29-Jun-12: Tentacles in Texas: A "loser" but ready, willing, able and driven to blow ordinary people up in the name of his religion

Khalid Aldawsari, convicted on Wednesday

His lawyer called him "a harmless failure... a failure academically... a failure at relationships". But on Wednesday a Texas jury took less than two hours to convict a Saudi Arabian man, 22, of terrorist charges relating to when he was a student at Texas Tech University. The "failure" was arrested in February 2011 after bomb-making chemicals, wiring, a hazmat suit and clocks, as well as videos showing how to prepare a chemical explosive called TNO, were found in his apartment. 

The evidence (according to a Washington Post report) is that Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari was researching several targets including nuclear power plants, the homes of three former soldiers who had been stationed at Abu Ghraib prison - and the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush. A local Texas news report prior to the trial said that "jihadist writings" were found in his personal journal along with notes about plans to explode car bombs in New York City and carrying a backpack into a Dallas night club. 

Among the potential targets Aldawsari allegedly considered: former President George W. Bush’s Dallas home; the Cotton Bowl; the homes of three soldiers once stationed at the Army’s controversial Abu Ghraib prison; and dams in California and Colorado.

His defence lawyers agreed with prosecutors that he had intent but argued (the "loser" defence) that he never came close to actually attacking anyone. Loser he may well have been, but (a) he managed to get into a decent American university and (c) bomb experts from the FBI said he was on track to making 15 pounds of explosive; that's the amount used per bomb in the 2005 London Islamist subway attacks. 

“It just didn’t happen overnight, on impulse,” federal prosecutor Jeffrey Haag said during closing arguments Wednesday morning. “This is something Mr. Aldawsari has been planning for a very, very, very long time.” ...Aldawsari came legally to the United States from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to study chemical engineering at Texas Tech. He transferred in early 2011 to nearby South Plains College, where he was studying business. A Saudi industrial company was paying his tuition and living expenses in the United States. His intentions all along, according to prosecutors, were to plot an attack. “His focus was on jihad and he was marching down that road,” said ...another prosecutor. “He’s been marching since he was 11 years old.”

Do the police or the news media care which Saudi industrial company was paying his tuition and living expenses? Is anyone concerned to know if this is the only "student" planted this way in the US? Is there not some way for immigration authorities to make an educated guess about which of the thousands of Saudi students applying for admission to the US each year have also been "marching" since they were 11 years old? And how many "loner" Saudi "losers" does it take before Western societies start recognizing a pattern?

28-Jun-12: Have we just been handed a credible guide to Iran's true plans?

Scene from trailer for a recent anti-Jewish Iranian
film production [Image Source]

A chilling assessment of Iran's intentions from the website of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. CFR publishes the prestigious journal "Foreign Affairs". 

The article below, which appeared on cfr.org yesterday (Wednesday) is authored by Elliott Abrams, a national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration for which he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The Voice Of Iran

Elliott Abrams [Source]
Why is it significant that the vice president of Iran has used a United Nations forum to deliver an appalling anti-Semitic speech? This happened yesterday in Geneva, as The New York Times reported. Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi blamed “Zionists” for the world’s drug trade, citing the Talmud and leaving his audience at the anti-drug conference in shock. This event is significant because it reminds us that the assumptions behind the nuclear negotiations with Iran are questionable at best. Those assumptions include mirror-imaging, the belief that Iran’s regime will make the sorts of “rational” calculations the governments of the EU and United States would make in their place. Impose sanctions on Iran, reduce its income from oil sales, harm its economy, and surely the Supreme Leader and his advisers will react as we would, weighing almost mathematically the costs and benefits of the nuclear program. Then comes Mr. Rahimi, teaching us that math may not be the best way to predict Iranian policy decisions. How do we factor in irrational hatred of Jews? How do we weigh a deep desire to destroy the Jewish state? How do we calculate the effect of beliefs that seem to us in the West to be preposterous, ludicrous, impossible? Or a better question: how do Israelis make those judgments? As many historians–most recently, Andrew Roberts in The Storm of War, his superb history of the Second World War–have reminded us, lucid calculations are often absent, statesmanship often pushed aside by ideological obsessions, hatred more powerful than rational calculations. Just because we think it irrational for Iranian officials to make such speeches, or wreck their economy to pursue nuclear weapons, or threaten Israel, does not mean that such things are not happening and will not happen. Sitting around conference tables they may appear unlikely or impossible, but the Rahimi speech may be a better guide to Iranian foreign policy than the words spoken at those sessions.

As Abrams writes, hatred is often more powerful than rational calculations. Egypt's semi-official Al-Ahram newsagency described the senior Iranian leader's speech, made at a global drug enforcement conference in Tehran, as "unusually vitriolic and inflammatory" while helpfully reminding readers that "Iran and Israel have traded hostile rhetoric for years".

Here's a nauseating recent example of Iran and Israel "trading hostile rhetoric", YouTube has a trailer for a thoroughly despicable anti-Jewish Iranian movie called "Saturday's Hunter", posted in November 2011 (h/t Elder of Ziyon). The imagery, the hateful stereotypes, are what Iranian mass markets are getting when they see Jewish life depicted on the screen. MEMRI provides some excellent background in a video clip of their own. 

