family made a conscious decision to murder and as such deserves to be tried, convicted and punished.

Furthermore, he or she lives in a society, whether it be in the West Bank or in Gaza, that instills such thought and promotes such action from birth. As Itamar Marcus wrote today in the JPost: "The PA continues to use all the structures it controls to demonize Israelis and to promote violence." 

And as we all know, Gazans in Rafah celebrated the Itamar murders with mass distributions of candies and sweets on the streets as documented by these Getty photos.

The chilling truth that Israel has many evil neighbors mere kilometers away is one that the West and our home-grown leftists find hard to fathom. It does not jive with their all-embracing "kumbaya" outlook on the world.

But we who live beside them must fathom it; our survival demands it. And this week we had it proven to us with a vengeance. It is critical for us to keep the shocking images of the murdered Fogel family fresh in our minds. Only then, with the caution that such a reality compels, can we wisely tackle the urgent mission of rescuing Gilad Shalit. 

13-Mar-11: The victims of Friday night's murders-by-knifing have names and faces

Rabbi Udi Fogel, 36, his wife Ruth, 35, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and three-month-old Hadas are the human beings murdered in their sleep Friday night by terrorists acting in the name of Palestinian anger and political aspirations. The orphaned Fogel children are Tamar, 12 (who came home at midnight to find an unimaginable scene of carnage), Roi, 8, and two-year-old Yishai. Their grandparents are now caring for them. The funerals are set for later today (Sunday) in Jerusalem starting at 1:30 pm.

Hadas (3 months)

Elad (3)

Yoav (11)

Ruth

Rabbi Udi

May their memories serve as a blessing.

Following is a report of Friday night's events passed along by a contact.

On Friday night at 10:30 pm the terrorists entered the house through the living room picture window, did not notice the 6-year-old boy sleeping on the couch and continued on to the bedroom where they slashed the throats of the father and newborn baby who were sleeping there. The mother came out of the bathroom and was stabbed on its threshold. The evidence shows that she tried to fight the terrorists. They then slashed the throat of the 11-year old-son who was reading in bed. They did not notice the 2-year old asleep in his bed, but murdered the 3-year old with two stabs to his heart. After that, they locked the door, exited through the window and escaped. Exactly two hours after the infiltration, there was another warning signal from the same spot on the fence, as the terrorists left the way they had come.  Once again, the patrol did not identify the source of the signal as infiltration. The 12-year-old daughter returned home at 00:30 and found the door locked. She asked a neighbor, Rabbi Yaakov Cohen, of the Itamar Yeshiva, to help her. He brought a weapon with him once he noticed tracks and mud near the house. The two woke up the 6-year old sleeping in the living room by calling through the window and when he opened the door, the Rabbi returned to his home. When she entered the bedrooms, the young daughter saw the horrific bloodsoaked scene and ran out of the house screaming. The neighbor ran back and fired several shots in the air to alert security personnel.  Within a short time, large police and IDF forces arrived and began intensive searches to see if the terrorists were still in the community. At 03:30 a.m., military trackers discovered footprints leading to the Arab village of Awarta.

Awarta is historically associated with the burial site of the sons of Aaron, the high priest (Cohen Hagadol) and brother of Moses. One of those sons was Itamar, after whom the community in which the Fogel family lived is named.

A previous jihadist massacre in Itamar in June 2002 took the lives of Rachel Shabo and three of her children: Neria (16), Zvi (13), and Avishai (5). Two other Shabo children were seriously injured and Yossi Tuito, commander of the neighborhood preparedness team, was shot to death as he approached the family's house in order to help. The Palestinian Arab terrorist who caused these deaths was killed.

12-Mar-11: Babies stabbed to death in their beds

Sabbath has just ended here. Now we know that in the quiet of Friday night, five members of a Jewish family were stabbed to death in their beds in yet another in a seemingly endless toll of terrorist murders directed at unarmed Israelis.