27-Jun-12: The terror attack in Ma'ale Adumim, and the role car license plates play

Maale Adumim [Image Source]

Ma'ale Adumim, a modern city of 30,000 people in the Jerusalem suburbs, is about 7 kilometers east of where we are writing this. The name is mentioned in the Bible's Book of Joshua; it marked the border between the Israelite tribes of Judah and Benjamin. In the Book of Luke in the New Testament, it's where the Good Samaritan parable is set. Currently there's a shortage of good Samaritans in the area. 

On December 17, 2011, one of the security guards manning the checkpoint at the community's entrance was stabbed by an unknown assailant who spoke Arabic [report]. A 21 year-old suspect by the name of Hanaishe, a resident of the village of Qabatiya, was arrested two months later and [according to Ynet's account] admitted to the stabbing, ascribing nationalistic reasons to no one's surprise. 

Typical yellow Israeli
vehicle license plate
[Image Source]

This afternoon (Wednesday), there was a similar stabbing in more or less the same place, with a different outcome. A Palestinian Arab who lives in Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, drove a Mitsubishi which, according to an initial report was owned by an east Jerusalem resident, came into Ma'ale Adumim and attempted to run over a police officer. Unsuccessful in this, he rammed the borrowed vehicle into a police squad car. What follows next is according to the reported testimony of Superintendent Uri Yoran, commander of the Ma'ale Adumim police station. 

The assailant emerged from the driver's seat and, abandoning the borrowed car, climbed a fence and ran about 100 meters to the security guard's booth at the city's entrance, with a  police officer from the rammed car in hot pursuit. The Arab then lunged at the guard's weapon and attempted to grab it. A struggle ensued, during which the Palestinian Arab attacker was shot. He was rushed (in accordance with invariable Israeli practice) to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center with severe injuries. If he survives, he can expect to get some of the best medicine available anywhere in the Middle East. 

License plate issued to
a Bethlehem vehicle owner by the
Palestinian Authority
[Image Source]

Dr David Applebaum is one of the medical professionals who turned Shaare Zedek emergency room (which we have unfortunately gotten to know too well over the years) into a globally-outstanding center for emergency and trauma care. David, who we knew, was murdered with his daughter on the evening before her wedding in what came to be known as Jerusalem's Cafe Hillel Bombing in 2003.


Why was today's attacker driving a borrowed car? We're surmising, but probably because the vehicles belonging to East Jerusalem residents, including many thousands who openly identify with the cause of the Palestinian Arab terror gangs, have ordinary yellow license plates like other Israelis do. People from Bethlehem, like the man who rammed the police car, pay their car fees to the Palestinian Authority and get license plates that bear the PA's insignia. Those vehicles get extra scrutiny from Israeli security guards. Today's terror attack is a reminder of why.

26-Jun-12: GRAD rockets strike Netivot again tonight

Scene of a previous GRAD attack on Netivot in March 2012.
Fortunately the explosion occurred in a car park in the center of town,
meters away from residential buildings. Tonight's attack (so far at least)
has also had a relatively mild outcome. But a strategy of
defending your home and your family cannot be based
on luck alone. [Image Source]

In the past hour (it's now 11:00 pm Tuesday night here in Jerusalem), four [11:45 pm UPDATE: five] GRAD rockets were fired from a launcher in the Gaza Strip, tumultuously ending what the Jerusalem Post is calling "a brief period of calm". Terrified residents of the areas targeted ran for cover as air raid sirens sounded on three separate occasions. 

Two [11:45 pm UPDATE: three] incoming rockets are reported by Times of Israel to have been intercepted in mid-air by Israeli Iron Dome missile defence system fire. Intercepts generally happen when the system's computer assesses that the enemy rockets are on track to hit a residential or other strategic target. The other two GRAD rockets crashed and exploded near the southern desert city of Netivot (population: 27,000); no damage or injuries to humans are reported.

The GRADs now deployed by the terrorists of the Gaza Strip are reported [source] to carry a warhead of  up to 19 kg of explosives “wrapped” with lethal metallic fragments. With a length of approximately 3 m, the rocket has a range of 40 km. Developed in the former Soviet Union, it has been sold to many former-Soviet allies and has undergone improvements by the Chinese and Iranians who are believed to be the parties supplying the Gazan terrorists. GRAD rockets are used by nearly 50 militaries worldwide, though it's unlikely they are applied - as the Gazan Palestinian Arabs do - exclusively against civilians.

26-Jun-12: Leaders of regional councils under fire from Gaza: "Protecting our children from daily Hamas terror has sadly become our top priority"

March 2012: Running urgently for shelter in the community of
Nitzan, south of Ashdod as yet another in the endless stream
of Gazan missiles is detected on its way towards the area in the ongoing
search for more and more Israeli victims. An astonishing 13,000 incoming 
rockets in ten years - and no end in sight. [Image Source]

Haim Yellin, Alon Shuster and Yair Farjun are respectively the heads of the Eshkol Regional Council, the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council and the Hof Ashqelon Regional Council. We write about all three of these southern Israel local government units frequently. They have the misfortune of being the Israeli communities closest to the Hamas-ridden Gaza Strip.

The three regional leaders addressed the British public some days ago via an open letter published in the Telegraph. Some excerpts:

• The 130 rockets that were fired on our region over the last few days constitute a sad but all too familiar scenario. Imagine, rockets were falling on your family, your home, your community. Protecting our children from daily Hamas terror has sadly become our top priority.
• Ominously, taking advantage of instability in Egypt and an increase in arms smuggling by terrorists in Sinai, rockets were launched from Sinai as well as neighbouring Gaza. 
• None of this is news. Our small region has been the target of 13,000 rockets fired from Gaza in a decade. More than one million Israelis are in range, living under a cloud of constant fear. The latest bombardment on our homes barely made a scratch on international headlines or the agendas of world leaders. It seems the sheer regularity of attacks has dulled global sensitivities to our communities’ plight. 
• Of course, we are not the only ones suffering from the ongoing tension in our region. We fully recognise the difficulties facing Palestinians in Gaza. But responsibility for their woes rests solely with Hamas.
• We have no quarrel with Gaza’s citizens and yearn to join with them once more in peaceful partnership. When Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza in 2005, we hoped that Gazans would be able to build their own businesses, develop a successful economy and establish a rule of law founded on basic freedoms. However, having seized power in Gaza in 2007, Hamas instead prioritised the import of weapons with which to attack Israel, developing a complex network of tunnels to smuggle arms from Iran via Sinai. The result has been a conflict which continues to threaten the security of the very civilians Hamas is bound to protect. 
• The people of Gaza deserve better than Hamas.

The full UK Telegraph article is here. 

With a Moslem Brotherhood government forming itself in Egypt, there are very few optimistic voices to be heard over here on our side of the fence. There have been 13,000 rockets fired into southern Israel on a regular (and routine) basis for some years. Intelligence estimates are that the same thuggish terrorists who did the firing now have three times (or more) that number of rockets, missiles and mortars ready to go on command.

26-Jun-12: This morning's rocket attack on southern Israel caused damage to property. But property is not what they sought to hit.

Running for cover in Sderot. No one, least of all the thugs
who fire them, knows for sure who or what's going to be hit next time.
Next time is hours away. [Image Source]

The intense rocket fire on southern Israel of last week has passed. The more normal situation of a rocket here, a rocket there, prevails once again as it has for most of the past decade. 

The way we see it, there is no reason for any self-respecting government to put up with this sort of Russian Roulette. But it's clear that this viewpoint is not widely shared outside of Israel, as evidenced by the zero level of media reporting on the indiscriminate rocket fire engaged in by the terror gangs of the Gaza Strip under Hamas leadership.

Another rocket, evidently a Qassam, exploded in southern Israel in the early hours of this morning [report]. It crashed into the grounds of an agricultural community - a kibbutz - whose name and exact location are not being publicized for reasons of the residents' security. A chicken coop was hit. Dead chickens don't, and should not, evoke the horror and passions that dead human beings, dead children, do. But from the standpoint of the rocket-rich Palestinian Arab terrorists of Gaza, it's the same. They hurl the rockets into the air in the general direction of Israel, and they pray to their deity that he should guide the explosive head to where it can do his will in the most effective way. 

Thank heavens, most of their attempts at killing Israelis fail. This, as we keep saying, is not the outcome they want and has much more to do with luck than design. Until they are stopped, they will keep doing it and will keep trying for a more 'productive' outcome. They have almost unimaginably deep reserves of rockets hidden away in residential parts of the Gaza Strip, inside the basements of apartment buildings, hospitals and mosques. They count on Israel's reluctance to cause massive collateral damage by attacking the known locations of these lethal arsenals.

But sooner or later, the thugs of Gaza will get lucky. They will hit a target of 'value', one which entails hurting and/or killing Jewish and/or Israeli human beings, as has happened numerous times in the past. 


To get a very mild sense of what that means, and without in any way deprecating the nastiness of a rocket attack on poultry (since we know why this was done), take a look now at what a bombed chicken coop in southern Israel looks like when a Gazan rocket makes a hit. It's a video from some months ago, very similar circumstances to today's explosion. See it here.

24-Jun-12: A request to our readers

Freshly married terrorists at their highly-publicized wedding ceremony
last week. Sentenced to seventeen life sentences between them, and laughing. 

Many of you have told us how important it is that the facts outlined in Frimet Roth's recent article about the Tamimis be made available in the Hebrew language so that it can start to have an effect on Israeli public opinion. We agree.

We previously asked for your help last year (see "14-Oct-11: Please sign a petition to keep this particular terrorist behind bars"). Close to ten thousand of you signed our petition in the three days that were available to us at that time. Now we have another request.

Frimet's article is entitled "So you thought Netanyahu is tough on terrorism? Not exactly". It was posted on this blog last week and cross-posted the same day on the Times of Israel website. She wrote it after the initial supportive media coverage came from the good people at Israel National News some days earlier. 

Malki, of blessed memory 

A cry of anguish, Frimet's op ed concerns the murderer of our daughter Malki (that's Malki's picture on the left) and the gift granted to the murderer earlier this month by the government of Israel. The narrative has numerous aspects from which the Israeli public has been shielded until now. We don't know why.

On Sunday June 24, Israel's newspaper of record, Haaretz, published Frimet's op-ed article in Hebrew. It's entitled "נדיבים לרוצחים", meaning "Being Generous to the Murderers". 