First responders said they encountered pools of blood on the floor next to children’s toys. Four family members, not yet named, were already dead: the two parents, one child of eleven and another of three months (three months!) A three year old child still had a pulse and ambulance volunteers undertook lengthy resuscitation efforts. But the baby was beyond help and died. The family's twelve year old daughter got home at midnight after spending some hours with friends in the local Bnei Akiva youth movement. Witnessing the carnage, she raised the alarm and will now have to face life in the wake of a tragedy that defies comprehension.

As has happened so often in the past, credit for the massacre in the community of Itamar was immediately claimed by Palestinian Arab jihadists. This time it was the turn of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and an operating unit of the Fatah organization headed by Palestinian Authority "prime minister" Mahmoud Abbas.  His "foreign minister" Riyad al-Maliki questions whether the murderers were Palestinian via this creative formulation:

"No Palestinian in the past killed an infant and butchered people in such way based on a nationalistic or vengeful motive [which of course] raises doubt as to Israel's rush to accuse the Palestinians of committing this act." 

Abbas and al-Maliki have both spent much their careers in public life encouraging and supporting precisely such acts of murder, rendering it a waste of time to point them to the hundreds of such acts of murder involving dead Jewish infants and children (see the faces of 123 Israeli Children Killed by Palestinian Terrorists, assembled by the Daled Amos blog) the and the butchering of innocent Jews. And certainly including the massacre that took the life of our fifteen year-old daughter.

Note that there is no suggestion here of innocent victims who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or caught in the crossfire. The killings were by knife, inside a home, by a killer energized by murder-lust and years of incitement by his political and religious leaders. These were not accidental victims of the terrorists. They were its very deliberate target.

The jihadists of the Hamas regime in Gaza have not been slow to express their delight at the scenes of gore, blood and dead Jews. Spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said: "We in the Hamas completely support the resistance against settlers who murder and use crime and terror against the Palestinian people under the auspices of the Israeli occupation soldiers."

More eloquently than the self-promoting words of the terrorists and their ideologues, the news photographs from Gaza (one above, more below) show the reactions in the Palestinian Arab street, literally. The caption, as it appears on the News.com website, reads "Terrorist act: A Palestinian man offers sweets to Hamas policemen in the streets of the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah to celebrate an attack which killed five Israeli settlers at the Itamar settlement near the West Bank city of Nablus."

This captures an essential truth at the heart of this ongoing war. The murder in their beds of little children, of a three month old infant, is a candy-sucking occasion for the people on the other side.

8-Mar-11: Fine British hypocrisy: where would the world be without it?

Her Majesty's government expelled a diplomat in Israel's London embassy about a year ago for what the Brits complained was illicit use of British passports by the government of Israel via its secret service. The story went that the  passports were part of an elaborate plot, entirely successful as it turned out, to permanently end the career of a very high profile Hamas terrorist with a great deal of blood on his hands. Australia expelled an Israeli diplomat too in the same connection.

The British Foreign Office through its minister, David Milliband at the time, said the government of the UK "takes this matter extremely seriously. Such misuse of British passports is intolerable. It presents a hazard for the safety of British nationals in the region.  It also represents a profound disregard for the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. The fact that this was done by a country which is a friend, with significant diplomatic, cultural, business and personal ties to the UK, only adds insult to injury. No country or Government could stand by in such a situation."

Such nice round vowels.

We're visiting the UK briefly today for our work. The news media here are reporting on a slightly embarrassing chapter in which "a British diplomatic team, including six soldiers believed to be SAS, have been freed two days after being detained in eastern Libya... [though] this was no covert military mission. Its aim instead was to reach out to opposition groups in the east and gain a better understanding of what was happening on the ground. The role of the soldiers was to protect the diplomat involved - a regular practice in war zones and hostile environments."

So the mission was friendly, not at all covert, certainly not military, and just ignore those SAS men over there.

But here's the more interesting part. According to the BBC, "They were held after going to an agricultural compound when Libyan security guards found they were carrying arms, ammunition, explosives, maps and passports from at least four different nationalities, witnesses told the BBC. The witnesses said the men had denied they were carrying weapons."

Passports? Four different nationalities? The British? Surely not.