Here's our request. 

If you have Hebrew speaking friends or acquaintances who you feel should become aware of what has taken place in this sad and worrying extended affair, please point them to today's article in Haaretz - נדיבים לרוצחים. For your English-speaking friends, please refer them to the English version of the same article (here on our blog). We have nothing more than this to ask. People should simply know.

Please also mention to those friends that the two convicted terrorist/murderers about whom Frimet writes were married in a highly-publicized wedding ceremony (including live TV coverage - this was a major event in the Arab world) in Amman, Jordan, on June 16. As far as we can tell, not a single Israeli news source has reported this until now. 

A snapshot of the blissful couple, one of many such pictures to appear in the Arab media in this past week, appears at the top of this blog posting.

Update:

At the suggestion of friends and in view of the large numbers of people visiting this blog for the first time as a result of the message above, we decided to add a photo of our murdered daughter Malki (1985-2001) above, in the body of this post. Malki's life was stolen from us in the very cruelest way when she was just fifteen, in the massacre at the Sbarro restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem. We honor her memory by providing support to families caring at home for a special-needs child. The not-for-profit organization that we created for this purpose is called the Malki Foundation, or Keren Malki. Its website has much more about Malki herself and about the fine work that is done daily in her memory. Please visit it when you can, and please let your friends know about it too.

24-Jun-12: Scenes from the front lines: today's Tayar Security Report update

Palestinian Arab human rights demonstrator
protesting in the village of Nabi Salah [Image Source]. 
The UNICEF logo on the human rights activist's shirt 
in this archive photo has no significance
whatsoever; none at all. Please focus solely on his human rights.

The chronology below picks up where we left off this past Monday June 18, 2012 [see "18-Jun-12: Scenes from the front lines: today's Tayar Security Report update"]. Like several earlier reports summarized in our blog, this one too is based on the Tayar Security Report compiled by Yehudit Tayar from first-responder, police and army reports. It skips some of the incident reports which we ourselves posted here in previous days.


Monday June 18, 2012

• Along the security fence near Kibbutz Be'eri (population: ~800), in the north-west corner of Israel's Negev desert: An unarmed Arab is caught after he penetrated from Gaza.
• Near Betar Illit: Several firebombs (Molotov cocktail) are hurled at Israeli vehicles
• The Gush Etzion-Hevron road near the town of Bet Umar, a constant troublespot for passing motorists: Several rock attacks (again) on Israeli vehicles; property damage is caused
• The Palestinian Arab village of Katna: Two IDF Special Police Force soldiers are moderately injured  by rock throwers; evacuated to Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem for urgent treatment
• Vicinity of the Palestinian Arab village of Borin, in the Shomron (Samaria district): Rock throwing attack on an IDF patrol
• Nabi Salah: Overnight rock throwing attack on a Border Guard patrol; an Israeli officer is injured and hosptialized for treatment
• Abu Dis in Jerusalem's eastern suburbs: Firebombs hurled at an IDF patrol.

Tuesday June 19, 2012

• Close to the Qalqilya security check post, an Arab is apprehended by alert IDF soldiers; he is found to have 3 pipe bombs on his person. These are safely detonated by IDF sapppers.

Wednesday June 20, 2012

• One small result of the day's massive rocket bombardment on southern Israel by the terror groups of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip: A mortar lands on the grounds of Kibbutz Sufa (population: 45 families) causing a fire to break out. It is extinguished with no injuries.

Thursday June 21, 2012

• Shechem (Nablus): Jewish pilgrims numbering 1,200, accompanied by an IDF security patrol to ensure their safety (given the grim history of previous such visits) approach the Tomb of Joseph the Patriarch. They come under fierce rock and gunfire attack near Balata. An IDF soldier is injured and evacuated for urgent hospital care.

A final word about the Tayar Security Report compiled by Yehudit Tayar: These reports are translated and publicized by Hatzalah Yehudah and Shomron with the clearance and confirmation of the IDF. Hatzalah Yehudah and Shomron is a voluntary emergency medical organization with over 500 volunteer doctors, paramedics, medics who are on call 24/7 and work along with the IDF, 669 IAF Airborn Rescue, the security officers and personal throughout Yesha and the Jordan Valley, and with MDA, Israel's official ambulance service.

23-Jun-12: Far from the attention of most people, the rocket barrages from Gaza keep being fired into southern Israel

From the Times of Israel:

Gaza-based terrorists fired 23 rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, causing damage to a school and factory. The latest attacks bring the total number of rockets and other projectiles fired from the Strip to approximately 150 over the past six days... The majority of the rockets launched Saturday were aimed at the southern city of Sderot, but several landed in other parts of the Eshkol, Hof Ashkelon and Shaar Hanegev Regional Councils, which border the Strip. One of the rockets exploded in Sderot’s industrial zone, causing moderate-to-severe injuries to one man and damaging a factory. According to Magen David Adom paramedics who arrived at the scene, the 50-year-old man was hit in the neck by shrapnel from the explosion. Another rocket caused damage to a school in Sderot, but there were no reports of injuries. The school had been reinforced against rocket fire.

Ynet says:

Saturday afternoon, Hamas rulers in Gaza threatened to escalate fighting with Israel, following days of rocket attacks from Gaza and Israeli counter strikes. "If the last rounds were not enough to deliver the message ... we are ready to crush the enemy and to curb its arrogance and to respond to aggression in a strong way," the group military wing, Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement released Saturday afternoon.

It's now 9:20 pm and two more rockets were fired into the Eshkol region in the last twenty minutes. And we're hearing reports of exceptionally loud explosions in both Ashdod and Ashkelon in the last few minutes

22-Jun-12: Israel has been re-arresting terrorists who got their freedom in the Shalit transaction last October

Released in the Shalit transaction, October 2011

Published here so that it stays on the record:

Since Schalit deal, IDF rearrests 15 terrorists
By YAAKOV KATZ
Jerusalem Post - June 21, 2012

The IDF has rearrested 15 Palestinians who were released from Israeli prisons under the Gilad Schalit prisoner swapconducted last year. Eight of the Palestinians were from the first batch of prisoners released, many of whom were serving life sentences for a variety of deadly terrorist attacks. The remaining seven were from the second batch of prisoners who were serving lighter sentences. Three of the prisoners have been released since they were rearrested. The first stage of the exchange took place in October, when 477 Palestinians were freed, and the second stage in December, when 550 were released. A senior IDF officer from the Central Command said on Wednesday that it was still too early to measure the impact the released prisoners were having on the West Bank. “People need to acclimate back to their homes and work to retrieve their former status in their respective organizations from the younger generation that took over while they were away,” the officer said. One of those rearrested was Ayman Salama, 36, who had been serving a 38-year sentence for his involvement in a 2002 bomb attack in Beersheba that wounded 18 people, as well as for a series of shooting attacks during the second intifada. He was supposed to be released in 2040. Another prisoner rearrested was Khalid Makhamira, who had been serving a life sentence since 2006 for his involvement in a series of shooting attacks in the West Bank during the second intifada. He was a Fatah member when he went into jail, and switched allegiance to Hamas during his five years in prison.

Now two questions for our readers: 

1. How many of the terrorists released in the second half of the Shalit deal (the part that Mr Katz of the Jerusalem Post calls here "the second batch of prisoners who were serving lighter sentences") were killers?
2. How many terrorists, out of the 1,027 who walked free in accordance with Hamas demands last October, were issued with a pardon for their crimes by the State of Israel?

Prizes for the first correct answers.

22-Jun-12: Only twenty years prison because he expressed remorse... but not really

The devastation on the morning after the Bali terrorist attack.
The bomb maker got twenty years prison, and not death, because of
his "remorse" [Image Source]

A court in Indonesia yesterday convicted an Indonesian "militant" - in reality, an Islamist terrorist - on all charges relating to the making of the bombs that killed 202 people in the October 12, 2002 Bali resort island attacks. 

TIME Magazine points out the defendant, Umar Patek, is a leading member of Jemaah Islamiyah, meaning "Islamic Congregation". Generally regarded as the Southeast Asian branch of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group acts to create "a Daulah Islamiyah" or regional Islamic caliphate throughout Southeast Asia. His sentence was 20 years in prison. His conviction brings to an end the trials that resulted from the Kuta Beach massacre.

The five judges found Patek played a key role in building the explosives as well as in the Jakarta church attacks on Christmas Eve in 2000 that killed 19 more innocents. Now here's the interesting part, in TIME Magazine's words:

Some felt the sentence was too light, but were encouraged by the remorse Patek expressed during the trial. “We will use him to influence other militants to not carry out terrorism acts,” said Harry Purwanto, deputy chairman of Indonesia’s counter terrorism agency. “Our aim is not only to jail them, but to change their platform to be law-abiding citizens.”

The central idea here is remorse. We wrote about this particular Islamist killer three weeks ago - see "31-May-12: Highly effective terrorist, now on trial, is really sorry. Not." We pointed out that while the man had indeed expressed a kind of remorse, it did not sound all that welcome to our ears. We wrote that:

It's a fairly conditional kind of "sorry" from the terrorist who is on trial for his life. Reuters and others choose not to report that Patek said his role was "small" but it is "Jewish slander'' that has made it seem larger [source]. His real goal had been to "retaliate" for "the killing of Muslims in Palestine". He questioned why this should be done in Bali. After all, he said, "Jihad should be carried out in Palestine instead. But they said they did not know how to get to Palestine" [source].

This having taken place in Indonesia, it's also worth reflecting on comments made two years ago by that country's minister of justice. Patrialis Akbar was caught on video telling Al Jazeera that he would like the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists to go to Israel instead and bomb civilians there. His country's government would even give them some practical help. [Elder of Ziyon reported on this in 2010, and we reported it here.]

22-Jun-12: Killing little children, then turning them into martyrs and blaming it on other people

Archive photo of crying child in Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip
As it happens, her surname is the same as that of the child killed
by a failed Hamas rocket this week [Image Source]

We mentioned in an earlier posting today ["22-Jun-12: For now, there's somewhat less drama down south, but peaceful it's not."] that Hamas, the thugocracy that rules Gaza, had staged a funeral for a tiny child of two, calling her a "martyr" and disgustingly wrapping her body in a Hamas flag. While they claimed her life ended in an Israeli attack, someone from Hamas had already admitted to the BBC [see "Palestinian Girl’s Death: Hamas Owns Up"] that the toddler's death was in fact caused by its own terrorists. No Israeli forces were involved.