So here's how we see it. A successful and elaborate effort to eliminate an abhorrent killer of children was accomplished with no loss of life other than the life of the jihadist himself, through - according to various unconfirmed reports - foreign passports were abused, and Israel which is presumed to have been behind it all, was publicly disgraced via the expulsion of its diplomats from two civilized and friendly countries.

Britain, by contrast, is now exposed as having engaged in a form of back-channel diplomacy with parties in a country (Libya) where, for years, it and members of its royal family and the leadership of one of its most vaunted educational institutions have humiliated themselves for years through forelock-tugging and incomprehensible steps like releasing a convicted terrorist airplane bomber. The effort comprehensively failed, and is now revealed to have included abusing the passports of, we presume, friendly countries. Melanie Phillips expresses the hopes of all right-thinking people when she comments: "We trust most earnestly that none of those was an Israeli one."

We say, so where are the cries for political resignations, self-examination, apology? If it's reasonable for the UK to do this, then should not the same courtesy, or at least the benefit of the doubt (there was not the slightest shred of published evidence connecting Israel to last year's passport story) be extended to countries whose battle with the terrorists is conducted at a far more intense and existential level?

Or should we just learn to live with double-standards of this kind? From our friends.

6-Mar-11: For those who believe the fighting against Israel has gone quiet

Having spent the last couple of days in the company of friends who believe what the media are reporting and therefore assume the security situation on Israel's borders is quiet, a reminder.

Friday, two more in the endless series of Gaza-based Palestinian-Arab Qassam rockets were fired by terrorists into Israel. Ynet says one of these exploded in the Sdot Negev region, at a location that is not currently disclosed (the Israeli view is why tell the terrorists how accurate their shooting is?) The second likely landed within Hamas-held Gazan territory and as every media person knows, no one cares a hoot whether or not there are injuries or damage caused by jihadist missiles landing on Palestinian-Arab heads.

Fortunately there are no reports of damage or injuries on the Israeli side, but this, as we have said before, is not the intention of the terrorists. They care not at all about the consequences of the rockets and mortars flung over the fence at Israel. Their only goal is - any damage, any injuries, any terror is a small victory.

1-Mar-11: Finally, some sanity on European funding of Palestinian Arab terror

David Cameron, then leader of the British parliamentary
 opposition, greeted by Abbas of the Palestinian Authority
 and the image of his predecessor

From a major speech by the prime minister of the United Kingdom yesterday:

While it is not for us to dictate how each country should meet the aspirations of its people, we must not remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success. Freedom of expression, a free press, freedom of assembly, the right to demonstrate peacefully: these are basic rights... They are not British or western values – but the values of human beings everywhere.
We need to take this opportunity to look again at our entire relationship with this region – at the billions of Euros of EU funds, at our trade relationship, at our cultural ties. We need to be much clearer and tougher in linking our development assistance to real progress in promoting more open and plural societies. And we need to dispense once and for all with the outdated notion that democracy has no place in the Arab world.
Too often in the past, we have made a false choice between so-called stability on the one hand and reform and openness on the other. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse.

Music to our ears! After decades of covert and overt channeling of torrents of cash into the hands of the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Arabs - finally a British leader who understands what untold harm has followed from this patronizing and thoroughly irresponsible largesse on the part of Whitehall, of the British parliament and - most of all - of the faceless Brussels bureaucracy of the EU.

More than four years ago, we wrote here [6-Oct-06: Crying Poor: The Terror-Laden Rise and Rise of the Palestinian National Payroll] about the disgraceful deeds of Christopher Patten who presided over an official European Commission program of sending huge sums of money into the Arafat kleptocracy while denying eloquently out of both sides of his mouth that anything, Heaven forfend, might be wrong with any of this.

How pleasant to read today the words of the UK government's head beating his chest in regret. Too late to bring back to life the thousands of innocent Israelis (our fifteen year old daughter among them) murdered by jihadist thugs and terrorist gangs - payrolled by the ocean of European and British money handed off year after year to the PA and Hamas despite all the evidence of their evil.

Wait.

Did we just have an unfortunate misunderstanding? That speech yesterday by David Cameron - was it actually about Libya and not the Palestinian Arabs?

What a pity.