Though most of the mainstream media reported the death as caused by Israel or at minimum that there were credible claims that it was all Israel's fault, there's a new and authoritative version. A UN agency has come forward (hat tip Challah Hu Akbar) to confirm the Israeli version of the facts. 

The little girl was yet another innocent victim of the Palestinian Arab rocket men, and she was not the only child to suffer in this particular incident. Click here to see how the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in "Occupied Palestinian Territory" reports on "two incidents on 18 and 19 June [in which] an 18-month-old Palestinian baby was killed and four other children (aged between 3 and 12) were injured when Palestinian rockets fell short inside Gaza and hit two houses in the Beit Hanoun and Az Zeitoun areas"

Tragically but consistent with their outlook on life - and on death - the Paltimes website published grotesque photographs of the "martyred" toddler, Hadeel al-Haddad. We won't reproduce them here.

22-Jun-12: More 'ceasefire' rocket attacks on southern Israel this morning

Our sources in the south reported Tzeva Adom incoming-missile warnings around 11 this morning. We see from this Times of Israel report that two more Qassam rockets were fired from the Hamas-infested Gaza Strip in the general direction of southern Israel's Eshkol region at about that time. Fortunately no injuries to human beings or damage are reported but this, emphatically, is not why the terrorist rocket persons endanger their own lives. It's Jewish blood they seek, and, with a religious dispensation, they are virtually fearless. They will stop only when someone stops them from the Israeli side. The Times of Israel reports as well that the remnants of a significantly more-powerful Grad missile were discovered in the Be’er Tuvia area this morning, close to the city of Ashdod (which is further away from Gaza than the beleagured city of Ashkelon is). Israeli security forces are unable to say when that missile landed.

22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it

Tamimi, self-confessed murderer of our child, planner of the
Sbarro massacre, presenter of a weekly TV program that incites viewers to 
follow in her blood-soaked footsteps, free citizen of the Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan, on her wedding day in Amman this week.

The article below, authored by Ben Cohen of Joint Media News Service, currently appears on the web editions of the Canadian Jewish News and of Algemeiner Journal. 

Fallout from Shalit deal continues to divide Israelis

By Ben Cohen/JNS.org

While the Israeli government justifies releasing 1,027 Palestinian terrorists (in exchange for Shalit) through the rationale that safety is improved when terrorists leave the country, Arnold Roth—whose daughter was killed in the infamous Sbarro bombing by now-freed terrorist Ahlam Tamimi—isn’t buying that argument.

Having experienced hijackings, cross-border incursions, gun attacks and suicide bombings across several decades, Israelis also know too well that the damage wreaked by terrorist atrocities can reverberate for years after these insidious acts are committed.

Internal divisions often accompany that lasting damage. In the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack, the country invariably unites in grief, but splits emerge when the feelings of those families scarred by terror attacks conflict with decisions that the government deems to be in the national interest.

A prime case in point involves Arnold and Frimet Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter, Malki, was murdered along with 14 others when a suicide bomber struck the Sbarro pizza restaurant in downtown Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001. Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian woman who transported both the bomb and the bomber to the restaurant, was subsequently captured and sentenced to 16 life terms in prison.

In October 2011, as part of the deal in which 1,027 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who spent more than five years in Hamas captivity, Tamimi walked free. Now living in Jordan, Tamimi has become a celebrity in the Arab world, hosting her own weekly show on the Hamas satellite TV station, Al Quds. In between extolling the virtues of “martyrdom attacks” against Jews, she celebrates her own monstrous achievement; on one famous occasion, when she learned that she had enabled the killing of eight children at the Sbarro restaurant, and not three as she had previously thought, she turned to the camera wearing a broad grin of pride.

Six months before the Shalit deal, the Roths and their many supporters implored Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to consider Tamimi’s release as part of any exchange. Netanyahu, they say, did not respond then. Nor did he respond when the Roths challenged Netanyahu's claim that the families impacted by the Shalit deal had been sent a letter explaining the government’s position; they could find no evidence, they insisted, that such a letter had been sent.

Now the Roths are accusing Netanyahu of ignoring them for a third time.

The occasion was the news that another convicted terrorist, Nizar al Tamimi, had crossed the Allenby Bridge from the West Bank into Jordan to join his cousin and ertswhile fiancée—none other than the murderer-turned-TV star Ahlam Tamimi. Nizar, who was serving a life sentence for the murder of a Jewish resident of the West Bank in 1993, was also released under the terms of the Shalit deal. While Ahlam and Nizar’s victims will never recover from the grief inflicted by their grotesque crimes, the Arabic press is reporting that the couple is currently planning their wedding.

This month, the Roths wrote an open letter to Netanyahu pointing out that Nizar al Tamimi’s release “was conditioned on the requirement that he remain at all times within the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority.” His reunion with their daughter's murderer came, therefore, as a massive blow to the Roths, who were already aware that Tamimi had previously tried to enter Jordan and been turned back.

“I called someone who has a very senior position in the Ministry of Justice,” Arnold Roth told me. “He said, ‘it’s never going to happen,’ but advised me to check nonetheless. I chased the Shabak (Israel’s security service) for two and a half weeks. When I finally got a reply, I was told that there was a decision to allow Nizar to leave, provided that he doesn’t come back within five years.” Roth hired a lawyer to challenge the decision, but it was too late—Nizar al Tamimi arrived in Jordan on June 7. “I felt like I’d been hit over the head with a cricket bat,” Roth, an Australian who made aliyah, recalled in his conversation with me.

I contacted Israeli government officials to find out their reasoning. After encountering some initial reluctance, I received a call from Mark Regev, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman. “I understand Arnold’s pain and the pain of those whose family members have been killed by terrorists, when they see those guilty of these horrendous crimes being released,” Regev said. However, he stressed, the current situation is a direct outcome of the Shalit deal. “Everything flows from that,” Regev said. “Arnold’s position is a legitimate one that we respect. Ultimately, the government chose the path of getting Gilad Shalit out of captivity.”

Though he was unwilling to discuss the specific details of Nizar al Tamimi’s case, Regev did explain the strategic principle behind the government’s thinking. “Israel does not have a problem with terrorists leaving,” he said. “It’s easier for us when hardcore terrorists actually leave. Their ability to hurt us in the future is much more limited.”

Arnold Roth is not persuaded by this argument. In an email to me subsequent to our conversation, he pointed out that another terrorist released through the Shalit deal, Ibrahim Abu Hijleh, had been rearrested. “f they want terrorists out of the country, why did they explicitly restrict more than 100 of them, including Nizar al-Tamimi, to the area controlled by the PA?” Roth wrote. “That’s a decision they took in October 2011. Since they made that decision then, why did they change it now? And without any announcement? And without consulting any of the victims?”

Lack of consultation with the victims is a recurring theme among critics of the Israeli government’s actions in this sensitive area. “Israeli government decision-making related to the release of terrorists and related issues continues to be highly secretive, often inexplicable, and entirely insensitive to the families of the victims,” Professor Gerald Steinberg, the President of NGO Monitor, a leading Israel advocacy organization, told me in an email. “The mass release in the Shalit exchange, and now facilitating al Tamimi’s ‘family reunification,’ has continued the cruel pattern of shutting out the families of the terror victims, while eroding Israeli deterrence against the perpetrators of mass terror.”

It is against this charged background that the Roths are demanding answers. The Israeli government can, of course, say that it is providing answers; but the problem with those answers is that they raise even more painful questions. Clarity is needed, and that’s why Prime Minister Netanyahu should finally sit down in person with Arnold and Frimet Roth.

True, such an encounter may well turn out to be a fractious one. That is better than a continuing silence that comes across as cold indifference.

Ben Cohen is the Shillman Analyst for JNS.org. His writings on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Ha’aretz, Jewish Ideas Daily and many other publications.

22-Jun-12: For now, there's somewhat less drama down south, but peaceful it's not.

Israeli bride Rinat Shiklar lives on Kibbutz Alumim, adjacent to the Gaza Strip. 
Here she poses in front of an Iron Dome anti-missile battery
on her wedding day,yesterday. Mazal tov! [Image Source]

Life goes on, as it must, and people get married and live productive lives. [Mazal tov, Rinat!] 

In Ashkelon, a gorgeous Mediterranean city that is home to more than 110,000 Israelis, the schools were due to reopen this morning after the drama of this entire past week. And yes, things are a little quieter there and in other parts of southern Israel this morning. But certainly not quiet, and certainly no one believes a ceasefire agreement with the terrorists means very much. 

During the night just ended (Thursday night/Friday morning), four rockets were fired from Gaza into the city, according to the Times of Israel. Three exploded in open fields, while the fourth was shot down in mid-flight by the IDF's Iron Dome missile defense system which is a good indication that that rocket was on target to strike a residential area. (The Iron Dome system has a differential identification mechanism that allows it to make split-second decisions about where to fire off one of its counter-measure rockets, or allow the incoming missile to crash and explode, depending on what it assesses to be the risk of a very bad outcome.) Fortunately no damage or injuries to human beings was reported during this past night but that was never the intention of the terrorist organizations and their sponsors.

In the quietest day of indiscriminate terror attacks this week, seven rockets (according to Ynet) hit Israel on Thursday in addition to the one intercepted over Ashkelon. The talley since Monday: 130 rockets that actually hit Israeli territory.

The IDF has made public its working assumption that the rocket attacks are going to continue. All things considered, it's a safe bet. What downside is there in the continued firing of lethal missiles when you're a terrorist organization. You're surely not concerned about possible losses to your own people. Such losses are actually a good thing rather than a bad, as anyone who follows these events and understands something about the mindset of the jihadists knows.

Hamas took public credit on Thursday for the fact that its terrorists operatives did all the rocket firings into Israel this week (which is almost certainly an exaggeration). But in doing so, it showed how much it expects consumers of news around the world to swallow the patent nonsense that it says about itself. The Hamas report proudly (no other way to describe it) lists 120 Gazan rocket firings, and then recites the name and character of the targets.

Guess what the targets were. No, not farms. Not school buses. No, not pizza restaurants or kindergartens or residential buildings. In reality, the people firing the rockets care not one tiny little bit who or what is hit; just as long as it's someone or something Jewish. But though that is certainly the truth, it's not what they say. On the contrary, the Hamas report says every single building, vehicle and person hit this week on the Israeli side was what it terms a "military site". The report is written in a kind of  English; check it now to see that we're not making this stuff up.

Revealingly, there's nothing on the Hamas site to acknowledge how one of its rockets this week killed a two year old Palestinian Arab girl. Elder of Ziyon has a brief and factual report which we would very much like you to see [click]. Brief summary: Hamas blames Israel for yet another self-inflicted loss caused by its own terrorist evil, and buries the evidence by staging a funeral for the little child, calling her a "martyr," and disgustingly wrapping her body in a Hamas flag. But it admits to the BBC [see "Palestinian Girl’s Death: Hamas Owns Up"] that the death was caused by its own sick-minded thuggish members (not the actual words they used).  

Hamas rockets landing on top of Gazan homes and hurting and even killing their own people is nothing new. It happens all the time, but gets reported in the media almost never. To know more, look for the laconically titled "dropped short", "exploded prematurely" and "exploded at the launching site" rocket listings on this EU-funded Gazan website [hat tip: EoZ].

In truth, we don't expect terrorists to tell anything other than lies and self-serving distortions since anyone with eyes is aware of what savages they are. What does stun us, by contrast, is how otherwise sober and supposedly intelligent reporters and editors (such as those at Agence France Press and the New York Times as two among many examples) peddle those Hamas inventions and fabrications while knowing from first-hand experience the true nature of Hamas, its ideology and its beastiality.

20-Jun-12: Wednesday evening and those Gaza rocket salvos are coming in thick and heavy

We don't have an authoritative update on the number of missiles fired into Israel by the various terrorist groups in Gaza today, but it appears to be around 50 at this point (the IDF says 75 incoming rockets in the past three days) and they are still coming, all of them seeking Israeli victims with no regard for whether they are military, civilian or other. This is how terrorists operate.

We were on the move throughout the day and not able to keep up with the incoming reports. Just this evening, there were clusters of attacks around 6:30 pm, then 6:45 pm, then 8:00 pm, 8:15 pm, 8:25 pm, and then an especially serious shower of rockets around 8:30 pm (all of these are Israel time). We know of significant property damage in the past 45 minutes (it's now 9:10 pm and the Tzeva Adom sirens are wailing across the Eshkol region), but there are no details for now because of ongoing security reasons.

From the reports and images we have seen, Israel's responses until now have been pin-point accurate and astonishingly free of collateral damage. The mood in Israel is, and always has been, that the IDF's actions should exact a price from the terrorists and their commanders, and to the greatest extent possible should leave non-combatants unharmed. War does not allow for such a precise distinction but the results of this round of Israel's forceful responses to the terrorist attacks have to the greatest extent fulfilled that hope.

20-Jun-12: Those rockets keep coming, and the news coverage outside the immediate area is practically zero

Scene at a Border Police base last night
shortly after one of yesterday's dozens of
incoming rockets got "lucky" and hit some
Israelis. [Image Source]

Incoming-missile sirens have been wailing across much of southern Israel almost non-stop throughout the hours of darkness and at about hourly intervals during this morning (Wednesday). It's continuing as we type these words.

Irrespective of whether Israelis have been killed or injured or terrified, it's a nightmare - a taste of what full-scale war-by-terrorists is going to be like as the war waged by "our" terrorists gets more sophisticated, with longer-range rockets, more accurate missiles and other outcomes that result from them having better and more technology. "Our" terrorists are caste from the same mould that is producing other people's terrorists - everyone else's terrorists. Their weaponry and methodology are similar and getting more similar all the time.

Perhaps this - the realization that the threat which Israel is attempting to blunt - is what prevents editors and their journalists and reporters, analysts and photographers - from properly covering - at street level, ground level - what hundreds of thousands of people living right across southern Israel are living at this moment.

Who knows? Whatever the explanation, this means it's practically impossible for anyone living outside the immediate region (other than the determined few who tune in to the various blogs and news services created by Israelis) to a real sense of the terror being inflicted round the clock on half of the state of Israel and its residents by the Islamic Jihadists, the Hamas thugs and the other sub-divisions of the global armed-to-the-teeth Islamist hatred movement.

19-Jun-12: Starting at 10 this evening, another wave of rocket attacks, and a residential building takes a direct hit

There's a real effort in this country to disguise the places where the Gazan terrorists rockets actually strike (why give the thugs any feedback to help them improve their aim?) So the reports issued in the past hour, since 10 o'clock Tuesday night, are vague as to location. What we can say, as the Times of Israel reported just now, is that

"one rocket hit a building in the Hof Ashkelon region, setting it on fire and injuring four people according to initial reports. One person is in serious condition and the other three were lightly injured by shrapnel."

Starting almost on the dot of 10 o'clock tonight, hundreds of thousands of Israelis in communities right across southern Israel were treated to Tzeva Adom sirens, the terrifying sound of which is a signal to run for cover and find some way to protect the children while shielding them from the horrors of what could be if the thugs of Gaza get lucky with their endless supplies of explosive missiles.